March 29, 2024

Tallahassee Trend

The '06 Agenda

In Jeb Bush's last session, the Legislature has billions to play with as it considers everything from tax cuts to land conversation.

Neil Skene | 3/1/2006
Vouchers energize the Republican base, but if they were a ballot issue, they also would draw opponents among education traditionalists who often vote Democratic. There will be some complex political calculations going on with this issue.

A similar political dilemma faces legislators on the class-size limitations approved by voters in 2002. The class-size requirements are soaking up more and more money and have produced spinoff issues, such as whether a co-teacher in a classroom should count as lowering the class size even if the room itself has too many students.

Bush wants to relax the class-size limits -- as with the bullet train, another case of asking voters to undo a decision in which they ignored his counsel the first time. But legislators who are inclined to ease the limits will face attacks from opponents charging they're trying to cram more students into a classroom.

Trying to strike a balance will likely involve offering voters (meaning education interests) something else for education in return for repealing the limits. At one point last year, the payback was minimum pay for teachers, but the minimum was, well, minimal.

One proposal now is to create a guarantee that at least 65% of school funding will go to "the classroom." Mark Pudlow at the Florida Education Association, which represents teachers, calls that a "magical fairy dust solution." What is a "classroom" expenditure? Current statistical measures, he says, don't include counselors but do include football coaches, for example. "We need more than a 65% solution to solve funding problems in the classroom," Pudlow says.

Bush also has proposed a program to attract teachers to Florida and encourage students to enter the profession. Florida needs more than 30,000 new teachers this fall, and hundreds of classrooms will have teachers teaching outside their subject areas. Some of the money in Bush's proposed program, about $40 million, goes for stepped-up recruitment and incentives for students who go into teaching. Most of the money, about $188 million, would be earmarked to buy laptops for every teacher so they can do paperwork and planning from home. Some teacher groups responded that Bush ought to just pay teachers more money.

In Jeb Bush's last session, the Legislature has billions to play with as it considers everything from tax cuts to land conservation.

? Tax Cuts

The state is swimming in money from a strong economy. Dominic M. Calabro, CEO of Florida TaxWatch, figures the uncommitted dollars, beyond a "continuation" budget at current levels, to be more than $5 billion, including local property taxes from rising valuations. He thinks a billion-dollar tax cut is plausible from the $70-billion to $75-billion budget.
Quickly emerging, of course, is a duel over what, where and how much to cut.

Bush has proposed $1.5 billion in tax cuts, more than a third of it for businesses. He wants final repeal of the intangibles tax, a perennial Bush target (paid by about 300,000 individuals and businesses). He also proposed repeal of the tax on liquor by the drink ($51 million), which was earlier cut by two-thirds and now is, in Bush's words, a "nuisance." Last year's proposed sales-tax exemptions on equipment for research and development and manufacturing are back, along with a $3-million exemption for equipment used in the space and defense industries.

For individuals, Bush proposed making permanent the separate tax "holidays" for hurricane supplies and school supplies, at about $40 million apiece. Bush also wants a 9% rollback in the so-called "required local effort" for schools, which is the minimum property-tax millage that local districts must impose as part of the school-funding formula. That's a $570-million item, amounting to an average of $55 per homeowner, though it applies to business and rental property as well. Homeowners, including owners of mobile homes on leased land, would also get a one-time $100 rebate by check, an idea also proposed by House Democrats, at a total cost of about $500 million.

Some senators, including President-designate Ken Pruitt, have proposed making portable the "Save Our Homes" limits on residential tax increases. People who move could take the accumulated tax break with them and apply it against taxes on their new houses. Bush declined to join in on that idea, but it may make it to the final dickering between the two chambers.

Bush's proposals have critics. Says Pudlow of the education association: "They're talking about tax refunds to consumers at the same time we have no money for class size. They want tax-free plasma TVs and $100 to every taxpayer?"

"They're talking about tax refunds to consumers at the same time we have no money for class size. They want tax-free plasma TVs and $100 to every taxpayer?"

Tags: Politics & Law, Around Florida, Government/Politics & Law

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