Haridopolos leads fight against "bait and switch"

Florida Times-Union: Property Taxes: A really bad idea

Mike Haridopolos, R-Indialantic, described the idea as a “bait and switch” and a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” in a Florida Capital News story online.

That’s an understatement. It’s a bad idea on many levels....

Cheers for the Haridopolos truth tour.

Ft. Myers News Press: Vote down shell game amendment

Why are so many people so alarmed by Amendment 5 in a year when a tax-cut amendment won overwhelming voter approval in January?

The answer is that Amendment 5 is a shell game that takes a reckless gamble with the future of education funding in Florida.

An impressive alliance has formed to oppose a tax-cutting amendment on the November ballot. We wish them well.

The Protect Florida’s Future coalition was announced this week by Sen. Mike Haridopolos, R-Indialantic, chair of the Senate Finance and Tax Committee and Senate president-designate in 2010. It has representatives of small business, education, health care, farm interests and others.

Florida Today: Haridopolos leads charge against 'bait and switch' tax amendment

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Senate passes frugal budget with pay cuts for governor, lawmakers

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A frugal budget that includes pay cuts for Gov. Charlie Crist and lawmakers as well as spending reductions in health care, education, prisons, the courts and nearly every other state service passed Wednesday in the Florida Senate.

The House, meanwhile, debated its version but will not vote until Thursday.

The Senate's $65.9 billion budget for the next fiscal year is about $4 billion short of what Florida is spending now because tax revenues have fallen due to slumping state and national economies. The House measure is even more austere, about $800 million below the Senate.

The Senate added the 10 percent pay cut for Crist, Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp, the three Cabinet members and legislators without debate or discussion. It would raise $586,426 to restore cuts in early learning programs including school readiness, pre-kindergarten, child care and families with disabilities and special health care needs.

"If we're asking everyone else to have to cut their budget, we in the Legislature should do exactly the same," said Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, who offered the proposal.

Crist would be the biggest loser under the Senate cut, taking a $13,294 salary decrease, and lawmakers from both chambers would take a roughly $3,000 reduction, a bit more for their leaders. The House included in its budget a smaller pay cut, shrinking legislators' salaries by about $760 a year, but leaving the governor and Cabinet alone.

The two chambers, though, are in agreement on a 6 percent tuition increase for community college and university students and neither has a tax increase, although the Senate would raise court filing fees.

"We've done more with less," said Senate Fiscal Policy and Calendar Committee Chairwoman Lisa Carlton, R-Osprey. "We have lived without our means."

Democrats, most of whom voted against the budget, offered two amendments that together would have raised about $400 million by closing what they said are loopholes that let big businesses shift Florida tax liabilities to subsidiaries in low-tax or no-tax states. Both failed.

"We could have raised money without affecting the average taxpayer," said Senate Democratic Leader Steve Geller of Cooper City.

The Senate vote was 26-12. All Republicans voted for the budget bill (SB 2900) and all except one Democrat - Sen. Mandy Dawson of Fort Lauderdale - opposed it.

The Senate also rejected efforts to restore cuts to prisons, the court system and a variety of education, senior citizen and children's health care programs by shifting money from a huge rail project in central Florida. It would reroute freight trains for a commuter rail system in Orlando.

After the House votes on Thursday, committees from both chambers will have to resolve differences in each section of the budget.

A major one is the House's failure to provide any money in the new budget year, which begins July 1, for Everglades restoration and the Florida Forever land-buying program, which get $100 million and $300 million in the Senate bill.

A big difference in health care is whether to pay for drugs for some people with catastrophic illnesses and transplant recipients. The House would, but the Senate wouldn't. The House, though, would cut spending for hospitalization for the same people.

Other differences include the amount of money the state requires schools to collect from tax dollars. The House would keep the amount the same. The Senate would require school boards to collect about $500 million more. The additional dollars would come from new development and property value increases. They also include a shift of some local tax dollars now earmarked for school building to school operating expenses such as salaries.

Despite those differences, the two chambers are fairly close on spending for primary and secondary schools, both cutting them under 2 percent. The Senate plans to reduce per-student spending by $116 while the House cut is $86. It would be the first per-student cut since 2001-02.

One of the most protracted debates in the House on Wednesday came over a plan in its budget (HB 5001) to close the A.G. Holley Hospital in Lantana. It's the last remaining hospital in the nation dedicated to treating people with difficult tuberculosis cases.

Rep. Yolly Roberson, D-Miami, who is a nurse, called closing the hospital "a public health disaster waiting to happen."

But Republicans said there are 2,400 hospital rooms in facilities around the state that will be able to care for the hospital's patients. They said the Palm Beach County hospital is a remnant of a bygone time when TB was a much bigger problem. It treated fewer than 100 patients last year.

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Associated Press Writer David Royse contributed to this report.


Please post your comments on the budget here.

TCPalm Editorial: Tax reform, yes; tax increase, no

Thursday, March 6, 2008


Imposing a one-cent hike in Florida’s sales tax would make tough economic times even worse

Call it penny-ante tax relief.

The latest plan at the state Taxation and Budget Reform Commission calls for a one-cent increase in Florida’s sales tax. In exchange, the panel pledges to close selected loopholes in the current tax code and deliver new breaks to property owners.

Can you say “bait and switch”?

This newspaper has long supported the concept of closing some statutory loopholes that, inexplicably, give tax-free status to hundreds of items ranging from pricey stadium skyboxes to ostrich feed. By capturing more revenues, the state should be able to lower the overall sales-tax rate, not raise it. That’s the essence of true tax reform.

But the tax reform commission blurs its priorities by piling on property-tax breaks for selected homeowners in an attempt to offset what amounts to a $3.5 billion sales-tax hike.

One provision would lower the newly voter-approved 10 percent annual assessment cap on non-homesteaded properties to 5 percent. That reduction surely sweetens the pot for snowbirds, but it’s no deal for 18 million Floridians.

This kind of tradeoff doesn’t impress state Sen. Mike Haridopolos, who chairs the Senate Tax and Finance Committee and was instrumental in producing the Amendment 1 reforms that passed in January.

“It’s too easy to start backdooring tax increases, with property taxes creeping up again,” the Melbourne Republican told Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers’ editorial board last week.

Indeed, the temptation to ratchet up taxes will be almost immediate. To sell the sales tax-property tax combo, Orlando economist Hank Fishkind calculated that the “average taxpayer” would come out $53 ahead under the proposal.

Really? Fifty-three whole dollars? For that kind of benefit, why go through these gyrations at all?

If Fishkind’s computations are correct, the sales-tax hike fails to generate appreciably more revenue, but a 17 percent increase in the base rate would hit low- and middle-income taxpayers disproportionately hard. In other words, the worst of both worlds.

Instead of pursuing a shell game that collapses at the bottom line, commissioners would do better to focus on another program already under review: the Taxpayer Bill of Rights. The so-called TABOR would cap how much cities, counties, schools and special taxing districts can spend by tying revenues to inflation and population increases. Only voters could waive the spending or revenue caps, and any new tax or fee also would have to get public approval.

Floridians deserve one clear, well-considered and equitable tax package from the reform commission, which has the authority to put recommendations directly onto the November ballot. As such, the panel must resist the temptation to haul out a smorgasbord of competing, even conflicting, schemes. A tax increase definitely should not be on the menu.

If the protections of a Taxpayer Bill of Rights were in place, Florida households would have enjoyed an average property-tax savings of $569 in 2006. That’s at least 10 times better than a market-killing hike in the sales tax.

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Reprinted from the TCPalm

Amendment would ensure lawmakers can set university tuition

Thursday, March 6, 2008


By BILL KACZOR
Associated Press Writer

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) -- A constitutional proposal that would ensure the Legislature, not an appointed board, can set tuition sailed through its first Senate committee Wednesday after lawmakers cast aside arguments it would politicize Florida's university system.

Besides making sure the Board of Governors can't set tuition, the proposed amendment also would again make Florida's education commissioner an elected position, abolish Florida's appointed State Board of Education and return its authority over primary and secondary schools to the governor and Cabinet. Until 2003 the governor and Cabinet, including an elected education commissioner, oversaw the state's schools.

The measure would undo constitutional provisions supported by two former governors, Democrat Bob Graham and Republican Jeb Bush.

Graham led a citizen initiative in 2002 that created the Board of Governors to oversees the 11 state universities. Graham and the board are suing the Legislature, claiming the panel, not lawmakers, have tuition-setting authority. The proposed amendment, though, would settle the issue regardless of how the courts rule.

"This new governance structure would clearly say that the decision on tuition is in the hands of the appropriators of the state's money," said Senate President Tempore Lisa Carlton, R-Osprey, who is sponsoring the measure (SJR 2308), which was before the Education Prekindergarten-12th Grade Committee.

Carlton said legislators can better balance the public's desire for low tuition - Florida has the nation's lowest - against the financial needs of the universities. Facing budget cutbacks, the board approved an 8 percent tuition increase in January without legislative approval.

University System Chancellor Mark Rosenberg argued against the proposal, which also would reduce the board from 17 to 8 members and cut their terms from seven to four years. He said it would hold universities "captive to political interests of the moment."

The board's size and terms are designed as a buffer against politics because a governor, who can serve only eight years, would be unable to appoint the entire panel until nearly out of office.

The committee also rejected arguments from Patricia Levesque, executive director of two foundations Bush has formed to advocate his education policies. She said having an elected commissioner would politicize education. Abolishing the board and giving its duties back to the governor and Cabinet will dilute the governor's power because he would no longer be the state's top education official, she said.

The measure, which passed unanimously, will be heard by the Higher Education Committee before it can go to the Senate floor. It's a top priority of Senate President Ken Pruitt, R-Port St. Lucie.

A similar proposal is to be heard Friday by the House Schools and Learning Council.

Graham said in an interview he was surprised by the proposal because "it seems to be a concession" the board has tuition-setting authority under the 2002 amendment.

The panel is similar to the Board of Regents the Legislature abolished in 2001 after it opposed two new medical schools favored by influential lawmakers. As a result, Graham said, "We became the most dysfunction university system in the country."

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Reprinted from the Associated Press

Senate Votes to cut $500 million from current budget

Thursday, March 6, 2008


By DAVID ROYSE
Associated Press Writer

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) -- State spending this year would be about a half billion dollars less than planned under a bill the Senate passed Thursday.

With Florida's economy in a tailspin and residents not spending money, incoming taxes are expected to be about 13 percent lower this year than what legislators initially expected to have when they wrote the budget last year.

Senators passed the $503.3 million reduction in the current year's approximately $70 billion budget to bring state spending in line with lower-than-expected tax collections.

The House passed its budget-cutting proposal a day earlier, although the two plans differ slightly. Those differences are expected to be worked out in talks that began Thursday.

Senators did change their cut plan slightly, shifting $2.5 million into the criminal justice budget that could mean prosecutors and public defenders won't have to take unwanted time off. The prospect of furloughs had been raised as lawmakers wrote the budget cut bill.

To avoid that cut, the Senate approved using money from various fines that are expected to be collected between now and the end of the year.

Sen. Victor Crist, who chairs the Senate committee that writes the criminal justice part of the budget, warned that when lawmakers start writing next year's budget, there will still be difficulties.

"This is a quick fix to help them get through this year's budget," said Crist, R-Tampa, who sponsored the amendment shifting the money.

The bill to make the cuts (HB 7009) passed 26-13, almost entirely along party lines, with Republicans in favor and Democrats against.

Democrats had urged that the state dig more deeply into its savings accounts to avoid deep program cuts and consider finding new sources of money - possibly including tax increases.

Republicans in control of the Legislature, however, oppose tax increases.

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Reprinted from the Associated Press