Phone company lobbyists thought they had it made - the big rate increase passed last year. Then the House speaker changed his mind.
By LUCY MORGAN and STEVE BOUSQUET
Published March 25, 2004
TALLAHASSEE - Dozens of dark-suited telephone industry lobbyists crowded into a hearing room in the state Capitol Wednesday to keep a watchful eye on lawmakers they have carefully cultivated for years.
They stood glumly near a back wall, chewing gum, arms crossed.
It wasn't supposed to be this way.
After pouring more than $13-million into legislative campaigns over the past seven years, and an additional $2.6-million spent wining and dining lawmakers, the lobbyists and their phone company clients expected this to be an easy year.
The hard work was behind them. Last spring, the Legislature passed a measure with the governor's blessing that could lead to a record phone rate increase worth at least $344-million. By year's end, the Public Service Commission agreed.
But House Speaker Johnnie Byrd has had a change of heart. He wants the rate increase repealed.
Byrd's announcement over the weekend sent lobbyists scrambling. By Monday morning they were meeting to plot strategy. The sheer number of lobbyists devoted to the issue - 114 at last count - underscores the stakes.
About 50 lobbyists were watching Wednesday morning as an obscure committee prepared to send the repeal legislation to the House floor.
The lobbyists talked bravely about slowing the bill in the House or killing it in the Senate. But they are clearly worried.
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Byrd wields enormous clout over rank-and-file House members, and it's an election year, so passage in that chamber is all but assured. And some senators wonder whether they can win re-election if they pass up a chance to repeal a wildly unpopular law.
So the lobbyists are warning lawmakers that a vote to repeal could damage the state's business climate and their own political futures.
A flip-flop could anger the voters even more, they say. Some are raising the specter of the services tax, passed in May 1987 and repealed in December.
"There are still a handful of us here who went to that rodeo," said lobbyist J.M. "Mac" Stipanovich. "Ol' Flip Flop is a very hard horse to ride."
Stipanovich was chief of staff to Gov. Bob Martinez when Martinez advocated and lawmakers approved extending the state sales tax to services. Seven months later, lawmakers repealed the tax, with Martinez's support.
On Wednesday, Stipanovich was carrying a sheet of paper listing the politicians who were defeated after the services tax flip-flop. One of the names on the list: Bob Martinez.
Another name was Sam Bell, a House member who was in line to become speaker.
"A lot of people didn't get reelected," recalled Bell, now a lobbyist, but not for phone companies.
Former Rep. Joe Arnall of Jacksonville Beach, now a BellSouth lobbyist, said voting for repeal won't erase what legislators did last year, and it won't stop an opponent from using the earlier vote in an attack ad. A repeal could even make matters worse, Arnall argued.
"It's a political axiom that when you change your mind, you make 100 percent of the people angry," Arnall said.
The 114 lobbyists who work for BellSouth, Sprint, Verizon, AT&T, MCI and the Florida Cable Telecommunications Association won overwhelming legislative victories in 2002 and 2003. Their 2002 victory, however, was short-lived because Gov. Jeb Bush vetoed the bill in the heat of an election year.
But last year, Bush signed the bill into law, paving the way for deregulation of telecom companies, who say the higher rates will stimulate competition and eventually lead to lower rates.
Byrd, who is running in a crowded Republican race for U.S. Senate, was a staunch advocate for higher rates last year. But now, he says, Attorney General Charlie Crist has convinced him that the PSC did not follow the law correctly and that a federal court ruling will make local phone competition almost impossible.
The lobbyists, many with thousands of dollars in contributions to Byrd's campaigns, feel betrayed.
The move revives memories not only of the 1987 services tax but an ill-fated unitary tax that was approved in 1983 and repealed the next year.
The House Committee on State Administration, its ranks swollen from five members to seven by Byrd to ensure passage, unanimously approved the repeal measure.
The lobbyists still hope to block it.
James Harold Thompson, House speaker in 1984 when lawmakers repealed the unitary tax, is now a lobbyist for Sprint. His assignment: "To get all the votes I can," Thompson said as he walked the Capitol halls Wednesday.
How many does he have?
"I don't have any conclusive votes," Thompson said. "But I think a lot of them are leaning my way. ... It's very unpredictable. People are flipping and flopping about."
When he was a legislator, Thompson says he enjoyed watching members squirm before they cast a vote.
Now, it's not so much fun.
Former House Speaker Lee Moffitt was in office when the unitary tax on corporations was adopted in 1983 and left a month before it was repealed. Now a lobbyist, Moffitt had a suggestion for lawmakers who feel the need to explain a flip flop.
They should look to people like Mathatma Ghandi, who explained a change of heart by saying he had grown wiser with the passage of time.
Publicly, the lobbyists are putting up a fight, hoping to prevent an outright repeal. Thompson says they hope to save part of last year's bill that provides low-cost phone services to the poor and elderly and aids internet phone services.
The effort is being quarterbacked by Mike Raynor, chief lobbyist for BellSouth, who is credited with writing the original bill.
Raynor isn't talking, and other lobbyists say he has ordered them not to talk to reporters either.
