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Florida Clings To Cheap Solutions

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By DAVID COBURN

Special to the Tribune

Published: March 1, 2009

Just when it looked like the sky was falling, President Barack Obama and the federal government came to Florida's rescue with a $12.2 billion stimulus gift. No state needed it more.

With mortgage foreclosure rates among the highest in the nation, a $7 billion debt and 7.3 percent of the population out of work (up from 4.4 percent as recently as November), Florida has become Paradise Lost in the eyes of many. A recent essay in the New Yorker magazine portrayed Florida as "the Ponzi State." But The New York Times may have summarized it best with the headline, Tending the Boulevards of Broken Dreams.

For the first time since the Great Depression, it appears that more people left Florida in 2008 than moved into the state, taking their families and dreams elsewhere. This in a state that grew by an average of 300,000 people a year for 35 straight years, from 1970 to 2005.

The political leadership of Florida appears as paralyzed as its residents about how to cope with this crisis. Gov. Charlie Crist hitched his wagon to Obama's stimulus package, even accompanying the president on his recent visit to Fort Myers. But the governor also opposes new state taxes to offset Florida's budget woes, and when lawmakers attempted to balance a difficult budget in special session, Crist reversed more than $360 million of the budget cuts that lawmakers approved. Political observers have rightly muttered that the right hand does not seem to know what the left hand is doing.

Woe be it for Florida to take any bold steps on its own. After all, this is a down economy, we are told, and taxing cigarettes or Internet sales or removing the numerous sales tax exemptions would be sheer lunacy in a down economy! The fact is that we are 46th on the nation in cigarette taxes (slightly higher than our public school ranking, one should note) and have no Internet sales tax on businesses not housed in Florida - in contrast to 19 other states.

Why should we not tax both, one might ask? What is the rationale for limiting taxes on cigarettes when they kill people, or not charging sales tax on Internet sales, when we require sales tax collection by all merchants operating in Florida?

Crist and lawmakers assure us that, despite this economic downturn, Florida will recover, all will be right with the world and we will once again have the funds to invest in education and compete globally. Our leaders seem to have this fantasy view of the world that we can compete in a global economy on the cheap.

Rather than raise revenue from these sources, lawmakers have seriously debated shortening the public school year to balance the budget in a state that ranks near the bottom nationally. Experts generally agree that lengthening the school year is a critical component if we ever hope to correct the educational problems facing Florida. By comparison, Japanese and German children, who far surpass Florida students on standardized tests, attend school for 240 days and 220 days respectively, while our children attend for 180 days. Guess how globally competitive Florida's kids are?

Associated Industries President Barney Bishop was recently quoted as saying, "Policymakers must look at reductions in regulatory red tape as a way to stimulate business activity." The regulatory red tape is the least of Florida's problems. Businesses generally ignore expanding into the state because the educational system is so poor, not because the regulations are onerous. And when the international economy revives, you can be sure that few high-skilled, technology-driven companies will locate in Florida unless we do something substantial to improve our public educational system.

The developments of the past year suggest Florida better get serious about the developments that led to this economic debacle or we are doomed to repeat them as we have throughout the 20th century. And we better get serious about the state's economic future or Florida won't have one.

Reubin Askew, who is generally regarded as one of the nation's ablest governors of the 20th century and who served as Florida's governor from 1971 to 1979, believed that Floridians would make the right decisions during a crisis if they understood the issues. He relied heavily on commissions and weekend gatherings of citizens to find solutions to the state's pressing racial, economic, educational and environmental problems. With their advice and information in hand, he then traveled to communities throughout the state to persuade voters to join with him in making Florida a better place for all its citizens.

Askew's approach to crisis is only one example. There are others. Floridians are ready for leadership right now, but is anyone in Tallahassee willing to provide it?

David Colburn is director of the Reubin Askew Institute at the University of Florida and author of "From Yellow Dog Democrats to Red State Republicans: Florida and Its Politics since 1940."

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