Florida lawmakers are not making many new friends these days with their handling of Amendment 1, the constitutional measure designed to promote the conservation of the state’s increasingly fragile natural resources.
Supported by three of every four voters in last year’s election, the amendment’s language allocates 33 percent of tax proceeds from real estate transactions — projected at roughly $700 million a year — for the acquisition or preservation of environmentally sensitive lands.
But proponents don’t see the Legislature living up to that, especially since the state Senate allotted only $2 million for Florida Forever, the state’s main vehicle for purchasing property for conservation.
Sen. Alan Hays, a Umatilla Republican who has questioned whether too much land already rests in public hands, has become the favorite punching bag for concerned environmentalists and other unhappy Amendment 1 supporters who believe the law’s intent is being gutted. “There is such a thing as too much,” he recently told The Ledger’s Tallahassee correspondents.
But there is an important sidebar to the Amendment 1 debate that is occurring. And so not everyone is discontent with the current trajectory of the policy-making regarding Amendment 1.
Those real-estate tax proceeds, otherwise known as documentary (or doc) stamps, amount to about $2 billion annually overall. Which means that after allowing for Amendment 1’s 33 percent, about $1.3 billion was leftover for other growth-related spending. Fretful over how Amendment 1 would be implemented were advocates of affordable housing.
Prior to the start of the session, those forces, led by a group called the Sadowski Housing Coalition, a consortium of 30 social service, business and veterans groups, worried that affordable housing programs would be cut by more than 40 percent — from an anticipated $267 million in past years to about $154 million in 2016 — in order to accommodate some lawmakers’ interpretation of Amendment 1.
Had that been enacted as proposed, the budget would have included corresponding cuts to local affordable housing programs. Thus, Polk County would have received $2.6 million instead of $4.5 million. The city of Lakeland’s share would decline from $924,000 to about $536,000. And Winter Haven would receive roughly $197,000 instead of the anticipated $340,000.
Recently, though, a Senate subcommittee agreed to fund the affordable housing proposal within just a few million dollars of what the Sadowski Coalition hoped for. Lawmakers set aside about $260 million, which includes $4 million for services to the homeless.
A month ago, Jamie Ross, president of the Florida Housing Coalition, cited a report that indicated Florida had the third-largest homeless population in the country, and that the number of very low-income Floridians — or a family of four making about $23,000 a year — who pay at least half their household income just for housing rose from 900,000 to 920,000. That’s about the population of Pinellas County.
The coalition argues that this funding is not just a giveaway to poor people. It’s also an economic engine for an industry that was hammered by the Great Recession.
They projected that a fully replenished trust fund would create about 25,000 jobs and generate $3 billion in new economic activity — as real estate agents and building contractors work to locate, build and rehabilitate housing for people who participate in the state’s two main affordable-housing programs.
“Affordable housing is not only important to those who benefit from it — Florida’s seniors, veterans, those with special needs and hardworking families — but also carries a large economic impact, as the full appropriation of affordable housing monies for housing will produce tens of thousands of jobs in Florida and billions of dollars in positive economic impact for our state,” Ross said in a statement recently. Ironically, Ross singled out Sen. Hays as one of the key players responsible for preserving the program as the coalition wanted. Apparently, he may think Florida has enough public land, but not enough affordable housing.
The Sadowski Coalition’s struggle is far from over. The Senate is often more receptive to such ideas than the more conservative Florida House. Still, we applaud the Senate panel’s action, and hope it resonates with other lawmakers.
This article was accessed last on April 1, 2015 at:
http://www.theledger.com/article/20150328/EDIT01/150329370/1036?p=1&tc=pg
A pdf of this article can be accessed here.