Tax breaks for the wealthy.
We know Florida is a low tax state. So instead of fixing "failing schools" (or helping the children who, through no fault of their own, don’t have the enriched background of the children in "good schools"), the Legislature is "giving back" one billion dollars in revenue. What will you see? A sales tax holiday in the fall and 25 bucks in property tax cuts if you own an $84,000 house.
What will corporate Florida get? A break on property tax, the intangible tax, unemployment tax and the tax on liquor. Nearly a billion for the companies that are recording profits and only two hundred million for thirteen million real people.
There is something absurd about giving a tax break on country club membership and skybox rentals (yes, that happened this year) when kids don’t have textbooks. When, believe it or not, spending for school technology was actually decreased!
But, Jade, didn’t the schools get almost a billion dollars? Talk about sound bite mathematics. First, half the "increase" was actually a "decrease" in the cost of retirement benefits for school employees due to the economy. Funny, when retirement costs went up, the state didn’t pay them, employees did. Now that they are decreasing, do the employees get the savings? No. Corporate Florida did - $500 million. Of the remaining half billion, $250 million funds new kids. The "real" increase - around $200 million - is the lowest since the recession of ’92.
And almost all the money is tied up in categorical programs, so that only through budgetary alchemy can we find ways to give decent raises to our hard-working employees. The average American wage went up 4.5% last year.
There is not a single Florida school district that received enough new unencumbered dollars to give a 2% raise. Some will do better, but only by raising class sizes, cutting back on other expenses or disguising their increase. The base student allocation, the cornerstone of the funding formula, went up less than $5 to $3,227.74 from $3,223.06.
Lawmakers, hang your heads in shame! The teaser for the ABC Evening News recently asked, "Vouchers - is this the beginning of the end for public education?" I want to raise the temperature of the debate: "Vouchers - is this the beginning of the end of American society?"
Are we going to devolve into a banana republic? We will if we continue to accept fewer than 25% of adults voting. We will if we continue to allow unlimited "soft money" political contributions. We will if we tolerate a culture that cares more for guns than kids, more for profits than investment, more for pleasing the Governor than pleasing our conscience. We must not allow Jeb Bush and a handful of zealots to destroy our state.