Tampabay: Penny list not quite so pinched

CLEARWATER -- It took them a week and a half to calculate it, but county officials finally revealed Thursday that a decade of overspending likely will shear nearly $123-million in projects off the Penny for Pinellas list.

That's $39-million less than estimates officials gave last week when they first revealed their predicament. But it's still enough to irk people who say the county should have revealed its overspending sooner than 11 years into the program.

"It's an abomination," said Darryl Paulson, a political science professor at the University of South Florida and a Palm Harbor resident.

"Somebody's neck should be on the line. They engaged in a public relations campaign" to pass the Penny for Pinellas sales tax, Paulson said. "They could at least inform the public when problems are developing with the program. To me, it's not a trivial problem."

County commissioners still offer no apologies for the aggressive spending that outpaced the tax revenue. But they admitted they should have done a better job of keeping residents informed.

"Those are priority decisions that I don't regret making," said Commissioner Barbara Sheen Todd, who originally criticized the county's staff for not pointing out the overspending sooner. "The numbers are brought up and people think, "Oh, you're not being responsible.' That's not true. We are. But we have a responsibility to communicate to the public so they're aware."

The Penny for Pinellas sales tax is unique in that residents voted to tax themselves, first in 1989 and again in 1997. Campaign materials supporting the tax advertised all the projects that could be completed with "your Penny."

So residents, understandably, feel a more personal attachment to the Penny for Pinellas than most other taxes. Many were displeased last week when interim County Administrator Gay Lancaster and Budget Director Mark Woodard revealed commissioners' long habit of adding new projects to the Penny list and expanding the size of existing projects.

"They started spending money without finding out if they could afford what they had already committed to," Clearwater resident W.L. Head said. "It isn't so much that they won't be able to complete projects as that they weren't keeping track of the money they were spending. I'll try that with my bank and see how they react."

Originally, Woodard estimated that commissioners would need to cut or delay $162-million in Penny projects over the next 10 years because of the early overspending.

But on Thursday, his hands full of historical budget documents, he revised that figure to $122.9-million. It seems that between 1990 and 2000, the county spent about $31.2-million more than the first Penny for Pinellas generated. In addition, the county has committed to $91.7-million more in Penny projects over the next 10 years than originally budgeted.

The cost overruns during the first Penny term can be attributed to massive projects like the Bayside Bridge, a $94-million expenditure that originally was supposed to be supported by toll booths, and the Criminal Justice Center, which cost $35-million more than budgeted.

"When you look at the projects we added, and it's still only $31-million (in overspending), that's pretty good," said Commission Chairman Calvin Harris.

Calculating just how much the county had deviated from its original Penny budget was no easy task. While residents have a special interest in the tax, the county merely lumps the Penny in with other capital improvement dollars from gas taxes, impact fees and other sources. That's why it took Woodard a week and a half to figure out the extent of the Penny shortfall.

Lancaster said the county's budget office may try tracking the Penny separately from other capital improvement dollars to give residents a truer accounting of just how that money is being spent.

"Nobody wants to be covert," said Lancaster, who said she wants voters to feel good about the Penny. "I guess what hurts me most is the suspicion that we have misspent. That is not what happened. That's not the case."

Separating the Penny tax dollars from others would help the county publish a yearly report to residents showing exactly how Penny dollars were spent, something Harris suggested earlier this week.

"Everybody took a lot of pride in that (tax)," Harris said. "We need to work harder at keeping that source of pride separate and visible."

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