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A Times Editorial
© St. Petersburg Times, published August 1, 2002
The indispensable employee in any state capital is the one whose duty is to tell the governor and the Legislature what they don't want to hear. In Florida, that role has been filled, faithfully and fearlessly for 16 years, by a good-humored economist (yes, there is at least one) named Ed Montanaro. His resignation as director of the Legislature's Office of Economic and Demographic Research is the worst news to come out of Tallahassee this summer.
It leaves a conspicuous void in the official Revenue Estimating Conference, whose other members directly represent the governor, House speaker and Senate president. By virtue of his long tenure and towering reputation, Montanaro has been first among equals in predicting whether the state's income will meet, exceed or fall short of its obligations in education, criminal justice and social services. Because those demands invariably rise in inverse proportion to the health of the economy and Florida's tourist-dependent tax base, Montanaro has more frequently been the bearer of bad news than of good. But legislators long ago learned that to ask him a question is to get an honest answer, however little they might like it.
On such an occasion earlier this year, Montanaro expressed his belief that Florida would get less economic benefit from giving corporations a $262-million tax break, as the governor and House leaders wanted (and got), than from spending the money on public services. More recently, he voiced reservations about the method of ascribing costs to a class-size initiative that the governor and legislative leaders oppose.
"We didn't always like what he said, but we always respected that he believed what he said," says Senate President-designate Jim King.
Montanaro's resignation, short of full retirement, to pursue a doctorate in Spanish raises obvious questions as to whether he felt impelled to leave. Montanaro insists that "it's my idea, not anybody else's." A widely held view, however, is that he simply did not want to wait around for a likely confrontation with the archly conservative speaker-designate of the House, Rep. Johnnie Byrd, R-Plant City.
It will be up to Byrd and King to choose Montanaro's successor, an agreement that neither leader expects to come easily.
"We've already laughed about that," says King, whose politics are moderate.
But nobody will be laughing if the Legislature's next chief economist turns out to be less than Montanaro's equal in integrity and professionalism. King and Byrd face no more important duty in their new roles.