Wall Street Journal Reports On Lawton Chiles Foundation Fight

Image by Getty Images via DaylifeThe Wall Street Journal reported today on the state of the fight to save more than $600 million dollars for the Lawton Chiles Endowment Fund.

The family of former Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles has assembled a team of lawyers to try to block state officials from dipping into an endowment named for the late politician to help close a projected $2.3 billion budget deficit.

The state House is expected to unveil a preliminary budget of roughly $66 billion Wednesday that would be balanced partly through spending cuts and borrowing from state trust funds. Those funds could include a loan of as much as $600 million from the Lawton Chiles Endowment Fund, which was established in 1999 by the state legislature with a portion of the landmark tobacco settlement won in 1997 during Mr. Chiles's governorship. The fund's purpose is to support health care for poor children and seniors, smoking-cessation programs and biomedical research.

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