Naples Daily News | March 11, 2015
The House and Senate are crafting separate bills that take very different approaches to finding $750 million for the environment, a move that is required under a constitutional amendment passed by voters in November.
Committees in both chambers passed bills Wednesday setting the framework to meet the requirements of Amendment 1, which requires lawmakers to spend roughly one-third of the state’s $2.3 billion in annual real estate taxes on the environment.
Language in the amendment, which passed with 75 percent of the vote, left it up to the Legislature to determine how to fund the Land Acquisition Trust Fund for environmental spending. That money must go towards things like land conservation, state land buys, water cleanup, and Everglades restoration, among a host of other options. As proposals are being drawn up, it’s becoming clear the House and Senate are taking different approaches in both strategy and tone.
The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on General Government unanimously passed its bill, tapping money in all existing trust funds for the environmental spending. The biggest hit comes out of transportation and affordable housing funds.
The Senate proposal retains the same percentage of real estate tax revenue the funds had previously, but that percentage is now based on 67 percent of the overall pot because Amendment 1 requires 33 percent be used for environmental spending. That’s a $112 million cut for the housing trust fund and about $100 million for the transportation fund.
“That redirection would create an impact to the five year [transportation] work program of over $1 billion,” Bob Burleson, president of the Florida Department of Transportation, said during the appropriations subcommittee meeting Wednesday. The Senate bill, which now goes before the chamber for a vote, is sponsored by state Sen. Charlie Dean, R-Inverness.
Before the vote, chairman Alan Hays, R-Umatilla, underscored the message used by Republican opponents of Amendment 1 during the fall campaign. After Burleson spoke, he asked if transportation cuts would “be classified as an unintended consequence of passing Amendment 1.”
He also said he thinks voters did not fully understand a “yes” vote on Amendment 1 would mean cuts to other areas.
“It would have been helpful I think if the voters had been informed of these consequences before the November election,” he said.
The House version builds the $750 million by using $228 million in real estate tax money that currently goes to a handful of environmental programs, $242 million currently in the Land Acquisition Trust Fund, and another $287 million that goes to the state’s general revenue fund each year.
“The current distribution for transportation, economic development and affordable housing are not changed,” House sponsor Jim Boyd, R-Bradenton, told the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Appropriations Subcommittee, which unanimously passed his bill.
By using that general revenue, which is a nearly $30 billion pot of money that lawmakers can spend however they choose, trust funds used for specific areas like transportation and affordable housing are largely spared in the House bill.
“This legislation protects affordable housing funds without reducing the amount going to Amendment 1 by a single penny,” Jamie Ross, facilitator for the Sadowski Coalition, after the House passed that chamber’s version of the bill.
Article accessed on March 16 at: http://www.naplesnews.com/news/politics/senate-house-begin-identifying-plans-to-pay-for-amendment-1_28952578