ElderWeb

The Lawton Chiles Endowment Fund is a $2-billion fund developed from Florida?s legal settlement with tobacco companies. When Governor Jeb Bush proposed the Chiles endowment last year, he said the money should go to Florida's neediest citizens, half for children's programs, half for the elderly. But when the Legislature ironed out the details this month, programs for the elderly received only one-sixth of the money in the fund. Half of the funds did go to programs for children, but the remainder of the money originally intended for programs for the elderly ended up being devoted to biomedical research.

Advocacy groups feel that programs for the elderly have been shortchanged, and point out there are many ways that money could be used to improve programs for caregivers and other aging initiatives in Florida. Opponents state that biomedical research will help the elderly, too. Larry Polivka, director of the Florida Policy Exchange Center on Aging at the University of South Florida, said the legislation caught him and other elderly advocates by surprise. The Florida chapter of AARP, which first heard about the legislation last week, was debating whether to ask Bush to veto it.