This just in: Add another $135 million to next year’s projected state deficit. That brings it to $3.75 billion–with a “B”–give or take a few mil.
And this not just in–because it’s an ongoing reality: Still no serious plan to update Florida’s revenue-raising capacity. The sales-tax skewed formula still harkens back to the days when the Sunshine State was routinely adding those 1,000 new residents per day–and go-go growth and sprawling suburbia was Florida’s manifest destiny.
But there’s this constitutional mandate to balance a budget, so the next one will, indeed–however skewed–be balanced. At the apparent expense of the usual bureaucratic robber barons: those living large off the golden goose of education, prisons and growth-management oversight. Then there’s the fat waiting to be carved from the gluttonous likes of those needing unemployment-benefits and help from the Medically Needy program. Beach re-nourishment? A prescription drug monitoring program? When in doubt, trim some taxes, increase some public-sector unemployment and talk some think-tank smack.
But nowhere is there so much as a hint of responsible revenue raising as a legitimate tool in addressing a 10-figure budget deficit. Expanding casino gambling is on the table but the taxing of services is not even up for discussion. The latter now seems ingrained as a political, third-rail issue the way Cuban policy has been. Since when is no guts an ideology?
And why no mention about joining a compact of pro-active (challenging the “physical presence” rationale) states to tax internet retailers? Doesn’t taxing the key burgeoning sector of the tax base, while strategically giving tax-break incentives to targeted corporate relocatees, make equitable, bottom line sense in a state enraptured with business models? To date, Florida has seemed indifferent to a possible piece of e-commerce sales, which have been estimated at nearly $3.5 trillion nationally.
And worse yet, there may even be a “Smart Cap” amendment next year that would put a governor, as it were, on the amount of revenue available to future lawmakers.