'Perfect storm' revenue picture for Florida

Forecasters sharpening the state's revenues are spending the day looking under fiscal rocks and finding little money. It's anticipated that the Revenue Estimating Conference will update the estimate to reflect a loss in this fiscal year alone of up to $4-billion compared to a projection from March.

All across the economic spectrum, the effects of the recession are hammering Florida's bottom line. Sales tax collections are sliding downward because people are buying fewer cars and fewer tourists are coming to Florida. Fewer cars on the road means fewer license tags and fewer insurance premium taxes - two other important revenue sources for the state.

As corporate profits tank, corporate income taxes will continue to sink. They are projected to drop by another 6 percent next year, or $220-million. "The worst is definitely ahead of us," said Amy Baker, the chair of the Revenue Estimating Conference.

People are even smoking less than expected, which is why cigarette sales taxes, already the 46th lowest rate among states, are also in decline. The state is being forced to liquidate its long-term securities to improve short-term cash flow, which means it is selling off those assets before they mature - creating what Jerry Bowman, a revenue analyst in the governor's office, called "the perfect storm with our investment portfolio."

The updated revenue forecast will become the driving force for the next round of decisions by Gov. Charlie Crist and the Republican-led Legislature, which likely cannot avoid a special session to put yet another large patch over the bleeding budget.

One leading Democrat, Sen. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach, isn't waiting for the final number. He again called for a special session Friday. "In rough waters, we can't expect government to run on auto-pilot," Gelber said on his blog.

Crist and legislators face a narrowing set of options: They can borrow more money from two fast-dwindling reserve funds, sweep unspent cash from single-purpose accounts known as trust funds, or make permanent the existing 4-percent hold-backs on all state agencies. They may also consider two last-resort options: make deeper cuts to the state budget or lay off state workers.

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Comments

I know where they can find $110,000 recurring.

[Show me where we hid the money.]

The reason why they're not turning up any new sources of revenue, is because they're not looking under the right "rocks".

Here's some you should look under:

(the rich)
(developers)
(corporate tax breaks)
(corporate bailouts)
(offshore havens)

Heck you should know where to find the money; you hid it there yourselves!

[terminator]

wonder if stuffed suit, empty chair Chuck is feeling optimistic now!
Florida's sliding down the tubes under Chuck's so called leadership.

[Draft Alex Sink for Governor]

Yeah and what is he doing as this perfect storm decimates the Florida budget? He's raising money for Jim Greer and the RPOF:

http://draftalex.wordpress.com/2008/11/21/special-session-watch-they-have-no-choice/

Natural Bridge...

US Sugar...

[duh]

Why not get rid of the sales tax exemptions that could be a huge revenue potential? The sales tax exemption on bottled water is $14 million alone!

Probably the worst economic crisis Florida has ever faced and Crist is at a fundraiser tonite for RPOF/2012re-elect/2012presidential-race and the media give him a pass. I simply don't understand.

Towards the end of today, so Crist has a harder time replying and spinning, Alex Sink should release a statement again calling for the special session, and Karen Thurman should release a statement pointing out where Crist is tonite and where he has been the past few days.

[indknow]

Spin this news governor....

[indknow]

and get back to focusing on the freshwater turtles...

yoo hoo, Charlie - thought of you & Florida when i read this....

Jobless numbers and foreclosures are skyrocketing. The stock market is plummeting. The auto industry is teetering on the edge of collapse. Analysts are wondering: Who's skippering the ship? "Somebody has to speak up soon," said CNN senior political analyst David Gergen. "The White House is silent... and the president-elect is silent in Chicago."

And the governor of Florida is silent but at a fundraiser tonite...

I'm sure things are more complicated than I make them to be but the State's budget is $70 billion. Reducing our expenditures by 5.7% across the board should get us there. Shouldn't it?

[sitcom anyone]

Let's see hummmm amendment 5 would have eliminated many if not all tax excemptions and helped the home owners. Wait that's the problem, help the tax payers, and home owners. The state and local fools can not cut spending. All they can do is screw the tax payers. Take a look at all the money wasted in Pinellas county alone. People losing their homes and the fools in charge are planting palm trees on Gulf Blvd for the tourist to look at. Just take a ride around the country and look. You'll see your tax dollars at work. Our commisioners are worth every penny of the 200,000.00 they are paid, just ask them. We needed a new park at the water tower on Seminole Blvd didn't we? Why not it's a great place for the homeless to hang out and it ownly cost how many 10's of thousands of dollars? Ever look at all the landscape done at the ST Pete college on Park Blvd or notice all the country cars and trucks being driven around all day. All you have to do is look. Say goodbye to your life style the fools are going to take as much as they can.

"People are even smoking less than expected, which is why cigarette sales taxes, already the 46th lowest rate among states, are also in decline."

I'm confused...isn't the point of additional taxes on cigarettes SUPPOSED to encourage people to quit?

Instead they counted on it as a revenue source...sort of like the City of Tallahassee telling people to cut down on their energy usage, when the City actually depends on the revenue generated from utility bills.

Only government can do idiotic things like this...

[Buzzard]

3:20 and 3:27 - I gotta agree with you. We need to cut government spending. And I think we can do it without affecting services. Most of the folks that do the "real" work are paid at somewhere between $20 K and $50 K. Cut every salary over that amount TO that amount and you've put a good dent in your budget shortfall. Everybody, say it again:
CHOP AT THE TOP - CHOP AT THE TOP - CHOP AT THE TOP

[Buzzard]

Get some marbles and tax services. Tax all advertising at a flat 7%. Tax all legal services at a flat 7%.

6 years ago the budget was at $38billion and now we are whining about dropping some 5% from $65billion. Why not look at what grew during that time and go back a bit. Population of the state is dropping too so lower demand for schools and school construction should be in order. Demand for classroom size should have dissapeared too. Local government expenditures went up 198% in 10 years. Must be plenty we could do without!

The creation of this so-called State Colege system should be suspended until such time as funds are available and also demand for services can be shown. We are going to spend millions for a few thousand students who could be better served in so many other ways.

[Buzzard]

4:22 - Holy Mackerel, why aren't people like you running for office?????!!!!! Oh, right, because you make sense.

[Draft Alex Sink for Governor]

4:45, its easy to make sense when your wrong like 4:22.

Here is just a few areas:

Budget: The budget six years ago was $47 Billion, and we've already cut nearly $8 Billion from the $73 Billion to return to '05 levels and will likely get closer to the '04 levels.

FY 98-99 $35.51 billion
FY 99-00 $38.05 billion
FY 00-01 $43.95 billion
FY 01-02 $47.16 billion
FY 02-03 $49.61 billion
FY 03-04 $53.72 billion
FY 04-05 $58.96 billion
FY 05-06 $65.74 billion
FY 06-07 $73.64 billion

Budget increases:
Have come from the rising costs of things like health care and attempting to have some sort of funding for education in the state. You can't just turn around and cut the budget in the areas where costs have increased like health care without cutting access or unbuild a school that was already built. It is not possible.

Population: It's increasing -- always has been. Florida is becoming the 3rd most populous state in the country behind California and Texas. Here is a decent idea on population growth from the census: 2006: 18,089,888 (percent growth from 2000 13.1%).

If you bother to look here (http://www.census.gov/population/projections/SummaryTabA1.pdf) You can see that population growth is expected to continue to about 19.5 Million in 2010 and 21.5 million in 2015.

Meaning there will be about 750,000 new children between the ages of 5 and 18 in Florida. So education needs to be funded.

And if you want young families to leave for North Carolina and keep importing retirees that the state can't afford to cre for cause the tax base is gone then cutting education to the bone is great idea.

In conclusion:

[Draft Alex Sink for Governor]

Sorry continued from my last post --

In conclusion: Cutting a budget isn't easy when it seems like it is. there are consequences to your actions. You have to base it on facts which why there should be a special session and Charlie should be in Tallahassee not a fundraiser tonight.

[Buzzard]

Go home, Alex.

[Draft Alex Sink for Governor]

Sorry are the facts ruining your fun?

[Gator(R)]

Buzzard:

She/he was right.

Based one of your brilliant proposals you would cut the Secratary of DCF's salary to $50,000. Responsible for a budget of $2.8 billon and a staff of 13 thousand - that salary level would attract all sorts of qualified candidates. I don't know why anyone would do it for 130 thousand.

But keep throwing those brilliant ideas, throw enough crap at the barn some will stick.

[Donald Lance]

Buzz, the average state employee's pay is $38k and there are roughly 110,000 employees. What you fail to take into account is that these employees are granted 9% pension fund. That's roughly 40k a year being invested for their retirement. It's not the salaries, it's the benefits that should be cut. Cutting wages simply leads to less spending creating lower tax revenues, compounding the problem that much more. It's the benefits that should be cut to matching deductions like the private sector. But still, you are only talking a couple million. That won't dig us out of a $4 billion hole.

Dear Donald Lance,

The problem is not spending by the government. In the past two years, state spending will have decreased by over 12% (after the new $2 billion in cuts to the current budget) while inflation and growth in Florida's population would suggest that growth of about 6% to 7% would be justifiable. It isn't like Florida had an expensive state government service system in the first place. Floridians pay some of the least in state taxes in the entire country especially when adjusted for the relative wealth of the state.

The problem is that state policy makers have talked cutting services while lining their own beds with gold. Take Rubio's position at FIU or Sansom's recently disclosed position for over $100,000. These guys are wealthy to start with, but while they cut the funding for teacher salaries they feather their own nests with the same money. Classic. Orwell couldn't have written it any better.

How about another tax cut? Jeb, thank for killing the surplus!

I see that TaxWatch dirtbag is back calling for tax cuts when we already can't make the budget. What a dipshit. That's all we need is even more unregulated businesses destroying our economy.

[Republicans destroyed our economy. Why should we listen to anything they say?]

Quit dishing out our tax revenue to your corporate buddies and collect the money like you're supposed to. Geez we hire these folks to do a job and instead they try to destroy our government. Vote out the traitorous conservatives. Take back government for The People.

Let's elect a governor who will ignore the problem and tell us how optomistic he is!

[will]

Florida should do away with all property taxes on individuals and businesses. The sales tax should be increased to 10 cents. There should be no sales tax exemptions. Internet sales and all services should pay the 10 cent sales tax. User fees and impact fees should be raised as needed. Florida is going to resemble a third world country in a few years if we do not fix the tax structure which is now out dated.

[G BRAZILL]

LOWER THE 90% PENSIONS THAT A LOT OF PEOPLE RECEIVE. GET RID OF DOUBLE DIPPERS ON STATE PAYROLL. THIS WILL FREE UP A LOT OF TAX MONEY THAT IS PAID INTO THESE PLANS.

[Tom]

Since when are Internet Sales or Purchases not being sales taxed? In the past five years, I have always had to pay sales tax on my Internet purchases. I highly doubt lawfully subjecting Internet Sales and Purchases to sales and Use Tax will put a dent into our Budget problems. Check out your recent Internet purchase invoices and get back with this post to correct me if I am wrong. The study TAXWATCH boasts about was completed prior to 2001. The person that conducted it is now in Real Estate in the Miami area. You can read the storyline on TAXWATCH website.
To the person that wants to tax advertising. Advertising was sales taxable but sometime during John McKay's era as a State Senator (1990 - 2002) all forms of advertising became exempt or excluded from sales tax. In fact, 105 of the 246 sales tax exemptions and or exclusions became lawful when Mr. McKay was a State Senator. If McKay's name does not ring a bell, this is the man that was on the TBRC, hand picked by Crist, the man that was behind decreasing school property taxes in lieu of increasing sales taxes by 1% earlier this year yada yada yada.

[Richard]

Sales tax is collected on internet sales only if the company you're buying from is a registered corporation in the State. Trying to collect State Sales tax from Companies that are not registered in the State would be next to impossible. If my warehouse is located in another State and my business license is in that State how can you make me register in another State just to collect sales tax. I believe Interstate Commerce Laws would be violated if you tried.

[Buzzard]

Good morning all! Hope you had a lovely weekend. I saw that adding another $1 per pack tax on cigarettes had been proposed by The Times as a solution to your government revenue shortage. Why not $1 per order of french fries? They're probably just as damaging in the long run and they affect more people...so would offer a bigger contribution to our tax woes! And quit picking on the po' folks to pay your exhorbitant salaries. How about some luxury taxes? How about a 50% tax on any alcoholic beverage that costs over 6 cents per net ounce? How about a $10 tax on every sporting event ticket? How about a $10 per cigar tax? How about an extra $200 per boat registration? How about a 50% per ticket tax on theme parks? Any other suggestions?

Better yet, how about you just spend less?

Much has been said about letting the big auto companies go into bankruptcy because bailing them out would be just "putting them on life support? Same can be said about government. Ya'll talk big about cutting a percent or two here and there, but fail to mention that property taxes are still based on appraisals that are way too high.

[POTUS]

There are many things for which to give thanks this season. The crazy, selfish lack of responsible actions by so-called "leaders" in state government are not among them. Why increase regressive sales taxes when creating a fair income tax would help so much?

[The Great Democrat-Republican Bailout Failure of 2008]

Well said, POTUS, but "fair" is not a word that works well here. Better to stick some poor schmuck with another tax on his smokes than spread the burden around. Pretend we've done something.

[Republicans destroyed our economy]

POTUS - damn right! Given all the government bailouts for the rich, and all the tax cuts since Reagan, the rich have been making out while the poor and middle class have shrunk and the national debt has ballooned to ridiculous size. A fair tax would have us return to the post Depression rates of about 75% for the rich and 4% for the lower brackets, at least until the bailouts are paid for and the national debt has been paid down. And let's stop the rich from offshoring their income and employing clever tax lawyers and accountants to hide their earnings. Heck, even at a higher tax rate they sometimes manage to pay next to nothing, right?

Make it so Barack!

[Alena]

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Alena

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