Moffitt Loses Tobacco Cash

A Senate committee unanimously approved a proposed tobacco tax hike Thursday - but only after stripping out a $50 million earmark for Tampa's H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute.

Initially the proposal, filed by Sen. Ted Deutch, D-Boca Raton, dedicated $50 million of cigarette tax proceeds to the center. The center is completely built out and needs bondable revenue for expansion.

Lawmakers allowed two-thirds of Moffitt's funding for construction to expire last year, leaving the cancer center with only $5 million that is bonded for construction.

"Moffitt has a four-phase $371 million building project," said Jamie Wilson, its vice president of government relations. "That new campus will create 3,000 construction jobs; it creates 1,200 permanent, full-time, high-level research jobs at Moffitt."

Asked about scrubbing the cancer center from the bill, Senate Finance and Tax Committee Chairman Thad Altman stressed that the current bill dedicates money to health care and would draw down federal matching dollars. The bill raises the tax on cigarettes by $1 per pack and on other tobacco products by $1 per ounce.

"The money is there to maximize the public health impact," said Altman, R-Melbourne. "I think our appropriators will look at the best use of these dollars. I'm hoping that programs like Moffitt will be funded."

There are several other bills that would restore lost funding for Moffitt, but none has received a hearing. Moffitt's leaders were disappointed to lose their earmark in the Senate cigarette tax plan, Wilson said, but the session is only half over.

"We're still hopeful that, somehow, Moffitt can get a bondable source of income," he said. "If you're going to raise a tax on tobacco products that directly result in occurrences of cancer, to not have a portion of that devoted to cancer research, to cancer treatment ... would be a real shame."