We need more attention on state politics

I've been focused on all the turmoil in Tallahassee for the past several months, but, in the back of my mind (and, apparently until now, bottom of my priority list) I've been itching to write a post about progressive blogs in Florida. So here goes.

I'm disappointed in the so-called "Florida blogosphere." The reason why comes down to something Ken Quinnell admitted at the Netroots Conference at the Democratic State Convention: Few blogs focus on, or even cover, state politics. It's bizarre, I think, that so much has been going in Tallahassee this year, but that there has been little coverage or comment by "Florida" blogs. Republicans in the statehouse have been running this state to the ground with autocratic, partisan politics and pushing for billions and billions of dollars in tax cuts even while the state faces a budget shortfall. These are classic Republican issues, and you'd think the progressives and Democrats in this state who are interested and involved in politics enough to write blogs would rise to the challenge.

Let me start by describing what I mean by "state politics." You may remember from a high school civics class that our government comes in three tiers - local, state, and national. You may also remember that there's a lot of overlap between them, which doesn't make clearly defining state politics any easier. Local politics is, I think, better represented in Florida blogs than the state level. State politics involves the state legislature, cabinet, governor, and state bureaucracy. National politics is about the President, his administration, Congress, and the Supreme Court. A lot of Florida blogs, especially the "Candidate Watch Network," focus on local congresspeople - they, and their campaigns, are involved in national, not state, politics. Immigration, the war, S-CHIP - thats all national politics, despite whatever stance a "local" congressperson takes on it. The Florida primary dispute is also national politics: although it started off in the state legislature with Republicans pushing the primary date forward, once Florida Democrats started fighting with the DNC and other early primary states, that's national level politics.

Let me give you an example of what I mean when I say that Florida blogs avoid state politics. The two special sessions, one for cutting the budget and one for cutting taxes, pretty much took up the whole month of October. The blog Change in Tallahassee had 62 posts the whole month. TWO of them had to do with the special sessions, and only a couple more had anything to do with state politics. Like most "Florida" blogs, it focused on Congress, the President, and the presidential campaign. Bear in mind that these are rough numbers, and my intention isn't accurate statistics but to convey a trend. Florida Kossacks had five posts in October, none of them about the special session, and in fact, none of them about state level politics at all. Miami-Dade Dems had 36 posts, none about the special session, and none about state level politics. Smashed Frog had 25 posts, none about either the special session or state level politics. The FPC blog had 59 posts (not including radio shows or announcements for them, or "stories to read" posts), of which 13 dealt with state level politics - 5 of those about the Democratic convention, and 3 as part of Mark Weaver's series of posts. Three of those blogs (FPC, Smashed Frog, and Change in Tallahassee) were nominated as "best state blog" in the recent Florida Netroots awards. Again, those numbers are all rough counts, and whether or not a post counted as "state level politics" was based on whether it dealt with the governor, cabinet, legislature, or a state level campaign. I also want to mention that my intention is to critique these blogs in terms of how often they deal with actual state politics, not on quality, usefulness, etc.

To approach this from a different angle, the FPC set up three blogs specifically to track state level politics. Florida House Watch has 2 posts in total, none posted during October. Florida Senate Watch has 4 posts, none from October. Florida Cabinet Watch also only has 4 posts, but two of those are from the beginning of October, and are about the special session. Ken tells me that anyone can contribute to them, and to send him an email if you're interested (and you should! The House, Senate, and Cabinet need to be watched by critical bloggers!)

Can you see my point? The "big" Florida blogs aren't, or are hardly, covering state politics, and blogs set up for that purpose aren't getting attention or interest.

I want to point out that Florida Netroots has done a great job keeping track of the legislature through the special session, and Pushing Rope also posts about state politics pretty frequently. My blog, Praxis, is dedicated entirely to commentary on state politics.

I can't emphasize enough the importance of state politics. National politics has more mindshare, but less impact on people's daily lives. Most public policy that effects your life is enacted and enforced at the state level, even if it's a national issue or law. As an example, take S-CHIP. Most of the blogs I described above had a large number of posts about the ongoing S-CHIP debate between the parties in Congress and the President. In Florida, S-CHIP, the federal program, is run by the state and is called KidCare. Sound familiar? You may remember that Alex Sink, among others, pushed hard over the summer for KidCare reform to be included in the recent special sessions - because KidCare is underfunded in Florida! While expanding the federal rules for S-CHIP is good idea, the fact of the matter is that Florida doesn't take advantage of the program as it is. Even if all the effort and energy put out by Florida bloggers to convince/coerce Florida Republican Congresspeople to override Bush's veto had succeeded, little or nothing would have changed in Florida. Involvement in state politics, on the other hand, and pushing for the statehouse to fully fund KidCare (and therefore be eligible for more money from the federal government) could, on the other hand, actually result in more kids in Florida with health insurance.

Just as important as the role of state politics in our lives is the fact that state politics is more accessible than national politics. By that I mean, involvement in state politics is more likely to result in actual changes in state policy than similar involvement in national politics. You could look at it as a simple matter of numbers - you're one of 18 million Floridians, versus one of 300 million Americans. Successfully influencing one of 120 state representatives is going to have a bigger impact on policy than influencing one of 435 representatives in Congress.

So, again, state politics both has a bigger impact on your life than national politics and you can have a bigger impact on it.

Come on folks! Blog about state issues! Blog about state politics! Hold state representatives accountable for their votes just like you want to hold congresspeople accountable for theirs!

I'm not writing this just to lecture at you - I know a good way for you to start getting involved in state politics too. There's a rumor (*cough*straight out of Rubio's mouth*cough*) that there's going to be yet another special session before the next regular session in March. The purpose? to cut the budget, again. As this article points out, the state still has a $2.3 billion shortfall, even after last month's budget cuts. Remember what they cut then? Education and health care, mostly. Transportation and business incentives were kept safe. Well, what do you think they're going to cut next time?

The Democrats in the House are probably going to (or at least, should) offer up their own set of cuts, cuts which will hold services and education harmless. They need to have a list of the ridiculous budget items Republicans would rather not look at. The best example I can think of is the $491 million dollar CSX project in Orlando (check out the end of this article for details). Another one is the $80 million Rubio wants to give the the University of Miami. Those two alone add up to a quarter of the shortfall.

So, can you folks help me find more?

What the hell is going on in Tallahassee?

Well, right now, nothing official. The special session is still on, but lawmakers are at home doing their day job until Thursday. Meanwhile, in "back rooms," Senate and House leaders are negotiating some kind of compromise. Good luck! If you look at a break down of the various elements of each plan, you can see that there a number of things that the Senate and House agree on - working waterfront protections, tangible personal property exemption, affordable housing breaks, and, the big one, portability. The disagreements are pretty major though: fundamentally different homestead exemption expansions, assessment caps, and local control of taxes. I wonder if negotiators will play mix and match, or try to scale down the more ambitious House plan.

Let's take a step back. How did we get here?

The special session started much like the last few - the leadership had worked out a plan, and was prepared to ram it through within a few days. This session was different in two ways, however. First, the subject, tax cuts, is Rubio's pet project (check out this analysis of Rubio's motivations for pushing an ambitious plan), and second, Democrats actually have power over the process due to the 3/4ths majority requirement for a constitutional amendment. Now, the Senate went along with the original plan, which everyone called "Crist's plan" back then, because Pruitt didn't want to rock the boat, and Geller, the Democratic Minority Leader, had been wooed by Crist to support the plan. Remember that Crist ironed out the plan with Geller's help back during the budget cutting process. So the Senate debated the plan and amendments last week, and amendments that would have modified Crist's plan to look more like what the House has come up with were voted down, narrowly in some cases. I think Geller's support of Crist's original plan was the crucial element in keeping the Senate "on track." This happened last Wednesday - after the final vote, the Senate packed up and went home, with Senate leaders making huffy statements about what was going on in the House.

On the same day, House bigwigs retreated into the "back rooms" and negotiated a compromise plan between Republicans and Democrats. Thats how the "House plan" emerged. This was prompted by sudden and unexpected developments the day before - when a Democrat, Rep. Saunders, unexpectedly and without consulting Democratic leadership offered an amendment to put a 7% cap on all nonhomesteaded property. He had pushed for something similiar in the past. This was apparently a ploy by Republicans, who baited Saunders to offer the amendment, and then immediately jumped on it, counter-proposing a 3% cap instead. All of this was done without warning or analysis. You can sense the bewilderment in the blog postings about the vote.

The negotiations Wednesday between House leaders produced the current House plan, which borrows heavily from the Democratic tax plan from the last regular session. The 3% cap was adjusted to 5% on nonhomesteaded residential and commericial property as soon as Republicans realized how big a cut 3% would be. The assessment cap is an interesting idea, and, I think, worth more analysis. I'll get to that later.

The Senate leadership was not happy with this new plan from the House, which was approved Monday 108-2. Pruitt and Webster complained that the House "broke the deal." Crist is being completely two-faced (the newspapers are saying "diplomatic") on the issue, both supporting the Senate plan, and not not supporting the House plan.

Okay, so that's background. Let's get into the issues.

I agree completely with Troxler about the Senate complaint that the House "broke the deal." Who cares what the deal was? The deal was an arbitrary compromise worked out in secret. It ought to change as lawmakers offer suggestions and alternatives. Which, surprisingly, is exactly what happened in the House. Now, I think it's a perfectly legitimate argument to say that the House plan hasn't been studied thoroughly, and probably has loopholes and unintended consequences. But bashing it for not following a script reveals the kind of politics Pruitt and Webster want to play.

Personally, I've really enjoyed watching the special session unfold - it's been pretty entertaining. I'm more fond of the House plan than I ought to be, because, by accepting Democratic input, the House leadership is taking a step in the right direction of playing bipartisan politics. But, as I said before, the plan need to be studied and analyzed seriously before trying to put it in the state constitution.

If you read this blog regularly (as regularly as one can with such irregular updates, I mean), you know that I think that the property tax problem in Florida isn't caused by tax rates, but by the way property is assessed. Save Our Homes has thrown things out of whack, and the highest and best use assessment requirement exaggerates that problem for commercial properties. The House plan takes a step in the right direction on that. First, the working waterfront tax break removes the highest and best use assessment requirement for properties on the water's edge. Thats not the same thing as removing highest and best use on all property, but its getting there. The Senate plan also has a working waterfront break, but it's narrower and probably won't help motels, tiki huts, bait shops, and the like.

The assessment cap of 5% is what I really have my eye on. Democrats originally proposed a 7% cap, which Republicans countered with a 3% one, and now its at 5%. Its amazing what a big difference there is between 3, 5, and 7 percent. At 3%, the plan would have choked local governments and completely screwed up Florida's tax system in just a few years. Complete disaster, I think. A 7% cap, on the other hand, is above the average growth of values, and so, at first glance, is worthless. However, the 7% cap would have prevented sudden massive rises in assessed value, and would give businesses the ability to predict taxes several years down the road - which is what they've been calling for for years now. The 7% cap is cautious but also fair and useful, and would not significantly affect local governments. The 5% cap mixes the pros and cons of the other two - it's a significant cut for local governments, will lead to problems down the road, but also helps out businesses and nonhomesteaded residents quite a bit.

5% is a good enough compromise from 3%, but I think nonhomsteaded residential property ought to be given a bit more of benefit (snowbirds and renters really deserve some relief) and business a bit less of a benefit. My plan would be 3% for homesteads, 4.5% for nonhomesteaded residential, and 6% for businesses. That, coupled with local autonomy over tax rates, would be a pretty sensible system.

Well, if you can't tell, I'm rooting for the House plan. But - only if there has to be a tax cut. The best scenario would be for the whole thing to fall apart, which seems pretty likely at this point, and for the tax debate to continue over the winter and into the regular session. The newspapers have been urging the legislature to wait for the tax commission to offer suggestions. I'm not quite as confident as the newspapers that the commission will have good ideas. The people on the commission were chosen by Crist, Pruitt, and Rubio, the same folks who have screwed up tax cuts the past three tries. Plus, some of them are real conservative ideologues. Still, I don't think there's any need to rush these tax cuts.

After all, I think Florida needs tax reform, not cuts.

Portability is not the answer

In the next couple of days, we should have a better understanding of what Crist's tax plan will be. I say "Crist's" because it looks like the Republicans leaders are going to let him run the show. Rubio can't afford to screw up AGAIN on taxes (as this Sun Sentinel opinion piece points out, he's already on strike two), so it looks like he's giving the torch to Crist. Regardless of whether the plan succeeds, Rubio will claim it didn't go far enough next regular session and push for his sales swap again. Plus, Crist needs the credit - he's got campaign promises to fulfill if wants to keep his astronomical ratings. It doesn't matter to him whether or not the plan suceeds either; he just needs to show he tried. On the other hand, it's good to see that he's willing to talk to Democrats about it, unlike his Republican friends.

So what is Crist's plan? There are several reports. SV Date (freshly transfered to the legislative beat and already causing trouble for the Republicans) has a write up that focuses on portability and doubling the homestead exemption; The Miami Herald has a somewhat different report, The Buzz has something else, and the Political Pulse also chimes in. You can see the common threads, but the details are different.

The important thing is that portability is the primary element of all of these plans. As explained by Date, portability would allow accrued savings from Save Our Homes to be transfered, but they would slowly phase out as the assessment of the property would grow by 8% instead of 3%, until it reaches what the assessed value of the property would have been if it was allowed to grow at 3% from the sale value of the property, at which point it would only grow 3% a year from there on out. Did I explain that right? Did you understand it? Somehow they've managed to come up with something even more convoluted than the super exemption/Save Our Homes choice. That is, if Date's report is right.

Lets assume it's correct. That would mean that long-term residents get a bonus exemption, which could be enormous - millions of dollars, potentially - that would slowly phase out until they're just left with their regular old Save Our Homes cap. Fine, that solves the "problem" of people being "locked" into their homes (realistically, people locked into their homes from assessment caps should make such a profit from the sale that it should mitigate the increased taxes of a new place). But - well, think about it. What if you move multiple times over the course of a few years? What if you move from a really expensive home to a much more modest one? In other words, what if you move from a home valued at $2 million but assessed thanks to SoH at $500,000 to a house worth $500,000? You'd have $1.5 million accrued savings, which means you'd pay taxes on negative $1 million dollars assessed value... right? How does that work? What I'm trying to say is, the loopholes here seem enormous.

But that's not the main problem I have with portability. It exacerbates the problem of tax inequities. Basically, it means that the longer you lived in Florida, the less taxes you'll have to pay, even if you move homes. Lets face it, people wouldn't get "locked in" if there wasn't a homestead based cap. Other people (including renters and businesses) have to pay more taxes because homesteaders pay less. Portability solves the problem only between actual Florida residents. New-comers, landlords, and businesses still have to pay more so these people can pay less.

Of course, since people who qualify for homesteading vote the most, they're the ones who get pandered to. But, wiping out homesteading benefits along with another kind of tax reform (to compensate for the fact that you'd essentially be raising their taxes) is much more fair and won't cause the long term problems that an unequal system, like SoH, is responsible for. But who cares about the long term?

What kind of reform could compensate for loosing the SoH assessment cap? How about this very interesting idea from property appraisers: roll back assessments. I firmly believe that property taxes aren't the problem, it's the rapidly raising assesments that are the problem. They're behind both the increase in taxes paid by individuals, and the growth of local governments and the resulting pain from forced cuts (I mean, growing fast and then cutting back is more painful than just growing less fast). I don't know about the specifics of their plan, reducing assesments by 5% for 5 years, but that seems like a move in the right direction. Apparently, removing the "highest and best use" assesment requirement is on the table for Crist's tax reform, which is also a good thing.

Bottom line: individualized assessment caps are the problem, and portability is only going to perpetuate that. A better solution is needed.

PIP is soooo last week

Thank you, Judge Francis, for giving us more Florida political drama. I had expected the excitement this week to be about the PIP deal and whether there would be a tiny special session on Thursday or Friday to pass the compromise before PIP expired. But, no, instead, out of nowhere, Judge Francis drops a tactical nuke on Florida politics.

Where to start? How about with timing? If this decision had been made a week earlier, Democrats may have pounced on it as a way to delay the primary vote until Feb 5th. Doing it would be easy: foul up, or threaten to, any compromise in the legislature over re-wording the ballot language until October 31st passes, at which point the 90 day deadline on language changes is reached. The legislature, if it wanted to keep an early vote on this amendment (and they do! Otherwise it'll compete with whatever the independent tax and budget commission comes up with for the general election), would have to reschedule the primary + referendum election to February or later. I dunno if Democrats would actually do that - it would take a lot of political capital that the Democrats haven't been very good at accumulating - but it would resolve the early primary problem.

If the decision had been made after October 12th, when the special session is scheduled to end, the legislature would have had to schedule another special session to change the wording, which would have been ridiculous. So the legislature is fortunate that the decision has come down now, and they can decide between rewording it or appealing the decision.

Before getting to that dilemma, lets talk about smear politics. The lawsuit that's caused all this was started by Westin Mayor Eric Hersh. You may remember the news about him starting the lawsuit a few months back - he was slammed by state Republican leaders, especially, if I remember correctly, Pruitt. Well, he's been hammered since then by waves of tv commercials, mailers, and telephone calls to his constituents over this lawsuit. By who? Good question; apparently no one is quite sure who's behind it. However, the trail of political stooges leads us right back to Pruitt and Rubio. So it's clear that the Republican leadership has been doing some very underhanded things to prevent this decision from happening. But now it has. So what next?

The leadership has two options available, and it's basically an either/or situation. On the one hand, they can crack open the amendment and revise the wording. That opens the flood gates though, and big business is eager to get some cuts for businesses in there. So if the special session also reworks the amendment, who knows what will happen. But maybe that's a good thing! The other option is to appeal the decision and take it to the Supreme Court. If they can't get a decision by the Supreme Court before the special session is over, and the Court then rules against them, thats it; there's no referendum short of some drastic maneuvers (like changing the primary date). Not surprisingly, in my mind, Pruitt is pushing for an appeal rather than rewording. Why is that not surprising? Of the three main actors, Crist, Rubio, and Pruitt, Pruitt has the least to lose, as this post on The Buzz details. He's not tied up in this like Crist, who came out swinging for it last week (bet he regrets that now), or Rubio, who has put a lot of his political capital into getting this thing through. Plus, Pruitt (and maybe Rubio, given his recent comments to business leaders) might realize how terrible the tax amendment really is, and actually be for the amendment failing.

They wouldn't be the only Republicans. As I wrote about before, a number of Republicans, including Sen. Lisa Carlton, #2 in the Senate, have publicly come out against the amendment, even though they voted for it in session. They didn't really get the public lambasting they deserve for voting for a crappy amendment they knew, or figured out quickly, was bad, but they probably will if they proceed to vote for a ballot rewording that doesn't change the basics of the amendment. The Republican leadership might not be able to get the votes it needs for a simple rewording! All it takes is about 20 Republicans in the House or 6 or 7 Republicans in the Senate to vote against it to kill the amendment. Carlton and other Republicans who have since spoken out against the amendment will have to choose between keeping to their word or doing a serious flipflop - again.

That's only if the ballot language is merely reworded. More likely, opening up the process to reword it will result in actual changes to the amendment. In as much as I'm for good public policy, I see this as a good thing. They ought to throw in a change to how properties are assessed, for example. However, that's a whole bag of worms. I doubt the Leadership can get major compromises on both budget cuts and the tax amendment in the same week and a half special session. Oh, and fix PIP.

PIP politics

Rubio is now claiming to working towards a PIP solution. Actually, more infuriatingly, he's saying that we must work towards a PIP solution to prevent political "procrastination." Its amazing that he's so gung ho about it now, considering that he wasn't willing to put PIP on the agenda of the mirage special session that was supposed to start on the 18th.

This whole PIP situation is frustrating. Democrats, particularly Rep. Kriseman, have been pushing for a PIP extension for months. They've been cooking up all kinds of ideas on how to get PIP on the official agenda of the special session (both the decoy and the real one), including some obscure procedure that would force a special session on a particular subject ( i.e., PIP). Democrats have mostly wanted to just extend PIP and work out a compromise in the next regular session (Rep. Gelber still wants to do just that). However, they haven't actually taken up a leadership role in forcing the legislature to take up the issue (writing letters hardly counts). If any Democrat has done that, it's Alex Sink, who somehow managed to push the issue without being overtly political about it. However, it's coming back to haunt Democrats now, as Republicans seem to be hosting negotiations that will produce something that Rubio can bless. Democrats had several opportunities to make PIP their issue, and, if these negotiations work, could have claimed credit on the result.

To be fair, both Democrats and Republicans have been agitating for some kind of PIP extension. But that's not including the leadership and their lieutenants, like Rep. Bogdanoff and Sen. Posey, who seem to have been more part of the problem than the solution for their inability to compromise. The leadership must have realized that they could have mutiny on their hands if they didn't get something done; hence, these negotiations.

Don't feel too good about the apparent progress, though: what they mean by "negotiation" is having a few dozen lobbyists from the various interests in the same room writing a bill. That bill will probably be released just before the special session, not giving potential opponents enough time to figure out how many different ways it screws them. It'll pass, because all the good little Republican boys and girls will do what Rubio and Pruitt tell them to do. And when the media, who will actually read the bill, start reporting on what a turd they passed, many of them will start to publicly equivocate or back down. At least, thats what happened in the last special session, and probably whats going to happen with the budget cuts. Maybe it's a bit cynical, but consider all that my official prediction on what will happen... except for that part about a few dozen lobbyists writing the bill - thats true, and its happening right now.

To summarize: 1) Democrats had an opportunity to make this their issue, and dropped the ball. 2) The Republican leadership desperately tried to avoid extending PIP, but now that it seems likely to happen, have positioned themselves to take the credit. 3) The Republican leadership has a definite style of making public policy: closing the door and keeping Democrats, and the public, out of the discussion. 4) That style produces crappy public policy.

PIP Session?

The Republican leadership may have thought that canceling/postponing the special session would have killed this PIP issue. However, it looks like a number of lawmakers are agitating for for a special session just for PIP. The Buzz article suggests that there's just a couple of lawmakers appealing for the session, but that number is closer to a dozen. If it turns into a movement, whether it succeeds or not, it will be a major blow to the authoritarian Rubio/Pruitt regime in the statehouse.

Lets hope more lawmakers grow spines and stick out their necks to really challenge the leadership on this issue.

Secret Negotiations

So Rubio and Pruitt canceled the special session - or, "postponed" it, to use their words. And why did they postpone it?

"The common denominator for productive special sessions is an initial agreement on a framework for action... While there has been tremendous progress, there is still work to be done... We remain confident that an agreement will be reached and that we will have a fall special session."

So, there's no "initial agreement." Have you read anything in the press about about Pruitt and Rubio working towards an agreement? If, like me, you've been reading articles about possible cuts, reform ideas, and committee meetings where department heads present their budget cut proposals, you probably thought that legislators were educating themselves in the past few weeks, in preparation for the big decisions they would have to make in the special session. The press would mention, here and there, that the House wanted to do targeted cuts, and the Senate wanted to just do a uniform 4% cut. But it never mentioned - to my knowledge - that Rubio and Pruitt were trying come up with an "initial agreement" before the special session started.

My take on this is that the Republican leadership was trying to do what it did before in the property tax special session - craft a plan behind the scenes, then shove it through. I have two problems with this. First, cutting the budget should be a public debate. This isn't something that should be concocted in dimly lit, smoke-filled rooms. It ought to be done in the open, so that the public can act and react. Second, this kind of political negotiation produces crappy policy. Look at what came out of the last special session - a terrible "tax cut" which didn't address the main concerns of property owners, only benefited homesteaders, generated a huge amount of partisan politics, and, in the long run, actually increases tax revenue. Including the public - or at least the other party - in negotiations isn't just important as a matter of political morality, its necessary to produce compromises that everyone can agree to.

It appears that Gov. Crist didn't even know about postponement until everybody else did - is he kept out of the loop on these secret negotiations too? If so, that's amazing, especially now that he's put out a pretty comprehensive budget cut/economic stimulus plan. In fact, that he did put out this plan indicates that he's not really part of the Pruitt-Rubio budget cut cabal. So who is coming up with the initial agreement? Maybe Rep. Joe Pickens, who's head of the education council (and therefore supposedly in charge of education cuts): this Naked Politics post was the first indication I had seen that the special session wasn't really set in stone. And who knows who else?

Budget Cuts

Here's what's going to be the big issues (Note how many issues there are! these cuts are bad news):

Department of Agriculture: They want to cut licensing offices across the state. If you're not aware, pretty much all commerce in agriculture in this state requires licensing. Buying and selling plants and produce requires a license. So cutting these offices is something of a big deal to people in the industry - especially since there's a perception, even if its not true (I don't know yet) that these offices are paid for by the license fees.

FWC: 2 million to be cut from Red Tide research and prevention. Luckily for budget cutters, there's no red tide so far this year - if there is, at any point this year, expect it to blossom into a big issue. Also, cutting down number of patrol officers means less protection for manatees along with other duties - like rescuing people, issuing speeding tickets, etc.

Department of Corrections: If you haven't heard about Secretary McDonough's proposed budget cut/reforms, read up on them. This guy has a vision, and he's trying to use the budget cuts as a way of pushing it through. Of course, Republicans (and Democrats trying to appeal to Republicans) will never support a change from traditional punishment of criminals.

Justice: public defenders and state attorney's budgets are something like 95% salaries. So they'll have to cut salaries or positions. This means, of course, a slow down in the courts along with lower quality work, for both prosecution and defense. Cutting the DARE program is of course controversial even though the program doesn't work.

Juvenile Justice: Cuts will close facilities, resulting in overcrowding. Cutting The Guardian Ad Litem program, which is mostly tied to DCF, will cause over 3000 children in the foster care system to lose their guardians (people who make sure that the foster child is being taken care of in the foster family).

Other: candidate filing fees traditionally go in part to the the political parties. Now, the plan is to have all that income go straight to the state. Expect the parties to fight for the money.

Cutting the budget of the Division of Administrative Hearings will probably go straight to salaries or positions, and lack of workers will mean delays to worker's comp cases. The situation in Florida for workers comp is already pretty bad - another insurance problem.

Healthcare: 43 million from prescription drugs; 80 million from medicare payments to nursing homes - which counties will have to make up. The Rape Crisis Trust Fund could be totally cut.

The Agency for Persons with Disabilities has an interesting cut that would remove something like 75 million from the privatized Support Coordinator program. Support Coordinators apparently interface with government for disabled (mental and/or physically) people and provide other services. The agency wants to cut the program and have state employees do it at a reduced salary and greater caseload. Support Coordinators, of course, are fighting this tooth and nail, and getting the families of the people they help to fight with them.

Finally, education.

232 million from the university system, with no tuition increases.

102 million from community colleges, with increased enrollment and no tuition increases.

19 million from financial aid.

191 million from class size amendment funding - and now Republicans are claiming that the size requirement is only for average size, not max size for every class.

32 million from school readiness program, which will apparently result in 8200 children being "disenrolled."

And more! but too much to list here

BUT - no cut to controversial, and unwanted by teachers, merit pay programs

Now, these are from the 10% proposed cuts, when only 4% is necessary. So some of these programs will be saved, and other cuts won't be as deep. But everything mentioned here is on the cutting board, and needs to be defended. And I'm sure they will be - loudly in some cases, softly and behind the scenes in others.

How much of this looks like “government fat” that Republicans claim they need to cut? I think this round of cuts - or the next! apparently another 900 million needs to be cut from next year's budgets, and will happen in the regular session in March and April - will bring people around the the realization that Florida needs more revenue. Whether it's from an income tax, or cutting out the sales tax exemptions, or taxing corporations more, or reinstating capital gains taxes, or something else, Florida just needs more money to do what people want and expect it to do.

You got more? let me know what other controversial stuff is on the cutting wish lists.

Bright Futures: Florida's Most Popular Welfare Program

There's been a lot of news recently, but nothing really interesting. The insurance issue is where it was last week, since State Farm apparently needs a month to produce documents. Budget cuts are pretty quiet in terms of what what will actually be cut. I'll probably have more to say on that as we head into the committee weeks prior to the special session. So, I've debated whether to write this post on Hometown Democracy or Bright Futures. Bright Futures won, in part because of the recent push by Democrats on education (in regards to the FCAT).

Bright Futures got a good write up in the Orlando Sentinel (a paper I otherwise despise except for the insightful commentary by Mike Thomas). Thomas's argument is right on the money - standards are too low, and it holds down tuition at universities. He gets close to saying, but doesn't quite utter those controversial words, what Sandy D'Alemberte (former USF president) has said: Bright Futures is an entitlement program for the wealthy. That quote is from a piece in the Sarasota Herald Tribune that's a bit more inflamitory than Thomas's article.

Let me restate that to make it a bit more clear: Bright Futures is welfare for the adult children of rich and middle class Floridians. It literally is welfare - even if they have no other scholarships or loans, and have to pay tuition and other school cost out of pocket, Bright Futures is twice yearly welfare check for young adults disbursed by universities. It's means tested, too - they had to have gotten a 3.0 GPA and 970 SAT. Many students (I was one of them) got Bright Futures in addition to other scholarships and/or loans, which effectively means that Bright Futures prevents middle class students from having to work to have spending money while in college. In other words, just as conservatives have always criticized welfare programs, Bright Futures was an incentive for me and tens of thousands of other reciepients to not work. So again, just so its clear, Bright Futures is a means-tested welfare program.

That it's targetted to middle and upper class families is also obvious. While 3.0 and 970 aren't demanding, they're difficult enough that lower class families, who have more on their mind than their child's academic achievement (like paying rent, being able to afford enough food, the higher crime rates in their communities, dealing with second or third jobs, etc.) may find those standards out of reach. That's particularly true of the GPA requirement, which a student can fail to achieve because of just one bad year (which, again, can be caused by things other than the student's academic capabilities). The children of middle and upper class families- which is to say, socioeconomically blessed students - do better in school environments and are much more likely to meet those standards even if they aren't, from a different point of view, more deserving of a merit based award. So clearly, Bright Futures is not intended for getting impovershed or working class students into college.

Fine. It's okay to have an extremely regressive entitlement program, so long as there is a good purpose for it, and it is achieving that purpose. Proponents of Bright Futures, like Ken Pruitt, argue that Bright Futures is necessary to keep college students in Florida, where they'll provide a highly educated workforce and keep Florida's economy strong. Okay, that makes sense - a broad program to provide higher education and keep those educated to stay in Florida sounds like good public policy. It's also SOCIALIZED higher education, but okay, whatever. But does the program achive that goal? and is that goal worth the cost?

Whether Bright Futures keeps college educated students in Florida is a question for statisticians, but on the other hand, it's worked for me so far, and I'm willing to say its probably successful in that goal overall. Now, as to the cost. The obvious price tag is the $350 million it takes out of the budget. That's a lot. It's more than the state spends from its lottery fund on public schools. But still, if you're comfortable with socialized higher ed, maybe thats okay. The real price is what it's done to funding for higher education. That $350 million is, obviously, going straight to universities as tuition. It's money that students would have paid anyway, however, so it's potentially $350 million that universities (or any other education or public program) would have got anyway. This goes back to the argument of whether a regressive entitlement program is a good way to spend public money.

The other price paid is that increasing tuition - which universities need to do every now and then to be able to remain competitive with other universities in other states - means increasing Bright Futures expenditures. Since the legislature controls tuition (or at least, has controlled tuition - hopefully the BoG will get control of that in the future) and has to deal with balancing Bright Futures in the budget, it simply hasn't increased tuition for years. Which means that Florida's universities are underfunded - higher student-faculty ratios, larger classes, less research initiatives, etc. The important thing to remember here is that tuition needs to be adequate but fair - too high and it's regressive, so there should be resistance to raising tuition frequently, but too low and the universities wither. Bright Futures is putting downward pressure on tuition, and long term, that has been the greatest cost of the program.

As a regressive entitlement program, Bright Futures isn't worth it. It needs reform. That doesn't seem very likely, however, because it's wildly popular. Turns out that upper and middle class voters love welfare programs - like Social Security, Medicare, mortgage deductions, and Bright Futures. Anyway, Bright Futures needs to be reformed, and soon. I'd share my ideas, but really, I'm not sure what would make sense here - how to fulfill the original goal of the program (I mean, other than just making Florida Universities more attractive than out of state ones... which only requires generous funding and superior management). Thomas suggests splitting the money into two pools, one based on merit and one on merit/need. It doesn't change the fact that A) any entitlement program based entirely on merit is (as I just discussed) regressive and B) restricting the entitlement means reducing political support for the program. Bright Futures would not be so popular if it was restricted to, say, GPAs of 3.6 and SATs of 1250 or higher, and so it'd be much more difficult fund it as much as Bright Futures is now. And of course, any means-tested entitlement program that spends money on poor people is going to be controversial and unpopular - even if the standards are the same as they are now, with the additional requirement that the family not earn more than (for example) $40,000 a year.

So thats the sad truth about entitlement programs in the United States: if they benefit the middle class, they're popular; if not, then they're criticized as bad public policy by conservatives.

The Property Tax Amendment

So there's still plenty to say about insurance, but I think we've hit a calm spot until next week when State Farm has to testify on its plan to drop 50,000 policies. There's other insurance news - like that PIP won't be on the agenda for the special session, and on KidCare and S-CHIP. But I want to instead take the time machine back to the last special session, on property taxes, and speculate a bit on what happened.

The last special session was scheduled to last up to ten days. That's ten days that could have been spent discussing ideas, building support for various ideas, forging compromises and settling the little issues. Instead, the leadership crammed a prefabricated plan through in just three days. And it wasn't like plan had been on the table and open for discussion before the special session began; no, instead, broad information about the plan was presented to legislators on the Friday before the session, and the actual language of the bill was finally provided on the Tuesday of the first week of the special session. The initial House Policy and Budget Council which was supposed to meet on that Tuesday was pushed back to Wednesday so that legislators could actually see the bill before they started debating it.

Starting that Tuesday, Rubio attacked Democrats for not immediately supporting his plan, and upped the rhetoric during a press conference on Wednesday. The plan passed on Thursday, but not untouched. There were a number of amendments, check out the list yourself. Notice anything strange? All of the successful amendments (including the one that allowed Floridians to choose between Save Our Homes and the super exemption) were proposed by Dean Cannon, who was one of the negotiators for the original plan. Check out who proposed failed amendments: Grant, Kravitz, Reagan, Robaina, Frishe, Allen... all Republicans. Toward the end of the list you see some Democrats also proposed failed amendments. Bottom line: only the leadership got to touch the bill.

Now, lets look at some of the rhetoric spewed out by Rubio and his lackeys:
From the St. Pete Times article mentioned previously: "[Rubio] said complaints that the plan is confusing amount to "code speak for 'let's do nothing.'" He later calls those against the bill "opponents of property tax relief."
From the Buzz: Adam Hasner (majority leader) said "despite the efforts of some politicians to obstruct property tax relief..." and "It is disappointing that so many Democrats chose to ignore the voices of the taxpayers..."
Dean Cannon said "Any vote against either of the bills presented today was a vote against property tax relief, plain and simple,"

The pattern here is that A) opponents of the tax plan were against all tax cuts and B) the tax plan was exactly what the people wanted. The point of part B is simple - it's just presenting their plan as the best possible plan It's what you'd expect from politicians. Part A, however, is more than just slamming Democrats - it's also intended to scare Republicans. Many Republicans were not happy with the plan when they got it, just as they weren't happy with it in the aftermath (take a look at my previous post on this). It appears that Rubio and co. did everything they could to prevent Republicans from challenging the plan - including shutting down questions from Republican Carl Domino. If you don't believe me that Republicans were ambivelent at best about the plan, check out this article in the Sarasota Herald Tribune written in the midst of the special session.

So if they had a bad plan on their hands, why did the leadership push it through? They had ten days to tinker with it. They didn't even have to listen to Democrats - that amendment list proves that plenty of Republicans had their own ideas.

I bet Rubio knows full well that the amendment is going to crash. It has to get 60 percent approval, and the first poll on the issue found only 57 percent supporting it. That number is going to go down - it always does on constitutional amendments. We all know what Rubio really wants: Sales Taxes. It'd be all to easy for him to, after the January 29th election, to blame its failure on Democrats, Teachers Unions, etc. and then turn around and offer an even more radical proposal - abolishing or severely cutting property taxes and upping the sales tax. In fact, he doesn't even have to. He can turn to his buddies on the Taxation and Budget Reform Commission. Since the commission has the power to place amendments directly on the ballot of the November 2008 election, Rubio can campaign for an amendment supporting his dream of increased sales taxes and abolished property taxes without ever having to get anything through the legislature.

Still, I don't see how he could get 60% support for a sales tax amendment if he can't get it for a property tax one. So I expect him to be working on it during the regular session in March and April.

Insurance Rhetoric

So Democratic leaders are upping the rhetoric on insurance to a full scale "war." (this being echoed by our own FLA politics). House Minority Leader Gelber is calling for Crist to have the upcoming three-week special session on the budget also cover insurance. The Democrat's old plan for the January special session is being revived; part of which, by the way, was for a Rate Reduction Authority, which would allow the state to respond to an insurance crisis without the legislature needing to convene.

There was an interesting story in the St. Pete Times on Tuesday on the cabinet meeting that, among other things, discussed insurance. Its an interesting read because it reveals a lot about the position of each cabinet member on insurance.

Crist:
"Let's make sure, or find out, if these companies are adhering to the letter of the law. It's the law!" Crist roared, punctuating each word with a fist to the desk. "And there are consequences to not adhering to the law."

Agricultural Commissioner Bronson:
"Let's just be honest with everybody and not play games where nobody really knows what that coverage is going to be."

Alex Sink proposed undoing the policy changes from the January session:
"Let's go back to where we were before, if it's not going to make any difference,"

Attorney General McCollum:
"I'm disappointed that the rates aren't coming down for some of these companies, but I think each company has a good argument to make, and I think that's why we have a process and the Office of Insurance Regulation."

Notice a trend? Sink and Crist are ready for changes, reform, action; Bronson and McCollum are sticking to Republican ideology on big business and want to keep their noses out of it. Crist is emerging as a real moderate - he's a populist on insurance regulation, a moderate environmentalist, etc.

Don't believe me that Crist is a populist? Check out the Orlando Sentinel's political blog's coverage of his meeting with their editorial board. "...these are people who live in Florida, some of them....don't they care about their fellow Floridians? Don't they have any heart? Don't they have any compassion?" Of course, I like the title of the post, taken from this quote: "My word, how much do we have to bend over to the insurance industry in our state?" For videos, look here; they give you some context: Crist was riled up because of all the diet Red Bull he's been drinking.

There's more: Rep. Dennis Ross wrote a letter in response to Insurance Commissioner McCarty's op-ed pieces in various newspapers around the state. Choice excerpt: "It is axiomatic that competition and market forces will result in better insurance products at better prices for consumers," and "Consumers have a right to have businesses competing for their interests, and they are entitled to choices." Thats some hardcore free-market rhetoric!

Of course, what the insurance industry wants is hardly free market. The industry has been spamming newspapers with op-eds to combat McCarty's pieces. From the Palm Beach Post, an insurance spokesman called for the legislature to "rein in the state-run Citizens Property Insurance Corp.... [and] create voucher and grant programs that extend the surplus matching program and help with increased deductibles." In other words, end socialized insurance in favor of corporate welfare.

So, in summary, this "insurance war" has the Democrats and Crist on one side, and Republicans and insurers on the other. Democrats want to follow the tradition of FDR and keep plugging away at reforms until something sticks - Crist on the other hand wants to stick with the law as it stands, but enforce it vigorously. Republicans either don't want to do anything (as shown by McCollum and Bronson) or want to prop up the insurance companies (as per Ross's letter). When I heard that Democrats thought they had the upper hand on this issue, I was incredulous, as the whole thing seemed unwinnable, but how things have been playing out recently have convinced me that they appear to right. Floridians are going to want reform and change, even if it doesn't turn out well, rather than just sitting on our asses until the situation fixes itself, or worse, cave into the insurance companies and start feeding them vouchers and subsides (corporate welfare! And, decidedly not "free market," despite the Republicans' rhetoric). That's why Crist's "bend over' language is so appropriate: its what Republicans want to do.

PS - I know insurance isn't a sexy issue, but I'm focusing on it this week because it's what our politicians are are focusing on. Praxis means practical politics.

Property Insurance

Property insurance is a big problem for the Florida Legislature. There's something of a miniature crisis going on with insurance companies filing for rate increases when they had been expected to decrease. Around now people are starting to get letters from their insurers letting them know how much they're going to be paying next year - and it can be more than double. State Farm, the worst neighbor, wants to drop 50,000 policies. And this is just the beginning of the insurance problem.

Lets start at the beginning. The Florida state legislature is not the ideal policy making body for property insurance. It has to due with the structure of the legislature: legislators are part time employees, make around $30,000 a year, and are term limited to eight years. In other words, they're amateurs. They're expected to have a regular job (no possibility of conflict of interest there!) that provides the majority of their income, and yet are expected to attend a 60 day regular session, an indefinite number of special sessions, and interim committee weeks. Legislators have only a handful of aides (an aide and a secretary for regular state representatives) who don't make much more than the legislator for the full time job.

I hope you can see the picture I'm trying to paint here: legislators are not experts, and don't have expert staff. They're amateurs with general housekeeping staff. To be fair, the legislature does employ experts for the committee/councils, and leadership positions are rewarded with more and better paid staff. But, the average legislator is not anything more than, at best, an educated amateur.

And yet they think they can fix insurance for the state of Florida! Insurance is, I hardly need to say, a massive, complicated, and most importantly, RICH industry. They have more experts than you could shake a stick at. So, of course, Florida's insurance policy is written, or at least guided, by the industry.

As the link I posted above mentions, the legislature allowed insurance companies to create pups back in the 90s. Pups buy their reinsurance from their parent companies. Think about that for a moment: it basically means that the company gets to profit from selling things to itself. What a deal! I'm sure they would never abuse that power.

So, in January, the legislature pumped up the CAT fund and offered it as cheap reinsurance to companies operating in Florida, as a way to decrease rates. That sounds good in theory. Thats why, when the industry offered that idea to the legislature, it ate it right up. Now, it looks like it was a con the industry pulled on a legislature that didn't know any better. Pups bought reinsurance from the state, and then proceeded to buy more from their parent company. You can see where the profit is.

Whew, six paragraphs and I'm not even done laying out the background of the situation!

Meanwhile, insurance companies are dropping all the policies in the state that are most risky. This shouldn't come as a surprise - all of Florida is prone to hurricanes, and since pups insure only Florida, there's no way to spread out the risk (to people who can't get hit by hurricanes - you know, in Ohio or where-ever). In response, the legislature created CITIZENS, the state-backed insurance agency that covers whomever the companies won't. Used to be that Citizens couldn't compete, and so it charged the highest rates possible, but recently the legislature dropped that requirement, and citizens, as a socialist program (no way around it! it's socialized insurance) is the cheapest option in most places. So, this year Citizens is growing like crazy, and by the end of the year will have two million policies.

So here we are. People around the state are pissed about their raising insurance rates. There's a battle growing between the insurance commissioner McCarty and the pups. Citizens is way larger than the CAT fund can support. If a big hurricane hits, it won't just be a natural disaster, it'll be a financial crisis.

Now, to the politics.

That bit at the top about how we have an amateur legislature is relevant again: no legislator has any idea how to deal with the problem. In a professional legislature, like the US Congress, legislators tend to specialize in policy areas, and so there are a congressmen and senators in DC who are experts on insurance policy. Not so in Florida - the best we might have is some educated amateurs, or insurance industry shills. As much as I am for European Style Big Government (bring it on, Rubio!), I do no want amateurs or the insurance industry designing a socialist insurance policy (although, I have to say, it makes a lot of sense to me for the government to handle insurance [if we want it to do health care insurance, why not property insurance?]). Likewise, more insurance reform guided by the insurance industry is just asking to be conned again. Insurance regulation approved by the industry is just going to result in guaranteed profit, which is A) not going to help in the long run and B) not free market.

So what can we do about property insurance? One thing is to wait for the national government to help us out. Florida congresspeople have been pushing for the federal government to instate some kind of windstorm insurance program. Hopefully that will pan out, because it spreads the risk and the cost across the whole nation. But it'll probably be a while before that happens, and anyway, this blog is focused on state politics.

Another option is create a regional cat fund with other southern states. Bigger cat fund, defused risk - sounds good to me. Democrats are in a good position for this, because it'd be Alex Sink who has to take the lead on that. Democrat legislators need to public ally push Sink to do it, not only so that it happens, but so that they can share credit. Solving (well, at least making positive steps) the insurance crisis while in the minority in both houses is a big victory, as it paints Democrats as competent and motivated, and will definitely help in the 2008 elections.

What else can be done? I have no idea. I'm not an expert, and I have the feeling that you'd have ot be to know how to get the insurance companies to voluntarily reduce rates. And yes, they'd have to voluntarily do it - mandates will cause them to pack up and leave Florida. They're already threatened to do it, and if they did - that leaves us with Citizens and not nearly enough money to pay for hurricane damages.

Anyway, the moral of this story is that our amateur legislature has gotten itself backed into a corner. And its not individual legislators who are to blame: its the structure of the place. Part time, term limited legislators are like lobbyists' wet dreams, and you can be sure that the insurance industry has more lobbyists than anyone else.

Conspiracies and Monoliths

Marco Rubio's statements, from the Buzz:

"The Republican Party is a big enough party for people of different viewpoints to fit in nicely. That's what makes us different from Democrats. The Democrats, in my opinion, are pretty monolithic. No Democrat could write the op-ed piece I wrote (on energy) because they would get excommunicated from the party."

What?

What the hell is he talking about? What reality does he live in? (apparently one where his tax amendment is a good idea, one where sales tax isn't regressive, and one where his non-action in preventing gambling bills from passing is more morally defensible than Crist's non-signing of them) I conclude that he must be totally insane.

This has already been commented on by Pushing Rope, and Ken Quinnell seems to think Rubio is a fan of Progressive Radio. But, I'd like to use this as a launching pad for some commentary.

"Monolith" implies both power and unity. Democrats currently have neither, and have never really had a good understanding of what "unity" means. I don't know who Rubio was directing those comments towards - everyone who would have read those words would be politically savvy enough to understand that the Democratic Party is hardly a monolith. In fact, I imagine most people reading the Buzz's post would either laugh or cringe (maybe not; compare the comments on the Buzz's coverage of Rubio's comments vs the coverage of Gelber's response. Hopefully I won't ever have to recommend reading the comments on that blog again). So why did he say that? And who was he saying it to?

If anything, the Republican party is monolithic - look at the property tax special session. The Republican leadership walked in, slapped their plan on the table (Yes, during, not before, the session), and had it rubber stamped in THREE days (out of an allotted ten). That's a sign of both power and unity.

However, it looks like the Republican party isn't quite as unified as it might appear. There's evidence that Rubio (and Pruitt to a lesser extent) achieved unity through power, rather than the other way around. A number of Republican representatives have lamented their vote for the tax amendment, and basically describe being strong armed into supporting the legislation - which they had either time to read, understand, or come up with alternatives (straight from the mouth of Sen. Bennett, as broadcast by WSLR; check out minute 13). Some might speculate Rubio and Pruitt rammed their plan through the legislature not to prevent Democrats from derailing their plan, but their own Republican allies from criticizing and voting against it.

In the weeks since then, their party has fractured in several ways. The attack mailers that went out right after the special session were defended by Rubio and Pruitt, but denounced by Greer and Crist. Then, Republican lawmakers started to realize just what kind of turd they passed in special session and have made ambivalent statements about it. And now theres this "dispute" between Rubio and Crist over climate change and gambling. Not to mention that Crist is becoming the new model of a moderate Republican even while Rubio is clinging to old school Dick Armey/George W. Bush Republicanism.

So lets get back to Rubio's bizzaro statement. Although anyone who follows politics knows that what he said is essentially the opposite of reality, Rubio might not have been lying through his teeth when he said it. With the evidence given above about how the Republican party is becoming less cohesive in the past month or two, Rubio is probably trying to reframe the images of both parties. Rubio and Crist are oil and water: Rubio is never going to support "European Style Big Government" on climate change or anything else. Other Republicans are distancing themselves from the party line on the amendment. So trying to get the message out to the media that the Republican party can healthily support internal debate is a pretty good idea. Likewise, Democrats are starting to line up solidly behind Crist - a unified position on environmental issues. In the coming months Democrats are probably going to take advantage of Crist's environmental agenda to present a cohesive plan on renewable energy and other initiatives. The only way Democrats can seize this opportunity to work with Crist is to do it with a unified party. So, Rubio is preemptively recasting that positive image into a negative one.

Hence, Republicans are (will be) a party of diverse ideas (whether actually likes it or not), and Democrats will whipping each other to hew to the party line.

Well, thats the most sense I could make of Rubio's statement. Can anyone help me out?