Print

Email story

Comment

Letter to the editor

Column

Crist pulls one more rabbit from hat

By HOWARD TROXLER
Published February 3, 2008

Our always-cheerful governor has pulled another rabbit out of his hat. Does everything work out for this guy, or what?

Charlie Crist proposes to run the state of Florida for less money next year than this year, in the $70-billion budget that he just made public.

And yet Crist also proposes to spend more money for schools, for green stuff, for more prisons for bad guys, and even for a little bit of a raise for some folks.

All of this without raising taxes.

How does the governor pull off such a trick, especially since the state started out in a $2-billion hole?

Two big things. First, unlike former Gov. Jeb Bush, Crist is embracing gambling.

He wants to expand the Florida Lottery, maybe even to hold twice-a-day drawings for Cash 3 and Play 4.

He's also counting on money flowing in from his new deal with the Seminole Tribe, and from expanded gambling in South Florida.

The second big change is that Crist is cracking into a lot of piggy banks.

He wants to spend more than $1-billion from trust funds that, in theory, were set aside for other purposes.

Here is who is not going to like this: Crist's fellow Republicans who run the state House. In general, they will want to cut spending more and rely on gambling less.

Rep. Ray Sansom, R-Destin, the House's top budget guy and a future speaker, says that Florida needs to "build the economy the old-fashioned way - bringing in jobs and keeping jobs."

Presumably, by "jobs," Sansom didn't mean croupiers and card dealers.

Remember the House is still fighting Crist in court on whether he was legally able to make a gambling deal with the Seminoles at all.

Here's who else might not like Crist's budget: anyone who has an interest in some of the funds being raided.

For example, our chief financial officer, Alex Sink, warns that Crist might be dipping too deeply into the state's worker compensation fund.

In general, it is a bad idea for Crist to rely so heavily on gambling to pay Florida's bills, but it's not so bad to reconsider some of the trust funds.

Gambling is a demoralizing way to pay for the common good. Like gamblers themselves, we hope for a free ride, something for nothing. It is a corrupting idea.

Plenty of people will say: "What, are you nuts? If some schmo wants to buy lottery tickets or blow his dough at the tables, and we taxpayers can get a piece of the action, then why shouldn't we?"

Okay, sure, let's grab it. But it's still a bad idea to pay the light bills and buy the groceries with it. It should be something extra, something to make the state better.

If gambling magically paid for the entire state government, and we didn't have to pay taxes at all, then we would be corrupted entirely.

We would no longer be stakeholders in the common good - we would just be a society of self-interested freeloaders. But, by golly, we wouldn't have to pay our own way, and that's what matters.

Although the governor has made his numbers add up, he still is taking, please pardon the expression, a big gamble - that the economy will improve sooner rather than later, and we will get by.

And who knows? He has been lucky so far. In fact, maybe to pay for the year after next, we could just raise half the dough up front, give it to Gov. Crist, and send him to the casinos to win the rest.

[Last modified February 2, 2008, 23:30:41]