|
The Orlando Sentinel, Fla., John Kennedy column: Lawmakers in Tallahassee look at higher fees to aid budget
(Orlando Sentinel, The (FL) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Mar. 23--Most of the talk in Tallahassee is about budget cuts, but a few lawmakers are willing to whisper that they're also considering hiking fees.
An election year is never a good time to do anything that opponents can cast in campaign mailers as tax increases. So lawmakers are wary of asking Floridians for any more cash out of their pockets.
But Republican leaders also are trying to close a budget chasm likely to top $3 billion this year. Deep across-the-board reductions are certain, with health and human-services programs facing perhaps the harshest hits.
Fee hikes aren't much of a Band-Aid. But lawmakers are just short of checking the sofas for spare change this session.
Modest boosts could raise $100 million or more when spread across the cost of registering a boat, vehicle title fees, court fees, policies and forms filed by insurance companies and agents, the cost of licensing funeral directors and the fees paid on pre-need contracts.
Firefighters, accountants and food-service vendors also are eyed by budget-writers as possible sources of extra state dollars.
"The older I get and the longer I'm here, I realize we don't box ourselves in by precluding anything," said Senate President Ken Pruitt, R-Port St. Lucie, when asked about the likelihood of a fee package emerging in the Senate. A Senate budget committee laid out many of the fee possibilities last week, although the government-shrinking House has so far steered clear of such talk.
"We're looking at everything to make it work," said Sen. J.D. Alexander, R-Winter Haven, chairman of the general government appropriations panel floating the fee hikes. "At this point, I'm not sure which way we'll go. The House doesn't seem too inclined to discuss those issues, but we'll be talking more the next couple of weeks."
Lawmakers don't have to look too far to find precedent.
Only five years ago, the Republican-controlled Legislature raised $150 million extra by hiking costs paid by drivers, college students, Medicaid patients, cell-phone users, hunters and mobile-home residents.
The Legislature that year also pulled $882 million out of reserve funds to help close a budget gap. Lawmakers used $1.3 billion in one-time tax dollars to maintain ongoing state programs, a risky dice roll that paid off when the state's economy perked up a year later.
With this year's shortfall almost triple that of 2003, whispers of fee increases and raids on reserves are getting louder -- election year or not.
Tax-talk flashback
New property-tax plan. Same ideological gridlock.
The wrapping wasn't off the amendment now headed to voters to cut 25 percent of their tax bills before the House and Senate were arguing last week about how to make it work.
The November ballot amendment requires the Legislature to make up the expected $9.6 billion in lost tax revenue for schools, with a higher sales tax; by sorting through hundreds of goods and services that now go untaxed and making them pay; or by cutting the heck out of what will likely be a pretty black-and-blue state budget once the tax cut takes effect in 2011.
Followers of last year's House-Senate wrangling about consumption taxes can cut and paste the arguments that ensued.
"A lot of legislators, conservative legislators, are probably going to come out against it," said Sen. Daniel Webster, R-Winter Garden, who since his 1980 election has seen Florida adopt and repeal a unitary tax and a services tax.
Webster said he fears the measure -- if approved by voters -- would result in a deep reduction in dollars that now flow to schools being replaced with a higher sales tax and cuts to other programs to free the money needed to maintain school funding at its current levels, as required by the proposed amendment.
Conversely, House Speaker Marco Rubio, R-West Miami, was gushing after the Taxation and Budget Reform Commission -- which has the power to place amendments directly on the ballot -- passed the proposal similar to his initial tax plan.
But more importantly, another ardent backer of switching to a consumption tax, Rep. Ray Sansom, R-Destin, is replacing Rubio in the speaker's office come November.
He said he favored paying for all the cuts through a 2-cent sales-tax increase.
"To get ourselves away from property taxes and more into a consumption tax is certainly the way to go in the future," Sansom said.
Business groups are hoping it never comes to that. They're urging the 25-member TBRC panel to switch their votes when the measure returns in April for a perfunctory final vote.
That seems unlikely. Though they won't mind polishing their arguments against the plan for the long campaign ahead.
"The voters get the final say," said Florida Chamber of Commerce lobbyist David Daniel.
For more insider information and insights on Florida politics, go to Central Florida Political Pulse at OrlandoSentinel.com/politicalpulse. John Kennedy can be reached at jkennedy@orlandosentinel.com. Aaron Deslatte can be reached at adeslatte@orlandosentinel.com. Both also can be reached at 850-222-5564.
To see more of The Orlando Sentinel or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.OrlandoSentinel.com.
Copyright (c) 2008, The Orlando Sentinel, Fla.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
|
Find Solutions for Enterprises, SMBs & Service Providers at the INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference and EXPO West, September 16-18, 2008. Los Angeles, California.
