State economists found a few more dollars for lawmakers looking to close a $2 billion budget gap.

But not enough.

Revising their forecast from last October, the state’s Revenue Estimating Conference agreed that tax collections have climbed $48 million more than anticipated this year — but are expected to be $25.7 billion below forecast for 2012-13. The difference means legislators will have about $23 million in extra cash to spread around in the $66-billion budget they are just beginning to cobble together for the year beginning July 1.

“Nothing dramatic happened since the fall,” said Amy Baker, coordinator of the Legislature’s Office of Economic and Demographic Research, who is among those making Thursday’s forecast.

Rising costs and the state’s still-fragile economy have combined to leave lawmakers staring at a $2 billion shortfall next year. Still, that’s about half the hole they faced a year ago, a sign, analysts said, that Florida is slowly recovering from the recession.

Sales-tax receipts, the real driver of Florida’s budget, are up slightly. Corporate and real estate taxes also have picked up over the past year, analysts said. But signs of the troubled economy linger — with personal income down in Florida during the third quarter of 2011.

The state still has a two-year backlog of homes for sale, and the number of foreclosures in Florida continues to outstrip home sales, Baker said.

Florida shoppers won’t have to pay taxes on clothes, shoes, books and some other stuff that costs less than $50 or school supplies like notebooks and pens less than $10 for three days in August.

Gov. Charlie Crist signed the Aug. 13-15 tax-free holiday (HB 483) into law today, reviving the popular shopping savings lawmakers nixed for the past two years because of the state’s anemic tax collections.

This year’s tax holiday – a slimmed-down version of 2007′s 10-day savings schedule – is expected to cost the state $21.3 million and local governments nearly $5 million, according to a legislative staff analysis.

Items in the tax-free shopping basket, initiated in 2009, include backpacks, diaper bags, wallets and purses but not briefcases or luggage.

The gubernatorial campaign fur continues to fly in the battle between Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink and Attorney General Bill McCollum, this time over what is a tax “cut” and whether they’re good or bad for businesses.

Sink’s campaign took a swing at McCollum for opposing tax cuts for small businesses to jump-start the economy and create jobs.

In fact, McCollum told reporters yesterday that he didn’t think targeted tax credits or incentives work out so great in the long term.

Here’s what McCollum said after a speech to the National Federation of Independent Business.

“Targeted tax credits, in my experience in Washington, were minimally effective. They can be in the short run but they’re not in the long run very effective,” the former Congressman said.

After the two campaigns traded insults on other matters throughout the day, Sink’s campaign blasted McCollum for being against tax cuts.

“Career politician Bill McCollum says tax cuts don’t work, but he’s just plain wrong- wrong for small businesses, wrong for our economy, and wrong for everyday Floridians. The choice in this election just got a little clearer- a career politician who cites his decades in Congress as a reason to oppose tax cuts versus a businesswoman who knows what it’s going to take to get our economy back on track,” reads a press release issued by Sink’s campaign spokeswoman Conchita Cruz.

Hang on.

McCollum spoke about tax credits or tax incentives. Are they the same as tax cuts?

“He said tax credits and tax credits are tax cuts,” Sink said in an e-mail from Cruz.

This from McCollum’s campaign spokeswoman Kristy Campbell.

“It is laughable that Alex Sink, who has made thousands in personal campaign contributions to liberal tax-and-spend Democrats, would try to assert she is a fiscal conservative. Following more political stunts from her official office at taxpayer expense, Alex Sink has resorted to ridiculous attempts to obfuscate the facts.

“Bill McCollum has a bullet-proof record of fighting to cut taxes across the board for families and businesses that speaks for itself,” Campbell said in a press release.

Cigar aficionados, rejoice. Cigarette smokers, not so much.

The House officially signed off on a buck-a-pack cigarette tax and the Senate agreed to exempt cigars from what lawmakers like to call a “surcharge” on tobacco.

Those who dip, chew or snuff also will pay more – also about $1 per ounce of loose tobacco.

The hope is to raise at least $800 million, most of which will pay for the state’s Medicaid program, and which lawmakers have included in next year’s budget.

Senate budget chief J.D. Alexander, R-Lake Wales, and his House counterpart Ellyn Bogdanoff, R-Fort Lauderdale, held a series of brief meetings to close out the tobacco deal, which Gov. Charlie Crist said today he would sign.

The tobacco tax was the brainchild of Boca Raton Democrat Ted Deutch.

Lawmakers will vote on the bills on Friday.

Lawmakers closed out the $65 billion budget this morning that includes nearly $2 billion in taxes and fees, including a $380 million property tax increase if school boards approve it.

Senate budget chief J.D. Alexander and House counterparts David Rivera and Marcelo Llorente resolved most of their disagreements over the weekend and sealed the deal this morning without sending any unresolved disputes to Senate President Jeff Atwater and House Speaker Larry Cretul.

One of the losers in the deal: Florida Forever, the state’s land-buying program received no new money. But the budget chiefs did agree to issue $250 million in bonding authority from this year. They could not sell the bonds because of a decline in real estate transaction taxes used to pay them back.

The legislature closed a real estate tax loophole during the session that they hope will generate enough money to keep Florida Forever running next year.

A last-minute change this weekend shifted $25 million for Florida Forever to the Everglades clean-up program, bringing the total for that to $50 million.

Also included in the budget are more than $800 million in fees, including a hike in driver’s licenses and vehicle registrations and court filings. And smokers will pay an extra buck-a-pack for cigarettes to raise about another $800 million to be spent on the state’s Medicaid program.

State workers earning more than $45,000 a year will see a 2 percent salary cut but university workers are exempt. That amounts to a $30 million cut from general revenue, far less than the $100 million in state employee pay cuts the House had original proposed.

School boards, meanwhile, got the OK to hike property taxes an additional 25 cents per $1,000 of value with a majority vote. Voters would have to sign off on the tax increase at the general election in 2010. The tax increase would raise $380 million for school districts statewide if implemented by all 67 counties, including nearly $17 million for Palm Beach County.

Bright Futures will no longer cover tuition hikes, including the 8 percent tuition increase included in the budget. Lawmakers also gave universities the ability to raise tuition up to 15 percent.

Palm Beach County could ask voters to increase the sales tax by one penny to 7.5 cents to help pay for emergency fire rescue services under a bill awaiting Gov. Charlie Crist’s approval.

The House on Thursday approved the bill, 110-8. The Senate unanimously approved the bill (SB 1000) on Wednesday.

If a majority of voters agree, the county would be required to reduce property taxes by an amount equal to the projected revenue from the sales tax increase. The county commission would have to approve a measure for the ballot

The measure allows all counties to offer a referendum, but it was a priority for Palm Beach County and Palm Beach County Fire Rescue. It was also a priority for Senate President Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, who asked Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, to sponsor the measure on behalf of the Professional Firefighters/Paramedics of Palm Beach County.

The Palm Beach County FIREPAC, the political action committee run by Armand Nault, has been active in the past election cycle, donating nearly $29,000 to lawmakers in the past 14 months.

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Floridians would pay sales tax on box seats, ostrich feed and some magazine and newspaper subsctiptions, but save on yacht and plane purchases under a bill, approved today by a key Florida House committee, that puts the state deeper in the red.

After weeks of contentious debate over whether to remove any of the state’s 246 sales tax breaks, the House Finance & Tax Council unanimously approved a measure that would eliminate some of the most politically palatable exemptions.

But the bill would also cap sales tax on boat and plane purchases and exempt back-to-school items, like clothes and school supplies, from sales taxes for one weekend this summer.

With Florida facing a $6 billion budget shortfall, the bill would cost the state $17.4 million next year.

“It’s far from perfect,” council Chairwoman Ellyn Bogdanoff, R-Fort Lauderdale, said. “You don’t automatically sunset exemptions. You just have to have the guts to start talking about them. And when you start talking about them, you’ll find those that create economic development and those that will create equity within our taxation system.”

Democrats agreed, saying strong lobby efforts made the process difficult.

“Everybody seems to have an association,” said Rep. Scott Randolph, D-Orlando. “The only association we haven’t heard from is the ‘association for sales tax exemptions.’”

Here are the changes proposed in the bill:

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The Senate unanimously approved a buck-a-pack cigarette tax expected to raise nearly $1 billion for health care programs.

Boca Raton Democrat Ted Deutch made the issue his top priority and the state’s dire fiscal straits – a $6 billion spending shortfall – helped persuade some senators to hold their nose and vote for the bill although they object to it.

The tax will discourage smokers and result in healthier Floridians while cutting back on the amount of money the state pays for tobacco-related illnesses in Medicaid patients, Deutch argued.

A provision to make it illegal to possess cigarettes sold on Indian reservations was taken out of the bill.

Instead, the measure (SB 1840) was amended to allow every member of the tribe to buy the equivalent of five packs of smokes a day for every day of the year. The population count of the tribes includes kids.

The Senate relies on nearly $900 million from the tobacco tax although the House does not have a similar provision.

From The Palm Beach Post editorial board this morning:

In general, the Legislature resembles a homeowner who has known for days that a hurricane is coming but decides to board up after the winds arrive. Legislators knew months ago that this would be a brutal session on the budget that might have to be followed by a special session right after the budget takes effect on July 1.

A buck-a-pack cigarette tax made it out of the Senate budget committee late this evening over the objections of cigar-makers.

But cigars could get yet be spared from the $1 per ounce “surcharge” on loose tobacco and cigars included in the plan, which would generate about $990 million a year for health care programs.

Sen. Ted Deutch, the bill’s sponsor and vice-chairman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee that passed the bill today, could not vote on his priority bill because he had to leave Tallahassee suddenly last night due to a death in the family.

“Ironically it was a death related to lung cancer,” said Sen. Thad Altman, R-Melbourne, chairman of the Finance and Tax committee who presented the bill in Deutch’s stead.

Reps of the cigar industry argued that a new federal tax hiked prices on cigars from 700 to more than 2,000 percent and an additional state tax would put about 10,000 workers in Florida out of jobs.

“There are very few businesses that could adapt that quickly and move on,” Richard Coates, lobbyist for the Cigar Association of America, told the panel.

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Sen. Ted Deutch’s top priority – a buck-a-pack cigarette tax – is virtually guaranteed to get passed today by the powerful Ways and Means Committee, its last stop before heading to the floor.

But the Boca Raton Democrat won’t be able to vote on the bill he’s pushed since joining the legislature last year.

Deutch had to leave town suddenly last night because of a death in the family.

Sen. Thad Altman, a freshman Republican from Melbourne who chairs the Finance and Tax Committee, will present the cigarette tax bill (SB 1840) to the budget panel, which Deutch vice-chairs, this afternoon.

Senate budget chief J.D. Alexander has included the $1 billion the tax is supposed to generate in the budget to pay for health care, making it almost certain it will pass out of his committee today.

The House and the governor haven’t signed off on the tax yet.

The Senate budget plan includes no boost to health care spending despite $1 billion earmarked from the federal stimulus package and an anticipated $1 billion from a proposed cigarette tax hike.

That’s raised the bipartisan hackles of Senate Health and Human Services budget committee members, including Chairman Durell Peaden, who phoned in his complaints on Friday to Gov. Charlie Crist.

“You want it in oral communication or blood pressure readings?” Peaden, R-Crestview, said of his disappointment.

Peaden said he has no clue where the money meant for health care is going.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” he said.

Part of the stimulus money is going to pay for programs for the medically needy and to accommodate increases in the Medicaid caseload, as required to get the federal stimulus money.

But nearly $800 million of the stimulus money is going to be used for non-health care programs and replaced with money a buck-a-pack cigarette tax proposal — if it passes.

Either way, the buck-a-pack cigarette tax proposal will generate $1 billion to offset the more than $1.3 billion the state now pays for tobacco-related illnesses, the proposals sponsor Sen. Ted Deutch said.

“This legislation will generate in excess of $1 billion in the first year. That is new revenue that will go into the health care trust fund for the purpose of funding health care,” Deutch, D-Boca Raton, said..

Sen. Nan Rich called the fund shift a “bait-and-switch” that defies the intent of the federal stimulus plan.
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The content of the podcast informed this story that was published Sunday. The interviews are still timely and, by at least one account, still entertaining.

The first 14 minutes is an interview with designated House Democratic Leader Ron Saunders of Key West talking about how Republican leaders are more interested in “hijacking” bills than fulfilling their responsibilities. He admires Rep. Ellyn Bogdanoff, R-Fort Lauderdale, for her “blatant partisanship,” anticipates the next “memo” from House Republican Majority Adam Hasner, apologizes on behalf of the Democratic caucus “for not being stupid,” and says he’s going “do my best” to flip the 76-44 majority the GOP enjoys in the chamber.

“We are the minority party,” Saunders says. “We are their conscience.”

The 12 minutes that follow is a separate interview with Hasner, R-Boca Raton, who gets in his own jabs. He says the House Democrats “have become a party of no” — just like Republicans in the U.S. House. He says their a “continental divide” in the minority party and that the stimulus will “potentially create more problems in the future than it solves.”

Listen to the podcast here. (Right click on the link to download)

Gov. Charlie Crist said today if lawmakers want to offer a constitutional amendment to extend term limits, “that’s their right.”

“That’s up to the people,” Crist said. “If the legislature wants to give the people the opportunity to look at that, that’s their right.”

So should voters be given a chance to increase the sales tax by one penny to help pay for public education?

Crist wouldn’t say.

“I don’t know that that’s very likely,” he said, noting the measure would need 75 percent approval from the House and Senate to be placed on a special election ballot this year.

UPDATE: This blog was updated to include the correct value of the sales tax exemption.

At two different times today, Gov. Charlie Crist teased reporters about an afternoon meeting he was having with his budget director, Jerry McDaniel, in which they were going to talk about a budget cut that would not hurt education spending or health programs for the poor.

We caught up with him at the governor’s mansion before a Torah dedication tonight to ask about the meeting.

Crist said he wasn’t prepared to talk about cuts and instead mentioned looking at “the other side of the ledger,” like fees.

“There’s some exemptions that I would encourage the legislature to look at, too,” Crist said. “There’s one that relates to automobiles when you have a trade-in. For some reason, and I don’t know exactly when it happened an exemption was carved out, and in my conversations with Jerry could mean as much as a half a million billion in dollars that we could use to help education. We’re just starting to look at that and study it.”

So if Crist’s estimate is right, that brings the budget deficit down to $2,999,500,000 $2,500,000,000.

(For some background on sales tax exemptions, click here.)

State lawmakers will start assembling a budget this week, but there appears to be little consensus about how to proceed, with Republicans and Democrats in the House refusing to blink in a debate over axing sales tax breaks and Gov. Charlie Crist reluctant to commit to either revenue increases or deep cuts.

More here.

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Talk about taxing strippers and other XXX-rated activities spawned a few words of caution from Senate Democratic Leader Al Lawson during a caucus meeting at lunchtime.

During a presentation on sales tax exemptions — which lawmakers are considering repealing this year — Sen. Eleanor Sobel of Hollywood asked about doing away with the exemption for adult entertainment.

That drew laughs from some of the caucus members and a bit of skepticism on Lawson’s part.

“We may have some frequent users in the legislature,” Lawson, D-Tallahassee, joked. “We might have some resistance to that.”

Gov. Charlie Crist’s budget guru Jerry McDaniel, under pressure from Democrat Ted Deutch, agreed that tax hikes and further budget reductions should be considered as lawmakers grapple with ever-declining revenues.

McDaniel defended the use of the Lawton Chiles endowment and other trust funds to bridge a spending gap, calling it less painful than raising taxes or making deeper cuts in services.

But, Deutch wanted to know: “Should all of those options be on the table?”

“Yes,” McDaniel replied.
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The review of state sales tax exemptions in the House Finance & Tax Council is quickly becoming a game of political gotcha in the House.

In a press release from House Majority Leader Adam Hasner’s office, the Boca Raton Republican attempts to rip House Democrats — including fellow South County lawmaker Kevin Rader, D-Delray Beach, who isn’t even on the council — for exaggerating the benefits of repealing some sales tax exemptions. From the release:

After years of telling Floridians that the best way to balance the budget was to repeal “special interest” tax exemptions, House Democrats – at last given the opportunity they have long been calling for – only recommended $388.9 million in sales tax exemptions to discuss for repeal. While that is a lot of money, even if all of them were repealed, it is nowhere close to meeting the expected $6 billion budget shortfall facing Florida state government this year. In fact, House Democrats are still $5.6 billion short.

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