Legislature returns to lesson of taxes past

MORGAN

© St. Petersburg Times
published March 9, 2002

It was another gut-wrenching week in the Florida Legislature.

It would seem the Republicans in charge are eating their young.

It was a week when Republicans in the Senate were poised to approve new taxes of more than a billion dollars. Republicans, for God's sake.

And then Senate Majority Leader Jim King saved them from themselves.

Politicians will long debate and remember this week. So will King.

The truth is that Republicans were unlikely to ever vote to increase the total amount of taxes collected by the state. Most of them got here by promising not to raise taxes. It has become the third rail of politics. If the tax had survived a vote in the Legislature, it is even less likely it would have survived Gov. Jeb Bush's veto pen.

Disagree with them if you like, but it is where they draw the line.

Senate President John McKay prodded some of them across the line, but most Republicans think they could not survive staying across that line very long. They remember members defeated over the years because they voted for a tax, or in some cases just thought about a tax.

There was Sam Bell, a Democrat about to become speaker of the House in 1988, booted out of office by his hometown voters after a Republican opponent accused him of supporting an income tax. Bell didn't support the tax, but when the fight was over he was out on his ear anyway.

There was also Gov. Bob Martinez, the last Republican governor. He supported a billion-dollar services tax in 1987 and then reversed field and got it repealed and replaced with a billion-dollar sales tax. Voters tossed him out for Gov. Lawton Chiles, who didn't push for tax reform even when he had Democrats in charge of both houses.

King remembered them all, and all of the Democrats he helped defeat while he was helping run House campaigns in the 1990s. Many of them went down in flames over taxes. That's part of the reason Republicans took control of the entire Legislature in 1996.

It's hard to say how long this fight will linger. The impact may depend on how it ends.

If some genius can find a way to help McKay save face and win something without raising taxes while adequately funding education and human services, there may be a way out.

Without it, the Republicans are in trouble.

Over in the House they have passed redistricting plans that have made just about everybody mad. A lot of people are wondering why a House run by Republicans would draw a district that so strongly displeases the Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives who has his hand on the purse strings.

But that is what they did to U.S. Rep. C.W. Bill Young, R-Largo. He is not a happy camper. He doesn't want a district that stretches from St. Petersburg to Holiday. And if there is any Republican who should get his way, it should be our esteemed appropriations chairman.

Some observers suggest that the House is merely tweaking the nose of Sen. Jack Latvala, R-Palm Harbor, who heads the Senate's Congressional Redistricting Committee and wants to give Young a good district.

The House has also managed to put U.S. Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Ocala, in a bit of a pickle. He and U.S. Rep. Karen Thurman, D-Dunnellon, share a district. And the district is one that just might like Thurman. After all she was once their state senator and is familiar with many of the issues they face.

The Senate plan adopted by the House puts Sen. Tom Lee, R-Brandon, and Sen. John Laurent, R-Bartow, in the same district. What is accomplished for Republicans with that move?

On Monday morning, legislators will be entertaining members of Congress at a summit in Tallahassee. Wanna bet attendance is up this year?

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