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Lee faces Florida's growth problem

By MARTIN DYCKMAN
Published January 16, 2005

TALLAHASSEE - When Senate President Tom Lee talks about reforming growth management, he has more in mind than simply changing who says when about who builds what. He means to pay for it with taxes.

Yes, t-a-x-e-s.

"Growth management means different things to different people," Lee said. "Over here, it means putting your money where your mouth is."

It is pointless to debate growth management, he said, "without any discussion about the deficiencies that exist in funding the essential infrastructure of transportation, schools, etc., that form the foundation for our quality of life in Florida.

"I don't want to preside over a fraud. . . . We have to acknowledge that growth management is more of a financing problem than it is a planning problem."

Lee, a Brandon homebuilder, says running the state as one would manage a business means investing in the future.

He will be attempting not just to make history, but to defy it. Since the first sales tax act of 1949, Florida has had only one successful tax reform, and that was 34 years ago when Democrats were still the majority, Republicans were not so dogmatically antitax, and special-interest lobbyists were not so numerous or powerful as they are today.

The failure of the 1987 attempt to extend the sales tax to legal fees, advertising and other services still haunts the Capitol. More recently, Senate President John McKay tried to broaden the tax base only to break his lances on the House, the governor's office and even the Supreme Court.

In retrospect, however, the 1987 fiasco was simply a failure of nerve on the part of Gov. Bob Martinez and the Legislature. The miscalculation in McKay's revenue-neutral reform was to shift burdens without offering any tangible results to those who would pay more.

Lee learned from that. His strategy - by way of example - would be to unite the single mother who drives two kids to school with the highway contractor who would like to improve the road. Give them both something to show for it, and they might be willing to pay.

This is fact, not theory. All but nine of Florida's 67 counties levy from a quarter-penny to 11/2-cents of local sales taxes either by referendum (in most cases) or by votes of the governments closest to the voters.

When antismoking organizations asked for higher tobacco taxes, Lee quickly said no. He foresaw no new taxes the next two years, he said, unless it had to do with growth management. Judging from their silence, a lot of people either missed the cue or secretly welcomed it.

Lee didn't specify the taxes he has in mind, but he did allude to the possibility of a referendum. "It may be something that ultimately has to go to the people. I think they're ready to embrace investment in Florida if we have a plan to alleviate the infrastructure deficit, and it's not more money just to facilitate even greater growth," he said.

Persuading other politicians would be the harder part, but Lee is hopeful that House Speaker Alan Bense, a contractor by trade, will be more open-minded than his predecessors Tom Feeney and Johnnie Byrd.

Bense said Friday that although he has disfavored new taxes, traveling the state to run for speaker brought home to him how congested some urban areas are and that "some creative ways" may be necessary. He will hear what Lee has to say.

"I'm not saying I'm there yet," Bense said. "I'm willing to look at it. We'll see what legislators want to do. Maybe we give local government more flexibility. . . . I'll keep my Republican hat on, but there's nothing wrong with listening."

According to Lee, "There is nothing about this principle or idea I'm expressing that offends a conservative Republican's view of the basic role of government. If it's not government's role to build these things, whose is it?"

As a builder, Lee said, he can't pull a permit on an F-rated road, "but you can count additional planned capacity, so we're always behind. We're always permitting things based on capacity that does not exist."

That's how Florida has accumulated a 10-year transportation deficit calculated at $22-billion. That's just to play catch-up, and never mind future growth. Add the schools, and the debt for past neglect is obviously far too big to pay off any time soon. But at least someone is ready to start, and others to listen.

Martin Dyckman's e-mail address is dyckman@sptimes.com

[Last modified January 16, 2005, 00:33:22]