As we enter the 2007 legislative session, there are many important and contentious issues that face the business community.
PROTECTING TORT REFORM: The most important of these is the preservation of last year’s hard-fought victory, which resulted in the elimination of joint & several liability. As I predicted, the trial lawyers have filed a bill in the Senate and House to accomplish a so-called “Fabre fix,” which doesn’t fix anything, but merely reinstates the broken system abolished by the Legislature in 2006. We must do everything in our power to maintain the victory that finally restored a balanced legal system to Florida.
PROPERTY INSURANCE: AIF has been the peerless leader on property and casualty insurance issues, creating the largest coalition (see Florida Hurricane Crisis Coalition on our website at www.aif.com) and producing Special Session Recommendations, some of which the Legislature and the Governor have already approved, such as a home grading system. Much work still remains. Thankfully, the Governor and the Legislature are committed to future hardening of homes, what we call mitigation; and over the short and long haul, this will do more to lessen losses for insureds and insurers than anything else we can do. We must also create a regulatory scheme for home inspectors/mold assessors and remediators; because without proper licensure, insurance, continuing education requirements, etc., there will be too much possibility for fraud and ineffective or flawed improvements to homes. We also need to protect those of our fellow citizens who live in manufactured housing by increasing the dollars for their special tie-down program, we need to help elders in nursing homes and others in continuing living communities with their cost of insurance, and we need to increase overall the amount of dollars to harden homes so that we can do it faster.
PROPERTY TAXES: Our third top issue this session is property taxes. In my testimony to the Senate Finance and Tax Committee last month (which is on our website as the “CEO Message”), we recommended a plan of action. We endorsed almost all of Governor Crist’s proposal, while reserving judgment on doubling the homestead exemption. We like many pieces of Speaker Rubio’s proposal; but, as of this time, our Board has not made a final decision on the most controversial part, which is abolishing the property tax and increasing the sales tax. I can speak to the fact that AIF and its members believe it is critical that any sales tax increase be preserved for potential hurricane damages from the upcoming season given that the CAT Fund has only about $1.3 billion of its $56 billion liability in the bank, and that Citizens is in worse shape with NO CAP on its liability, and it depends on the CAT Fund for its reinsurance! Succinctly, we support a rollback in property tax rates, a cap going forward, a radical revision of the TRIM notice, and a reevaluation of the Value Adjustment Boards. Interestingly, we are the only business association proposing a mandate for local government to create “local savings accounts” of 5% of their budget to be set aside over the next 10 years, so that when there is a downturn in the economy, they will have some monies to fall back on.
AFFORDABLE HOUSING: Workforce Housing is our fourth priority, which does not mean Section 8 housing. It means housing for the average citizen, somewhere in the $125,000 - $225,000 range. The first priority is to lift the cap off of the Sadowski Fund, the trust account that was established to fund affordable housing. It will certainly mean higher densities in urban areas, but it also means that local government must truly have a “fast track” process for accomplishing this. In our minds, it means that if a developer does not get his or her permits say within 180 days (an arbitrary number), then that local government would only get say 20% of their state dollars, but if they did have such an expeditious process, then they would get 100% of their dollars – a carrot and stick approach, rather than mandating. Most importantly, we must remember that the American dream is to own a home, so we should be doing everything we can to make this a reality for all who want to do so.
WORKFORCE DEVELOPEMNT: Priority number five is Workforce Development and Education. Simply put, employers by and large are not getting high school, community college and college graduates who can think, write and speak intelligently. This can not be allowed to continue. Thankfully, SUS Chancellor Mark Rosenberg and Board of Governors Chair Carolyn Roberts have already recognized this dilemma; and they have reached out to the business community to get us involved in working on a solution. But we need to think radically. Subliminally, we are telling 40% of our kids that they are a failure every time we advertise or tell them they must go to college, because they never will. Yet they can become a success; and no one has more clearly demonstrated that than former School Superintendent and now Senator Don Gaetz, with his innovative Career Academies. We support this concept and other school boards around the state are doing the same. We must fully fund and support these efforts so that everyone has the chance and opportunity to succeed. Finally, we must stop comparing our educational rankings with Iowa, Minnesota and Michigan; and we must start comparing our educational standards with China, India, South Korea and Taiwan - they are our 21st Century competitors. While almost a half billion Chinese students last year learned English, only 65,000 children in American learned Mandarin Chinese! Our educational system is tops in the world for elementary education, and in the middle of the pack by middle school, yet we are in the bottom four for high school worldwide. We cannot allow this to continue and expect to remain the economic powerhouse that we are today.
COMMUNICATIONS SERVICES TAX: The Communication Services Tax (CST) rounds out our top issues. Again, Keyna Cory and Frank Meiners are leading the business-wide charge in this arena as they did with the Communications Substitute Tax issue. The cost of this tax is stifling, and thankfully our Governor supports getting rid of it. We will work with him and our legislative leaders to make this happen.
In closing, I would like to comment on our new Governor. AIF was the first general purpose business association to endorse him. And in a heartbeat we would do so again! No one can expect a Governor to be with the business community 100% of the time because that would be foolhardy. But Charlie Crist is a man who will do what he thinks is right, and yet he will listen. As an organization that was created 87 years ago to lobby, that is all that we can ask for. While some business groups questioned Charlie’s choice of Jeff Kottkamp, we immediately applauded the selection because we knew that Jeff was an AIF Champion for Business in 2006. So, we believe we have an executive team that we can work with on issues of mutual concern. I would be remiss if I didn’t also comment on Senate President Ken Pruitt and House Speaker Marco Rubio, two leaders with whom AIF has had a long and fruitful relationship. They have given unparalleled leadership opportunities to their respective Council and Committee Chairs, and for that we are thankful. This legislative session promises to be an interesting one; and we are thrilled to be working with these men, all of whom have demonstrated integrity, adherence to principles, and a willingness to work with others in pursuit of success – that’s a winning combination!
516 North Adams Street ● Post Office Box 784 ● Tallahassee, Florida 32302-0784 ● Phone: (850) 224-7173 ● Fax: (850) 224-6532 ● www.aif.com
