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Editorial: Florida House still picking winners and losers on tax breaks

 
Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran claims to be taking an ax to corporate welfare. Yet a House bill eliminating numerous tax credit programs preserves the breaks for certain special interests, including golf, motorsports and the defense industry.
Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran claims to be taking an ax to corporate welfare. Yet a House bill eliminating numerous tax credit programs preserves the breaks for certain special interests, including golf, motorsports and the defense industry.
Published March 24, 2017

Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran claims to be taking an ax to corporate welfare. Yet a House bill eliminating numerous tax credit programs preserves the breaks for certain special interests, including golf, motorsports and the defense industry. As much as Republican lawmakers talk about no longer playing favorites and open competition, there are still winners and losers in Tallahassee.

The House voted earlier this month for a measure that would kill Enterprise Florida, the state's economic development agency. A priority of Gov. Rick Scott, Enterprise Florida uses mostly taxpayer money to lure businesses to the state in exchange for creating jobs. Scott insists the strategy is essential for recruiting high-quality employers to Florida. Corcoran, R-Land O'Lakes, derides it as "extortion money,'' and he's right that the money could be better spent.

But the House's legislation, HB 7005, which passed 87-28, keeps the World Golf Hall of Fame in St. Augustine squarely in the winner's column, allocating $2 million a year in tax credits to the private entity even though it fails to meet its revenue projections and attendance goals. Jeremy Wallace of the Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureau reported that the budget analysts for the Legislature determined that, among 26 state tax programs, the golf hall of fame provides the worst return on investment — a $54 million loss over the life of the agreement.

There's no strong financial case to be made for preserving the tax breaks, and Corcoran doesn't disagree. His spokesman says the reason the golf tax credit was left alone — while others for baseball spring training facilities and redevelopment of brownfield sites were cut — is a clause in the contract that the Legislature can't circumvent. It says that the World Golf Foundation, which owns the hall of fame, can use its state funding to pay off bonds, and records show the World Golf Foundation has pledged the state money to pay off bonds used for capital projects.

But the hall of fame has reneged on its end of the deal by failing to draw at least 300,000 paid visitors a year and generate $2 million in revenue. And Corcoran likes being a disrupter. Visit Florida, the state's tourism bureau that is also in his crosshairs, had a secret contract with the rapper Pitbull to promote the state. Visit Florida refused to disclose the terms, including how much it paid the pop star, so Corcoran sued and prompted Pitbull to reveal the amount himself — $1 million.

The golf hall of fame isn't the only entity whose tax breaks were spared. Motorsports entertainment complexes and defense industry contractors, two major sources of campaign donations in Florida, would keep their tax credits under the House bill. Leaving their tax credits in place while eliminating others certainly amounts to picking winners and losers.

Corcoran's crusade to kill Enterprise Florida faces an uphill climb. Although the House bill attracted enough votes to override a certain veto by Scott, the governor has been mounting a high-profile defense of his jobs agenda. There is no companion bill in the Senate, where eliminating the agency is less of a priority. So while the fight persists ideological grounds, the House is less ideologically pure than Republicans' rhetoric suggests.