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A Times Editorial
The governor's budget is rife with counterproductive ''savings'' and tax relief for investors, selling Floridians short.
© St. Petersburg Times, published January 23, 2003
He didn't phrase it quite that baldly, of course. But as Gov. Jeb Bush announced his budget Tuesday, it sounded as if he was punishing Floridians for ratifying the class size initiative that he opposed.
The most pointed cut, an $111-million blow to the universities, took dead aim at the one constituency -- families keen on education -- that was most concerned with the passage of Amendment 9. That's $111-million less for operations even with the 7.5 percent mandatory tuition increase built into his budget. Community colleges, meanwhile, would get less than they need just for enrollment growth. Construction of some of the new public school classrooms would be funded with bond money diverted from the universities.
The next logical step would be to zero-fund the state's industrial development budget. High technology employers expect and demand a highly educated work force. Florida, which already ranks last in spending per capita on higher education, cannot afford the governor's false economy.
There are other counterproductive "savings" in the Bush budget. To spend less on preventing juvenile crime means costlier prisons in the near future. To cut public transit subsidies for the sake of laying down more concrete is to get the least mileage for the money. No pay raise, but higher insurance premiums, for state employees is a undeserved blow to their morale. Limiting the medically needy program to prescription drugs raises the questions of who will pay the doctors who prescribe those drugs and what will happen to seriously ill clients who need hospital care as well.
Bush sought to blame most of this on Amendment 9, saying the people made it "their number one priority." But the budget in fact serves primarily his priorities: less government, fewer taxes.
But not so neatly as he makes it seem. The $64-million that he'd make the counties pay to detain juveniles until their hearings is a potential increase in local property taxes. So is much of the additional $417-million earmarked to the schools from increases in the taxable value of real estate.
The juvenile detention cost shift is wrong in every respect. It needs to remain a state responsibility for the reason that it became one in the first place: to guarantee a uniform standard of care regardless of where children at risk happen to live. Nobody ever questioned this priority until Jeb Bush came along.
The most problematic area of his budget is the notion of a wholesale conversion of trust funds to general revenue. Quite possibly, some funds have outlasted the purposes for which they are earmarked, but no one could seriously say that's true of the affordable housing and environmental land purchase bonds that are underwritten by trust funds from documentary stamps, to name just two examples. To that extent, the governor is balancing his budget on some very shaky assumptions.
Amid so much hardship and damage, Bush would press ahead insensibly with the intangibles tax cut that was delayed on account of the economic aftershocks of Sept. 11, 2001. That reduction, now effective with the tax payments due in January 2004, would cost some $116-million. Coincidentally, that just about matches the proposed cut to the universities.
The Legislature should either repeal that tax cut or change it to exempt the same number of smaller taxpayers but double the rate on those remaining.
Republican governors in Connecticut, Georgia, Kentucky and several other states are calling for tax increases to mitigate severe budget cuts that have been forced on them, as on Florida, by the stagnant economy. Nevada's Kenny Guinn is asking for nearly $1-billion, without which, he said Monday, service cuts in health and education would "produce a devastating effect on every single Nevadan." Such an outcome, he said, "is not a choice for leaders, but a choice of political cowardice."
It sells the people of Florida short to propose on their behalf a budget that imposes so many hardships at the same time it grants tax relief to investors. The Senate, to its credit, intends to hold extensive public hearings on the budget and is willing to entertain tax reforms that could make a more decent thing of it. Unfortunately, neither the governor nor the House seems disposed at this point to listen to reason. But so long as there is life, there is hope.