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Editorial: Rick Scott's economic fairy tale

 
Under Gov. Rick Scott, more than $266 million in tax incentives have been pledged in return for creating more than 45,000 jobs. But just 2,430 jobs, 5 percent of that number, have been created.
Under Gov. Rick Scott, more than $266 million in tax incentives have been pledged in return for creating more than 45,000 jobs. But just 2,430 jobs, 5 percent of that number, have been created.
Published Oct. 27, 2014

Gov. Rick Scott wants this election to be all about the economy. In debates and television ads, the Republican incumbent portrays Democrat Charlie Crist as the former governor who destroyed the state's economy and casts himself as the governor who brought back the good times. It is a fantasy based on half-truths and misrepresentations, and voters still struggling to make ends meet in this plodding recovery should not fall for it.

Like a broken record, Scott kept repeating during last week's debate that Florida lost 832,000 jobs while Crist was governor. A new state Republican Party ad released Thursday makes the same simplistic argument and rounds up to "about a million" jobs lost. In fact, governors have little control over the economy, and the factors that contributed to the economic recession, such as the housing bubble and the reckless practices by mortgage lenders, were occurring before Crist took office in 2007. Crist is no more responsible for the nation's economic meltdown and the impact in Florida than Scott is for housing prices that are rising again.

The reality is that Crist should get credit for helping lessen the impact of the economic collapse. He accepted the federal stimulus money at great cost to his own political future as the Republican governor who embraced the Democratic president. That stimulus money, which Scott opposed, saved thousands of jobs in Florida. It also paid for projects such as the highway connector to the port in Tampa and improvements to U.S. 19 in Pinellas County that are critical to the region's economy. Scott neglects to mention that the Republican-led Legislature happily spent billions in federal stimulus money to get this state through the worst of the crisis.

The incumbent casts himself as the jobs governor as he flies on his personal jet from ribbon cutting to ribbon cutting. Yet his signature economic program, promising tens of millions in tax breaks in return for creating jobs, has produced little. More than $266 million in tax incentives have been pledged in return for creating more than 47,000 jobs, but through August just 2,430 jobs have been created — or about 5 percent of promised total. Those are the facts, but you won't see them in Scott's commercials.

The governor could have taken credit for adding far more jobs than his tax incentives have created so far. He could have supported creating tax breaks for installing solar panels, collecting the sales tax on all Internet sales to help bricks and mortar companies compete, and spending state money for an anti-poverty program in St. Petersburg's Midtown neighborhoods that would have created jobs. He could have approved the high-speed rail line that federal money would have built between Orlando and Tampa, which would have created a few thousand jobs. He could have demanded that the Legislature accept billions in federal Medicaid expansion money to cover more than 800,000 Floridians, which would have created tens of thousands of jobs. The governor turned his back on all of those opportunities.

It is true that Florida's unemployment rate stood at 6.1 percent in September, the lowest since June 2008 but still above the nation's unemployment rate. Scott, of course, takes full credit. But much of the decline in the jobless rate during his term is the result of fewer Floridians looking for work and the creation of low-wage health care, tourism and retail jobs. Scott also acts as though the thousands of state and local government jobs that have disappeared don't count, and he long ago abandoned his 2010 campaign pledge to create 700,000 jobs in seven years in addition to normal job growth.

If Scott wants full responsibility for the Florida economy, he should take responsibility for Tampa Bay lagging behind cities such as Birmingham, Charlotte and Indianapolis in economic output when measured as gross domestic product per person. He should explain why the median household income is lower in Tampa Bay than it was in 2010, before he took office. He should have answers for why Tampa Bay and Miami are the only two metro areas among the nation's 25 largest with median household incomes below $50,000. He should be held accountable for the rise in food stamp benefits in Tampa Bay on his watch, the increase in the portion of area children living in poverty and the thousands of area mortgage foreclosures that remain unresolved. Instead, Scott is the candidate who opposes increasing the minimum wage and whose computerized system for applying for unemployment benefits remains a mess.

The governor is taking heat for economic issues he could affect, such as high electric rates and Duke Energy billing customers more than $3 billion for nuclear plants that are broken or will not be built. Scott's response: He falsely claims electric rates are lower since Crist left office, and he falsely claims Crist signed the law that enabled Duke Energy to collect the billions for failed nuclear projects when Gov. Jeb Bush signed it. Meanwhile, Duke Energy has contributed more than $1.2 million to Scott's re-election effort and the Republican Party.

Scott takes credit for modest economic improvement he doesn't control and avoids responsibility for economic issues he could influence. Opinion polls show most voters do not believe the economy is recovering, but the governor plans to start spending his personal money for more television ads that portray him as the economic savior. It is political propaganda at odds with the facts and with the realities Floridians cope with every day.