With only four days remaining out of the 60 prescribed by the state Constitution, the Florida House and Senate have yet to agree on anything important or even on when the session actually will end. For Friday, the House's printed calendar confidently proclaims sine die, the Latin term for final adjournment. The Senate's calendar treats it as just another day. To adjourn by then, they would have to agree on a budget, for which the effective deadline is not Friday but today (the Senate hasn't even passed its version of a budget yet); compromise on new districts for Congress and themselves; and provide for a new system to regulate banking, insurance and financial markets after the comptroller's and treasurer's offices are merged next January.

That would be a challenge even under normal circumstances, given that redistricting is normally about cutting throats. This year, another issue looms over all: Senate President John McKay's unrequited passion for tax reform. The Legislature does not deserve to go home until it has dealt fairly with that.

Monday's proposal by Rep. Rob Wallace's House Fiscal Policy and Resources Committee is not merely worthless. It is worse than worthless, because its purpose is to delude the public that the Legislature is serious about tax reform. The unseriousness of the scheme, which calls for a joint commission of House and Senate members to review tax exemptions, is apparent in the details. It would take a two-thirds vote for the commission even to recommend the repeal of any tax exemption. Even then, nothing would compel the Legislature to act. The supermajority provision was too much even for Associated Industries, McKay's archfoe on tax reform, which said only a simple majority ought to suffice.

The committee's sham could be useful only as a face-saving pretext for ending the session on time. McKay properly rejected it, and however nervous other senators may be, they should continue to support him.

McKay's own counterproposal, though rejected by the House leadership out of hand, has considerable merit. It calls for scheduling most sales tax exemptions to expire unless subsequent sessions re-enact them. History teaches that nothing less drastic will work. The objection from House leaders and business lobbies that this would cast a pall of uncertainty over economic development is a particularly fragrant red herring. Every tax exemption is always theoretically subject to repeal whenever the Legislature meets. Moreover, taxes have much less influence on modern industrial investment than do the quality of a state's schools, universities and transportation system.

It won't be so bad if the session doesn't end on time, or if it ends in apparent failure to redistrict and enact a budget. Legislators eventually would be called back in one special session to reconsider the budget and in another, as the Constitution requires, to reapportion themselves.

The worst that could happen is that the Florida Supreme Court would eventually redistrict the House and Senate, which it could hardly do worse than the legislators themselves and almost certainly would do better. A federal court would redistrict the congressional seats, to the probable dismay of the Republican National Committee and the likely disappointment of House Speaker Tom Feeney, who wants a district he can call his own.

Meanwhile, a failure to enact tax reform would serve at least one useful purpose. It would demonstrate conclusively to voters that, apart from McKay and his Senate stalwarts, their present elected leadership is unwilling to lead Florida any further into the 21st century.

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