Politics

Crist earns mixed marks

Tough insurance and tax issues detract from his progress in his first year in office.

By STEVE BOUSQUET, Tallahassee Bureau Chief
Published December 31, 2007

Gov. Charlie Crist's highest-profile effort, to lower property taxes, required two special legislative sessions before it reached the ballot. Now he is campaigning for the Jan. 29 vote on the plan. Crist's first year report card (PDF)
	[AP photo]

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TALLAHASSEE - Gov. Charlie Crist's schedule these days reads like a candidate running for office. Photo-ops with suburban families. Automated phone calls to voters. Fundraising parties aimed at raising millions.

But this campaign isn't for re-election. It's the runup to the Jan. 29 vote on a property tax plan, and it comes after a politically successful inaugural year for the populist governor.

The St. Petersburg Republican had spent the past year governing Florida with a centrist brand of politics that has won high approval ratings, appreciation from Democratic allies and growing unease among conservative Republicans.

His first-year successes included a crackdown on probation violators, a streamlined system for felons to regain civil rights and a switch from touch screen voting to paper ballots. He launched a search for new energy sources to combat global warming and promoted quicker access to government records.

Crist, 51, who began his political career in 1992 as a state senator, appears content to settle for incremental progress. After his first year, he has no complaints.

"Overall, I'm very pleased. You never get exactly what you want, and I think that's one of the lessons of life," he said in his office, where a framed portrait of his Greek immigrant grandfather dominates a wall behind him. "If you can get half a loaf, that's a good thing. ... I just want to make progress."

Disappointments, too

Crist's record at the end of his first year, however, often doesn't match his soaring rhetoric. His "drop like a rock" promise on taxes falling has failed to live up to reality, and he blames "greedy" insurance companies for failing to pass cost savings onto consumers. He enters 2008 with other problems looming, from a stagnant economy that will force more budget cuts to a showdown with the Legislature over casino gambling on Indian lands.

"He's piloting a ship that's navigating very treacherous seas," said Rep. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach, the House minority leader. "I think it's going to test his optimism."

Crist also has made enemies in his party's conservative wing, most notably House Speaker Marco Rubio, who has higher political ambitions. Crist's decision to sign a progambling pact with the Seminole Indian tribe was followed by a further retreat on a 2008 antigay marriage petition drive, which he signed as a candidate but now says does not belong in the Florida Constitution.

"It's part of a pattern in which Crist talked just conservatively enough during the campaign to get elected, while governing during his first year in office as the moderate he actually is," editor James Smith wrote in Florida Baptist Witness. "Crist cannot be depended upon to defend certain pro-family concerns."

Largely untested

Crist's predecessor, Republican Jeb Bush, weathered two major crises during his first year in office, 1999. A prison inmate died of injuries sustained when guards removed him from his death row cell, and a Bush plan to replace affirmative action brought large, angry protests, mainly from African-Americans, that opened a chasm between Bush and the black community that never fully healed.

So far, Crist's administration has had no such defining moments. Much like Crist's affable, get-along style, his first year in office has been built more on consensus-building than on any sweeping policy agenda.

Jim Krog, a lobbyist and former chief of staff to Democratic Gov. Lawton Chiles, said Crist enters his second year not having faced a major crisis and with a staff that's younger and largely untested.

"You still don't know how well tuned they are in terms of reacting to things at a time of crisis," Krog said. "He hasn't had any. He hasn't had that major hurricane."

Taxes and insurance

Crist's highest-profile effort, to lower property taxes, came in fits and starts, requiring two special legislative sessions before it reached the ballot.

Unlike the hard-charging Bush, who presented plans for change that the Legislature reacted to, Crist more often let lawmakers take the lead and then he responded. On taxes, the result is a product that is now widely criticized as flawed, even by lawmakers who voted to put it on the ballot. And it faces an uncertain fate with voters.

The plan would reduce property taxes by increasing the homestead exemption from $25,000 to about $40,000 and allowing homestead homeowners to transfer tax savings under the 3 percent Save Our Homes assessment cap to a new home. It would also cap annual growth in property tax assessments for commercial and nonhomestead property at 10 percent annually.

Legislators, not Crist, wrote the tax proposal. But if it fails to win support from the 60 percent of voters needed to pass, it would be a significant defeat for Crist, who is leading the charge for it over stiff opposition from unions for firefighters, teachers, health care workers and others.

As Crist sees it, the beauty of Amendment 1 is that "my bosses," as he calls voters, will have the last word.

Crist's efforts to reduce insurance premiums took a slightly different approach with the Legislature, as Crist made the rounds of committee meetings to urge passage of a plan that greatly increased the state's exposure in a hurricane by selling cheaper reinsurance to private insurers.

When the rates didn't drop, Crist ripped a page from his old playbook as a populist attorney general. He threatened to sue and this month hired three trial lawyers to investigate whether insurers failed to pass on savings to consumers.

Such style continues to play well with voters. Polls suggest the same people who say they see the quality of life deteriorating in Florida are also overwhelmingly pleased with Crist's performance. In November, 57 percent of respondents to a statewide St. Petersburg Times/Bay News 9 poll said Crist was doing a good or excellent job.

The man who has been closest to Crist for the past five years has an explanation for Crist's high approval ratings.

"I don't think the people expect you to get it right all the time," said George LeMieux, who is leaving as Crist's chief of staff. "I think they feel that if you're fighting for them, you're doing the best you can."

Steve Bousquet can be reached at bousquet@sptimes.com or 850 224-7263.

TIMELINE 

Gov. Crist's first year

Jan. 2: Charlie Crist becomes Florida's 44th governor.

Jan. 25: Signs legislation he promises will lower property insurance rates. But it ends up providing little relief, even as it greatly increases the state's financial exposure for a major hurricane.

Feb. 2: Comforts families in Lake County after tornadoes kill 21.

March 14: Demands $5-million payment for family of teenager Martin Lee Anderson, who died in a Panama City boot camp. Legislature agrees. Seven boot camp workers are later acquitted of wrongdoing.

April 5: Pushes Cabinet to make it easier for some felons to regain civil rights.

May 21: Signs law replacing touch screen voting machines with optical scan paper ballots by July 2008.

May 24: Vetoes record $459-million in legislators' projects from state budget.

May 29: Embarks on a weeklong trip to Israel.

June 27: Agrees to higher tuition at three of Florida's 11 public universities after initial opposition.

June 14: Applauds a two-part property tax plan passed by state lawmakers during a special session that requires local governments to cut millage rates and asks voters to create a new super homestead exemption. A judge would later rule the ballot measure misleading, forcing another special session in October.

July 18: Signs first death warrant for child killer Mark Dean Schwab, who remains alive due to U.S. Supreme Court delay over lethal injection.

July 31: Threatens to sue insurance companies for allegedly violating a new law requiring them to pass savings on to policyholders.

Oct. 26: Signs lawmakers' $1.1-billion budget-cutting plan due to sluggish economy.

Oct. 30: Applauds lawmakers' new property tax plan that would expand the homestead exemption from $25,000 to roughly $40,000 and provide "portability" of Save Our Homes tax savings.

Nov. 4: Signs pact with Seminole Tribe of Florida for casino gambling at six sites in exchange for at least $100-million in annual state revenue. Legislature petitions state Supreme Court, saying Crist exceeded his authority.

Nov. 29: Votes to freeze local governments' withdrawals from a dwindling state investment fund hit by the subprime mortgage crisis.

Times files

[Last modified December 30, 2007, 22:22:10]