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Legislative leaders divide by party over whether to call a special session or whether to rescind tax breaks.
By ALISA ULFERTS
© St. Petersburg Times, published August 28, 2001
TALLAHASSEE -- Drawing from Alcoholics Anonymous' 12-step recovery program, Democrats Monday called on Gov. Jeb Bush to admit the state has a financial problem and then urged him to fix it.
"Gov. Jeb Bush seems intent on ignoring the warning signs," said Senate Democratic Minority Leader Tom Rossin.
"(And) the first step to recovery is to admit you have a problem," Rossin said.
The symptoms include an expected budget shortfall caused by the sluggish economy and increased expenditures, including health care costs for employees. The gap is expected to be between $400-million and $600-million, if not more.
If the shortfall reaches 1.5 percent of the state's general revenue budget, then by law the Legislature must convene. The trigger is estimated at about $300-million.
The Revenue Estimating Conference won't meet until next month to agree on an amount, but already Democrats are urging a special legislative session to look at how to balance the shortfall. They want Bush to admit that the $1.6-billion in tax cuts he and the Republican-led Legislature approved in the past three years have created a problem for the state budget.
Their first suggestion for cuts: Repeal the $175-million tax cut lawmakers carved out of the state's intangibles tax on stocks and other investments this spring.
"It is clearly possible and it is something we should try and do," Rossin said.
But House Republican Majority Leader Mike Fasano, who engineered the intangibles tax cut, said repealing it is not something the Legislature should even consider.
"We don't do that. We're not about to start doing that," Fasano said. As long as the state meets its priorities, such as education and health care, then there should be no problem returning to taxpayers greater shares of the intangibles tax, he said.
Senate President John McKay has compared this year to 1992, when the Legislature had to meet in special session to deal with a budget shortfall, and has said he expects that they will have to so again.
But Fasano said none of the House Republicans he has spoken to think a special session is needed at this point. Everyone is waiting for the revenue conference to name a figure, he said.
House Speaker Tom Feeney said Monday that it's premature to consider a special session. And state Rep. Johnnie Byrd, R-Plant City, discounted the Democrats' complaints.
"You can speculate all day long, but let's wait and see what the revenue estimators say, and go from there. From what I've heard, everything is pretty manageable. The sky is not going to fall. I don't think we need to overreact," Byrd said Monday.
Republicans have accused Democrats of manufacturing a crisis for political gain. House Democratic Leader Lois Frankel, a candidate for governor, accompanied Rossin to Monday's conference. She and Rossin admitted the budget shortfall could help their party, but said that didn't change the fact that it was hurting the state.
Bush spokeswoman Katie Baur said there are remedies the state has at its disposal before it needs to consider raiding the reserves or cutting services. That would include the money saved when Bush vetoed several million dollars in local projects earlier this summer.
- Times staff writers Steve Bousquet and Lucy Morgan contributed to this report.