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Politics

Bishop faults Penny sales tax

He says more should go to human services; officials say it frees other funds for that.

By SHERRI DAY and WILL VAN SANT
Published March 8, 2007

Just days before voters decide whether to extend the Penny for Pinellas, the region's top Catholic leader is criticizing the sales tax and urging parishioners to give it a careful look.

Bishop Robert N. Lynch, who leads nearly 112,000 Catholics in Pinellas County, sent a letter to pastors Wednesday that argues the sales tax extension will spend too little on human services.

And Lynch plans a full-page ad in the St. Petersburg Times on Sunday to deliver the same message. Lynch leads the Roman Catholic Diocese of St. Petersburg and its nearly 400,000 parishioners across five counties.

The penny-on-the-dollar sales tax before voters Tuesday is expected to provide Pinellas County and its cities almost $2-billion in revenue if extended from 2010 to 2020. The Penny was first implemented in 1990.

By state law, the money can only be used for public buildings, roads, parks and other infrastructure. In his letter, Lynch told pastors more should be set aside for projects that help the homeless, create affordable housing and support social services.

The letter does not explicitly advocate a vote against the tax, but its message is clear: Lynch, who was out of town Wednesday and unavailable for comment, does not approve of the planned allocation of revenue.

"He doesn't want to say 'Vote no,' and he doesn't want to tell people to 'Vote yes,' " said Frank Murphy, president of Catholic Charities. "He's raising the question about the Penny."

The church's move comes days after a local group, Cut Taxes Now, led by St. Petersburg neurosurgeon David McKalip, announced it would protest the tax Friday on the steps of the County Courthouse in Clearwater.

County Commissioner Ken Welch said Murphy called him Feb. 21 and said Pinellas had failed to help those in need and that he would be urging the bishop to oppose the tax.

"Obviously, I was taken aback," Welch said. "This approach is not the way to build a relationship with the commission."

Murphy said the idea to challenge the tax emerged as area pastors examined St. Petersburg's homeless issue and looked into how much county government spends on human services.

The group was disappointed, Murphy said, when it found that Penny for Pinellas earmarks favor more traditional public infrastructure projects over human welfare.

"We just need to think about our priorities as people better," he said. "What are we doing to help other people? I know the parks and the trails and the roads are important, but we need to take a little bit more of that and spend it on taking care of people."

County Administrator Steve Spratt attended Catholic schools, and Lynch confirmed his youngest son last year. Spratt agrees that more should be done in the area of social welfare, but said the sales tax is not the solution.

"It has been adopted in this community with the understanding that it is to address capital needs, which are substantial," he said.

County leaders point out that $30-million in Penny for Pinellas money has been set aside to buy land for affordable housing. And by freeing up general fund money, they say, Pinellas has been able to raise spending on social services from $40-million in 2002 to $67-million this year.

"This seems like a very unusual way to encourage us to do more by tying our hands," County Commissioner Susan Latvala said. "I hate to see an organization as large as that take such a bold position."

Diocesan spokeswoman Vicki Wells Bedard said the government's recent handling of the homeless and their tent cities in St. Petersburg prompted the bishop and other priests to take action.

But Welch questioned why it took the church so long.

"It's very late in the game," he said. "We invited the public to come in and tell us where the money should be allocated, and they were nowhere to be found."

The bishop's assault on the measure is two-pronged. Priests received the bishop's letter in time to share it with their congregations on Sunday before voters go to the polls. Lynch plans to further nudge voters in the full-page ad in Sunday's Times.

In the ad, Lynch tells voters to "make an informed decision on March 13, 2007, and give direction to our county leadership regarding the importance of Human Services. 'I know how I will vote!' "

Diocesan officials said a group of concerned Catholics will pay for the ad, which costs an estimated $35,000. The diocese declined to identify the donors.

Spratt said he would have preferred the discussion with the church over the sales tax to have happened months ago. But he was hopeful that the county's own promotion of the tax would prevail over the church's activism.

Despite the public differences over the Penny for Pinellas, Spratt said he had stressed his commitment to human welfare issues in a personal conversation with Lynch last week.

"I pledge to work with the bishop and the diocese to fund these needs in a variety of other ways," he said.

Sherri Day can be reached sday@sptimes.com or 813 226-3405. Will Van Sant can be reached at vansant@sptimes or (727) 445-4166.

The bishop's letter

In a letter, Bishop Robert N. Lynch, head of the Diocese of St. Petersburg, called on Pinellas County Catholics to carefully consider their vote on the Penny for Pinellas sales tax extension. While the bishop stopped short of telling area Catholics how to vote on the issue, he did urge them to think about the importance of funding for human services issues.

Religion in Pinellas

Here's a breakdown of the number of religious adherents in Pinellas County:

Catholics: 112,037

Evangelicals: 91,280

Mainline Protestants: 79,541

Orthodox Christians: 9,631

Others (includes Jews, Baha'is, Muslims, Sikhs and Buddhists): 1,825

Unclaimed: 597,168

Source: Association of Religion Data Archives 2000 Survey

[Last modified March 8, 2007, 06:50:33]