Florida's Revenue Estimating Conference plowed ahead last week despite the uncertainties created by terrorism. The goal was an estimate rosy enough to avoid a special legislative session.

It was a theater of the absurd for Florida's Revenue Estimating Conference to meet Thursday in obedience to a schedule that no longer made sense. Though every economist present agreed that Florida's tourist-dependent budget will suffer significantly from the economic shocks of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, the conference insisted on issuing a revised forecast that had essentially been prepared before the world turned upside down. With financial markets still closed and airlines still grounded, it was too soon to have revised the forecast yet again. The only sensible alternative was to postpone the conference.

The obvious, if unacknowledged, reason for plowing ahead was to issue an estimate just rosy enough as to not trigger the special legislative session that Florida law requires when larger deficits loom. Gov. Jeb Bush and House Speaker Tom Feeney worry that a special session would, as it should, cast a pitiless spotlight on the tax cuts that were their top priority last spring, and in the two years before.

There was, of course, nothing encouraging about even the artificially low deficits that the conference predicted -- $265-million this fiscal year and $800-million for the budget year beginning next July. As social service budgets have already been cut nearly to the bone of what federal entitlements require, the only remaining source for more savings is in education. Remember, the schools are already suffering from having received no new state money this year.

What happens, then, if tourism, consumer purchases and the taxable value of securities subject to Florida's dwindling intangibles tax post even greater declines in the aftermath of the day of infamy? No one knows. The governor and Feeney are behaving as if Tallahassee were the capital of a state named Denial.

The governor's hand was particularly evident Thursday. Among the three agencies responsible for the official estimate (the Legislature and Department of Revenue are the others) projections from the governor's budget office were the rosiest. Bush's budget director, Donna Arduin, was still pulling strings by cell phone as the conference proceeded toward a less optimistic consensus.

Florida is going to need new taxes, all of which could easily come from special interests that are currently and illogically exempt. But if that reality is postponed much longer, the job will be significantly more difficult. A foolish consistency is not only the hobgoblin of little minds, but the despair of a society that is literally starving for responsible and courageous leadership.

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