While Gov. Charlie Crist was reaching voters across Florida in a recorded telephone plea to vote for the
Jan. 29 property tax cut proposal, House Speaker Marco Rubio was in Manatee County on Wednesday, pitching an alternative tax-cut
plan that some say detracts from Crist's efforts.
While neither Crist nor Rubio have been openly critical of
the other's efforts, Rubio's 15-minute speech at Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport reflected just how far apart
the two most prominent state leaders are when it comes to the issue Floridians recently said is their biggest concern: rising
property taxes.
Rubio did not mention the Jan. 29 amendment a single time in his speech. Instead, Rubio, R-West
Miami, focused entirely on the need for deeper reforms, touting a different tax reform package -- the so-called "1.35
Percent Solution" -- that its backers are trying to get on the ballot next fall.
It is not the first split
between the first-year governor and the 36-year-old House speaker. Rubio has criticized Crist's plan for new environmental
regulations to reduce global warming, warning that it threatens Florida's economy. Rubio has also opposed the governor's
plan to expand gambling on Seminole Indian reservations.
But none of their differences has been quite the public
spectacle that their competing drives to cut property taxes is turning out to be.
It has left Crist trying to sell
a potential $9 billion tax-cut plan with virtually no public support from the House leader who helped pass it.
While
Crist never criticizes Rubio publicly, he did take a dig at the speaker's contention that Amendment One -- with its average
savings of $240 for homeowners who do not move -- does not go far enough.
Crist said he saw "thousands and
thousands" of people lined up in Miami's Little Havana earlier on Wednesday to get a free holiday ham.
"Yet
we have people who say $240 or $250 doesn't mean anything," Crist said to the Florida Association of Realtors group
at the Governor's Mansion. "It would mean a lot to every one of those ... people who were lining up in Little Havana.
So don't let friends or people tell you that $240 doesn't mean anything."
Rubio does not disagree
with the governor that Floridians are hurting. Indeed, Rubio said the economic slump is so painful that he would not recommend
anyone move to Florida and only the inability to sell their homes is keeping more people from leaving the state.
But Rubio says the Jan. 29 amendment, which he voted for, is a "small solution to a big problem." A far greater
overhaul of the state property tax system is needed to revive the economy, Rubio said. The plan he is pushing would cap property
tax increases at 1.35 percent of assessed value for all property owners. The plan would significantly change the state's
taxing structure, bringing big cuts to business owners and part-time residents, who have historically received little protection
from rising rates.
Rubio is campaigning hard for the alternative tax plan in the hope of getting enough signatures
to put it on the ballot in the fall of 2008. But the timing could not be worse for Crist and other advocates of the Jan. 29
amendment, which polls show does not yet have the 60 percent support needed for approval.
"In the best of
Republican worlds, Rubio would be out drumming up support for the plan that's on the ballot in six weeks," said Aubrey
Jewett, a professor of political science at the University of Central Florida.
Instead, Rubio's effort feeds
into the perception that the Jan. 29 measure does not go far enough. That may be enough to persuade undecided voters to vote
against it.
Rubio said he is not trying to damage hopes for the Jan. 29 vote. He said he plans to vote for it and
said the two tax-cutting plans can co-exist.
But others who support the Rubio-supported plan are not buying it.
Don O'Connell, head of the Venice Landlord Association and supporter of the Rubio-backed plan, said if the Jan. 29 plan
passes, he fears the political wind will be gone to take property tax reform to a new level.
"That one's
got to be defeated," O'Connell said.
Not everyone agrees.
For his part, Crist offers only tepid
support for Rubio's effort, saying he would "probably" sign the petition advocated by Rubio.
"I've
already pledged that I would keep going after this one passes in January," he said.
Crist said he thought
Rubio's rival efforts would not have "any effect at all" on his own campaign.
"One is sort of
on deck January 29 ..." Crist said. "The next one will be, if enough signatures are applied to it and I hope they
are, in November. I don't think we can have enough property tax cuts."
Since he was elected last year,
Crist has publicly showered Rubio with praise.
But Rubio's hiring of numerous former employees of Crist's
primary challenger, Tom Gallagher, as well as exiled employees of Gov. Jeb Bush, has led to behind-the-scenes tension.
Rubio dismisses talk of a rift, saying the media is making too much of the split.
"We're friends,"
Rubio said of Crist. "We talk all the time. We agree more on most issues than we disagree."
Crist said
he had spoken with Rubio within the "past week." The governor said they did discuss the general issue of property
taxes and he reiterated his support for further cuts.
The governor said he asked Rubio to support the January effort
and Crist said Wednesday that Rubio "said he would."
Asked what level of commitment Rubio offered, Crist
said, "We weren't specific about it."
The split over taxes has been seen differently partly because
of how paramount an issue it has become for each politically.
Crist rode a platform that centered on cutting property
taxes to victory last year. And Rubio hitched his political wagon to the topic when he gained statewide notoriety almost overnight
when he proposed eliminating all property taxes in favor of a statewide sales tax.
But Rubio encountered stiff
resistance to his original plan, retreating to a less ambitious tax-cutting plan that was thrown out by a state judge. When
Crist and the majority of the Florida Legislature pitched the current plan to double the homestead exemption and allow some
portability of those benefits, Rubio declared it was not enough.
Addressing a crowd of 100 supporters at a rally
at Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport, House Speaker Marco Rubio said high taxes plaguing the state of Florida were
akin to a disease.
"If you've got cancer but only admit you have a cold, you'll never get the treatment
you need," he said.
The cure, Rubio said, is significant tax cuts -- not just for homesteaders, but for all
property regardless of its use. Hence his support for a new constitutional amendment that would impose a hard cap on taxes
of 1.35 percent of a property's taxable value.
"Increasingly people are saying that Florida is looking
like the very place they came here to get away from," Rubio said.
The constitutional amendment, initiated
by Cut Property Taxes Now and being supported by a coalition of tax reform groups across the state, needs to get 61,000 signatures
by the end of the month and 10 times that number by the end of January in order to be placed on the November ballot.
Barry Gould, an Anna Maria Island real estate agent and member of the Coalition Against Runaway Taxes, said local volunteers
have been walking the streets with petitions, and hundreds of interested individuals have been going online to find the petition
as well. He said organizers are confident they will reach 61,000, and are predicting more than 100,000 signatures could be
gathered by the end of this month.
The question, though, is whether they can meet the next threshold.
Although only about 100 people showed up, not the 500 to 1,000 organizers had hoped for, Gould said he considered Wednesday's
event a success. The fact that the speaker and other state and local officials were in attendance means the new proposal is
gaining the attention it needs, he said.
Not everyone in the room was breathing easy, though.
Gerri
Holmes, a landlord in Bradenton and director of the Web site LandlordsOnline.com, was particularly unsettled by suggestions
that if the "1.35 Percent Solution" fails to get the signatures it needs, voters could instead simply support the
Jan. 29 amendment, which focuses more on homestead properties.
"The January 29 amendment is fine for homeowners,"
Holmes said, "but the rest of us are just getting killed. We need that relief too. Over the last several years, the taxes
on the home I live in have gone up about 9 percent. But for my businesses, it's up more than 200 percent."
Jude Levy, also a member of the Sarasota tenant-landlord coalition, said landlords are not the only ones who suffer under
rising taxes. Levy, who herself rents a home, said the pressure on landlords naturally trickles down to those who live in
their units.
"If my landlord is getting it in the neck, that likely means trouble for me, too," she said.
