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LUCY MORGANThe Senate Finance and Tax Committee agrees to create a task force on communications issues, including last year's increase.
TALLAHASSEE - As legislative leaders moved to settle their differences on dozens of issues in the closing days of the 2004 session, a compromise emerged in the Senate over a proposal to freeze a controversial telephone rate increase.
The Senate Finance and Tax Committee voted to form a task force to study communications issues, including last year's rate hike. Senate President Jim King reportedly called for the study, which was included in an amendment offered by Sen. Bill Posey, R-Rockledge.
That keeps the issue alive during final negotiations before lawmakers go home April 30.
House Speaker Johnnie Byrd wants the Senate to freeze last year's rate increase, but King has been reluctant to take up the issue until pending court challenges are completed. The rates are frozen until the legal issues are resolved.
Telecommunications lobbyists, all 114 of them, have been working to block the freeze.
"I'd say somebody just tossed a real big grenade into the middle of everything," joked James Harold Thompson, a lobbyist for Sprint and a former House speaker.
The task force would include nine members with three each to be appointed by the governor, House speaker and Senate president. No one from the telecommunications industry would be eligible. The bill requires the task force to begin meeting by July 14 and complete its work with recommendations to the governor and Legislature by Jan. 15.
The amendment was attached to a bill that prohibits taxing some wireless communication systems until Dec. 31, 2005. Bill sponsor Mike Haridopolos, R-Melbourne, said many of the communications systems used today were not available in 1985 when lawmakers approved a gross receipts tax.
Haridopolos' proposal would block the state Department of Revenue from collecting about $300,000 a year on some computer networks, two-way radio systems and wireless dispatch systems used by businesses.
"I think this is essential," Haridopolos said after the meeting. Sen. Tom Lee, R-Brandon, a leading opponent of the rate increase last year, said he did not think senators would take up Byrd's call for a rate freeze, which the House approved 67-48 last month. But in the final days of the session, he said, anything is possible. "If we end up in a stare-down over telecommunications, we can do something," Lee said.
- Times staff writer Steve Bousquet contributed to this report.