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FLORIDA POLITICS
Since 2002, daily Florida political news and commentary

 

UPDATE: Every morning we review and individually digest Florida political news articles, editorials and punditry. Our sister site, FLA Politics was selected by Campaigns & Elections as one of only ten state blogs in the nation
"every political insider should be reading right now."

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Welcome To Florida Politics

Thanks for visiting. On a semi-daily basis we scan Florida's major daily newspapers for significant Florida political news and punditry. We also review the editorial pages and political columnists/pundits for Florida political commentary. The papers we review include: the Miami Herald, Sun-Sentinel, Palm Beach Post, Naples News, Sarasota Herald Tribune, St Pete Times, Tampa Tribune, Orlando Sentinel, the Daytona Beach News-Journal, Tallahassee Democrat, and, occasionally, the Florida Times Union; we also review the political news blogs associated with these newspapers.

For each story, column, article or editorial we deem significant, we post at least the headline and link to the piece; the linked headline always appears in quotes. We quote the headline for two reasons: first, to allow researchers looking for the cited piece to find it (if the link has expired) by searching for the original title/headline via a commercial research service. Second, quotation of the original headline permits readers to appreciate the spin from the original piece, as opposed to our spin.

Not that we don't provide spin; we do, and plenty of it. Our perspective appears in post headlines, the subtitles within the post (in bold), and the excerpts from the linked stories we select to quote; we also occasionally provide other links and commentary about certain stories. While our bias should be immediately apparent to any reader, we nevertheless attempt to link to every article, column or editorial about Florida politics in every major online Florida newspaper.

 

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The Blog for Monday, June 06, 2005

Disclosing Tax Revenues

    The DB News-Journal goes substantive in "Public deserves to know about extra tax revenue".:
    The housing boom is a story of windfalls for developers, real estate brokers, home-sellers -- and governments whose tax bases are fueled principally by property taxes. As property values rise, so do tax assessments. Government revenue usually follows. ...

    Governments have a choice. They can use the windfall to catch up with long-standing needs on their wish lists. Or they can cut or roll back their tax rate so that revenue next year doesn't exceed this year's. It's not a given that more tax revenue should result in tax cuts. ...

    What should be a given is that local governments level with taxpayers honestly about how much money is coming in and how much money is needed to meet next year's budget. State law requires that honesty. Local governments don't always comply. ...

    One reason governments don't feel compelled to level with the public, when they get more money than their budget calls for, is that the whole budget process revolves around tax rates instead of actual dollars. But it should be simple enough for governments to lay out their bottom line at every step of the process. If Government A prepares a budget based on $50 million in revenue in July, it should stick to that budget come September even if revenue clocks in at $52 million -- and adjust the tax rate accordingly. Alternately, that government should tell the public, clearly, why it's holding on to the money and keeping its tax rate unchanged. Good reasons may abound. This year, for example, governments will be looking to pad their reserves with as much revenue as they can in light of hurricane scares. But they should tell their constituents that they're doing so (and give constituents a chance to speak on the matter) rather than, essentially, take the money and run.
    "More.

6:33 AM

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