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Success Is A Matter Of Opinion

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By JEROME R. STOCKFISCH and CATHERINE DOLINSKI, The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 4, 2007

TALLAHASSEE - The special legislative session ended Monday night with Gov. Charlie Crist embracing Senate President Ken Pruitt in celebration. In typical fashion, Crist had let the legislative process run its course, and it had rewarded him with the very planks of property tax reform on which he had campaigned.

But Crist had promised voters more than a doubled homestead exemption and portable Save Our Homes tax protection. He had promised that taxes would "drop like a rock" - just as he had pledged "meaningful" reductions in property insurance rates when the Legislature answered his call in January to reform the system.

In fact, annual property tax savings will average about $240 per homeowner statewide, or $300 in Hillsborough County, if voters approve the tax plan Jan. 29.

Insurance rates have dropped about 14.5 percent on average, well shy of the 25 percent that lawmakers predicted when they sent the reform legislation to Crist.

Crist's inability to deliver big numbers on his biggest promises has not diminished his enthusiasm or his popularity, which rates a very strong 65 percent these days.

But even his supporters worry that the patience of the people - or as Crist calls them, "the boss" - may be growing short.

Great Expectations

Crist is playing with fire by ginning up voters' expectations, said Lance deHaven-Smith, a political science professor at Florida State University.

"I think it's the most perilous thing that he's doing politically," deHaven-Smith said. "A very high popularity rating can vanish in a second. The voters' attitude is, 'What have you done for me lately?' Expectations are dashed, and that support can vanish."

Critics of the governor's track record often fault his style of deferring to the Legislature - as the governor once put it, "leaving them to legislate" rather than forcing specific policies that could yield more dramatic results.

"I think the governor can demand more of the Legislature," said David McKalip, a St. Petersburg neurosurgeon who is leading the Cut Property Taxes Now petition drive. "It's up to him to lead on these issues."

The petition group is gathering signatures to ask voters in November 2008 to cap all ad valorem property taxes at 1.25 percent of a property's taxable value. Since the initiative launched Oct. 17, the group has acquired about 4,000 of the 611,009 signatures it will need by Feb. 1. It is one of several groups in the state that have vowed to propose steeper tax cuts to the ballot than lawmakers and Crist agreed to do.

"I'm disappointed that the Senate was unwilling to provide any real tax relief, and I'm disappointed that the governor didn't demand more from Tallahassee," McKalip said.

Even more disappointed is Sam Rashid, a Hillsborough businessman and major GOP fundraiser, who called the result of the special session a "total travesty."

Rashid wanted to see more tax relief for small business, which he called "the engine of this economy." As chief executive officer of the state, Crist should be held accountable, he said. "We have seen a complete absence of leadership."

Crist has bucked the Legislature a few times, notably by vetoing a large companion bill to the state budget in June on grounds that it would help health maintenance organizations at the expense of patients.

However, when he made it clear during the session that he did not want to raise college tuition, the Legislature ignored him. The House and Senate sent him a 5 percent tuition increase at session's end, and after he vetoed it, they sent it to him again last month. Crist relented and signed it.

Whereas Crist's predecessor, Jeb Bush, was an infamous policy wonk who forwarded explicit policies, Crist has remained above the fray of most legislative infighting over the details, said Darryl Paulson, a political scientist at the St. Petersburg campus of the University of South Florida. "Jeb Bush would have come up with his plan and rammed it down the throats of other Republicans," Paulson said.

Given Crist's two-pillar agenda from Day One - property taxes and property insurance - "it's not unfair to expect the governor to intervene and outline his expectations of what exactly he wants to achieve, and what are the essential parts of the plan," said Paulson, a Republican and Crist supporter. "Failure to do that on property taxes sort of gave the Legislature to some degree carte blanche to move in 15 different directions. And in moving 15 different directions they failed to move effectively in any one direction."

Time will tell whether the insurance reforms that passed in January will serve Crist and the Florida economy well, Paulson said. The state Office of Insurance Regulation is examining a new round of rate filings and expects the savings to reach an average of 24 percent statewide.

But to achieve rate reductions, Crist and lawmakers saddled the state with vastly greater liability for hurricane damage, from $6 billion to more than $40 billion in the event of a megastorm. That risk trickles down to policyholders, who would face surcharges should the state have to borrow that kind of money.

Meanwhile, Crist continues to battle the insurance companies that filed for rate increases this fall.

Different Eras

Crist's tendency to build consensus and defer to the Legislature bespeaks his background as a state senator. The messiness and occasional melodrama of the legislative process are less likely to rattle Crist than someone without that experience, Paulson said - but by the same token, it is curious that he would inflate expectations beyond what the process would likely permit him to accomplish.

Paulson hesitated to compare Crist's record to that of Bush, who operated in a markedly different political atmosphere.

By Bush's second year in office, brand-new term limitations had sent most Tallahassee veterans packing. Seventy-five rookie lawmakers - including more than half of the 120-member House - were more than willing to do the charismatic governor's bidding and take steps to enhance his executive powers.

Crist works with a vastly more experienced and headstrong Legislature, with many members who have served in both chambers. Democrats have gained more influence. And in the case of property taxes, a supermajority of 60 percent of voters will have to approve the constitutional amendment Jan. 29.

"Now that there's 60 percent approval, you can't do things that you necessarily want," said Rep. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach. "A lot of these notions of shrinking government and following some ideology of letting the state control local government are not going to fly. You've got to create something that has high favorability and few enemies."

In fact, an earlier amendment calling for a complicated homestead superexemption was thrown off the ballot by a judge in Leon County. "To a certain extent, that judge saved these guys lawmakers from themselves," said Gelber, who was no fan of the original property tax overhaul.

Savings 'Hard To Equate'

Pruitt, the Senate president, said Crist's achievements go beyond dollar figures and percent decreases.

"You have to remember what he was handed. He was handed a bad deal," the Port St. Lucie Republican said.

The $240 average savings per home is "a bogus number," Pruitt said. "It's hard to equate when somebody gets a $4,000 Save Our Homes benefit and they can take that to their next home."

Pruitt said Crist's stances on property insurance and property taxes will stick in Floridians' psyches. "People are going to gain confidence. He's starting to give them hope."

That may explain Crist's stratospheric poll numbers. A Quinnipiac University poll last week found that two out of three voters said they consider $500 or more a "significant" cut; and 39 percent defined it as $1,000 or more.

Even as lawmakers debated the package billed as a $420 benefit, a majority of voters said they approved of the way Crist is handling taxes. His overall approval rating is 65 percent - down from a high of 73 percent in July but still exceeding Bush's highest approval rating of 62 percent after the 2004 hurricanes.

"Voters are skeptical about government," said Peter Brown, assistant director of the polling institute. "So even though lawmakers may not have delivered what he had hoped or what they had hoped, he did something for them. They see him acting in their interest."

Taking The Polls Into Account

McKalip, of Cut Taxes Now, said he attributes high poll ratings "to the ability of politicians to follow the polls and do what the polls tell them to do. That's not leadership."

House Speaker Marco Rubio remarked similarly on Tuesday to reporters: "I don't think leadership equates polling. ... You do what's right; you do what you think is best."

When pressed, he denied that such comments were "veiled criticism" of either Crist or Senate leaders.

Rubio, who has all but panned the legislation as a "missed opportunity" for more aggressive reform, said Tuesday that he would not criticize Crist, having never walked in a governor's shoes.

"I think the governor did what he could," the speaker said, adding, "It's a tough job, guys."

Crist's poll numbers contradict a firestorm of criticism on conservative talk radio stations, blogs and chat boards, and in letters to newspapers.

In August, the governor made a rare acknowledgement - sort of - that he might have raised expectations too high with his drop-like-a-rock rhetoric. When asked by a reporter at a news conference whether he promised too much, he replied, "Perhaps. I hope not."

But after the special session, he cited big-picture numbers - $12.4 billion cut from local property taxes over the next five years if the amendment passes, on top of $15 billion trimmed during the spring legislative session. All told, as Crist has pointed out repeatedly, it would be the largest tax cut in Florida history.

"That's getting pretty close to something larger than a pebble, I think," Crist said.

Reporters Jerome R. Stockfisch and Catherine Dolinski can be reached at (850) 222-8382, jstockfisch@tampatrib.com or cdolinski@tampatrib.com.

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