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The governor is counting heads and lobbying in the House, where he needs 61 votes.
By ALISA ULFERTS
© St. Petersburg Times, published November 6, 2001
TALLAHASSEE -- With plans for a second special session still taking shape, Gov. Jeb Bush has begun to tally the legislative votes he can count on for a delay in a controversial tax cut.
Bush has requested a list of Republican representatives who supported an amendment that Rep. Nancy Detert, R-Venice, drafted last month to delay the tax cut, Detert said.
Other lawmakers from both parties said Bush's office contacted them about their votes.
The substance of Detert's amendment -- to delay rather than repeal the tax cut -- was the backbone of an agreement that Bush and legislative leaders reached on Sunday. The deal is to delay the intangibles tax cut for 18 months and to trim the budget by more than $1-billion.
The agreement was a breakthrough in what had become an impasse in the Legislature's attempts to plug a $1.3-billion hole in the budget. It was reached in a series of telephone calls among Bush, House Speaker Tom Feeney and Senate President John McKay.
The three Republicans are expected to appear together at a news conference this morning to announce details of the agreement.
A spokeswoman for Feeney said the speaker has told his members to vote their conscience on the intangibles tax cut deal, but that he plans to vote against it. The heavy lifting needed to convince 18 other Republican House members to support the deal will be done by Bush, Feeney spokeswoman Kim Stone said.
With Bush needing 61 votes in the House, the number 18 presumes that all 43 Democrats will agree to delay the intangibles tax cut rather than repeal it outright. And that's not a sure thing, said Rep. Ron Greenstein, D-Coconut Creek.
"I think they'll probably get 90 percent of them," Greenstein said. "I'd vote for it," Greenstein said, but he said he knew of several who might not or who would prefer to see a complete repeal of the tax cut, not a delay.
Every Democrat who won't agree to the delay means another Republican vote Bush will have to secure. But Bush spokeswoman Liz Hirst said the governor doesn't consider the budget issue a partisan matter and is urging lawmakers from both parties to support his deal with McKay and Feeney.
"The governor has made it very clear that it's now appropriate for the deferral," Hirst said.
Rep. Marco Rubio, R-Coral Gables, a majority whip in the GOP-controlled House, predicted Bush would have no trouble getting the 61 votes he needs, even in the unlikely event that some Democrats voted to let the tax cut go through.
"The governor's not going to have a problem getting that deferral," Rubio said.
But his vote won't be among those, Rubio said. He said it was bad public policy to delay the tax cut and cited the likelihood that the economy will slip even further.
-- Times staff writer Steve Bousquet contributed to this report.