A raid on environmental funds

January 23, 2015 | Ocala Daily Commercial

This article was reprinted in Leesburg paper.

Last November, Florida voters delivered a message on environmental protection so clear that not even the solons in Tallahassee could doubt its meaning. Three of every four voters supported Amendment 1, which mandated funding to help preserve and protect springs, rivers and the aquifer, the Everglades and beaches, open recreation lands — even geological sites.

Amendment 1 dedicated 33 percent of the net revenue from taxes on real estate transactions, commonly known as doc stamps, over 20 years for that purpose. One estimate pegged the potential windfall over two decades at $10 billion. The beauty, supporters maintained, was that revenues would be sufficient to make up for past cuts to environmental protection while not hurting other programs.

Yet some lawmakers have openly suggested someone will get hurt in implementing Amendment 1. That would be the Floridians who need affordable housing. Two weeks after the election, new Senate President Andy Gardiner, R-Orlando, told lawmakers: “The challenge facing this Senate is the impact Amendment 1 will have on transportation, affordable housing, and economic development, and other priorities which also receive doc stamp funding.”

Now, as the Legislature’s budget-making season gets heated up, the Sadowski Coalition is trying to counteract that prediction. The group — an array of 30 different housing, social service, business, seniors and veterans groups — is urging an appropriate share of the doc stamp pie is set aside for low-income Floridians’ housing needs.

In 1992, lawmakers passed the Sadowski Act, which, like Amendment 1, earmarked doc stamp revenue for housing programs. Cities and counties utilize allotted doc stamp revenues to partner with contractors in building or renovating single-family homes, while also helping prospective buyers with down payments and closing costs. Seventy percent of the housing trust fund is used this way. A state-approved agency doles out the rest to developers on a competitive basis to boost the supply of rental units.

The Sadowski Coalition projects that the housing trust fund would reap $267 million in the state’s 2016 budget.

Lawmakers, first under former Gov. Jeb Bush and then especially during the recession, were not shy about shoveling trust fund revenues — whether for housing, the environment, transportation or other needs — into the state’s general fund to pay for government services. The ongoing economic upswing, however, should stop such raids.

Yet Gardiner and others indicate the housing account must be drained again to meet obligations now funded with general tax dollars.

Sadowski Coalition President Jaimie Ross says that doesn’t have to happen. “Nobody voted for Amendment 1 and thought they were hurting affordable housing,” she said. “It’s unfair to do that to … voters.”

We must preserve Florida’s natural splendor. It sustains us physically and economically. But all the coalition seeks is for lawmakers to use the doc stamp revenue as intended more than 20 years ago. Honoring Amendment 1 doesn’t have to mean shortchanging residents struggling to find housing and idling the workers who can provide it.

From Halifax Media Group.

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