By: John M. DunnOcala
The Great Recession isn’t bad news for everybody. After all, conservative lawmakers in Tallahassee, under the guise of economic necessity, made a lot of headway in achieving their goals during the last legislative session: deplete library funding, bust unions, gut environmental laws, sell off conservation lands, weaken the Public Service Commission, divert money to private schools, strip teachers of their academic credentials, thwart growth management, and launch other attacks on civilization, which they claim is part of their core values.
But they didn’t need to do this by dipping into pensions of state workers and trashing public services and the environment.
Sadly, many of our tax-phobic politicians never point the finger of accountability at those who are the most to blame for the economic mess: themselves.
Today, 350,000 empty homes sit idle in Florida. It wasn’t state workers, environmentalists, or poor people who caused this disaster. Instead, you can thank our “growth at any cost and at any speed” State legislature—dominated by the Florida Growth Machine-- and a plethora of county commissions and city councils who rushed land development in recent decades. The result of such greed, shameless selfish interest, and irresponsibility is a vast glut of vacant houses and retail space that wrecked the construction business and sank property taxes. This, plus the crimes on Wall Street have ruined Florida’s economy.
Were these lawmakers—or their kindred political spirits of the past--worried about balanced budgets when they granted all those “sales tax holidays” during the peak of tourist seasons and reduced revenues to public services? Or, when they beat down legislative attempts to create a “service tax” or extend sales taxes to products not being taxed at the retail level? Why is it taking so long to get tax on bottled water—the enemy of the Florida aquifer? According to the Orlando Sentinel’s Mike Thomas, there are no state taxes on, among many other things, “ostrich and racehorse feed; complimentary meals served by hotels; booze bought for taste testings; university stadium skyboxes; religious items; Internet sales; veterinary medicines; newspaper inserts; racing dogs; railroad-bed materials; cattle-growth enhancers; and tickets for the Super Bowl...”
These exemptions may deprive us of billions in revenues. We don’t have a state income tax, and the collection of the intangible tax in Florida was a joke. Homestead tax exemptions for just about everybody! Some legislators want to make it easier for developers to avoid paying their fair share of land taxes by misusing “agriculture” tax assessments originally written to help farmers.
What do you expect—other than mindless ideological consistency--from a bunch that wants to cut taxes when the economy is bad, and also cut taxes when the economy is good?
Tax slashing ideologues in Tallahassee also want to authorize elected local officials to seize our taxpayer money to help them campaign against citizen ballot initiatives that corporations don’t like.
Of course, the one citizen initiative Florida’s corporate elite really hates is Amendment 4, appearing on the upcoming November ballot, which will empower citizens to veto any comprehensive land use changes made by elected officials that the community doesn’t want.
Amendment 4, in fact, may very well give Floridians the power to prevent future land development madness that is bound to re-emerge when the recession ends.
This state belongs to all of us, even if it is ruled by the wealthy. One way to fight back against corporate power brokers and their sycophants in Tallahassee is to vote “Yes” on Amendment 4.
John M. Dunn
Steering Committee
The Smart Growth Coalition of North Central Florida
222 SE 29thTerrace
Ocala, Fla. 34471
352-694-4461
dunnj@embarqmail.com
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