DeSantis Committee for Low Taxes To Meet in Hillsborough County with Highest Sales Tax Rate in FL

We posted here about how those who want tax hikes were erroneously appointed to an economic committee to advise Governor-elect DeSantis for how to keep taxes low in Florida.

It's bad enough the Tampa Bay Swamp tax hikers were appointed to such position but the optics got worse.

The committee is meeting in Tampa tomorrow. According to this Tampa Bay Times article:

The Transition Advisory Committee on the Economy, led by former state Speaker of the House Will Weatherford, will gather at the university’s Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation at 1 p, m, on Wednesday, Dec. 5. The public may attend.

Tampa Bay Swamp Goes to Tallahassee

Governor-elect DeSantis left the Swamp in DC to run for Governor.

DeSantis supported Trump and he received support from Trump that helped him trounce Adam Putnam in the Primary. DeSantis went on to narrowly beat Gillum in the General.

Unfortunately, while DeSantis promised to keep taxes low and oppose tax increases in Florida, the Tampa Bay Swamp who want higher taxes are already on their way to Tallahassee.

How the Crony Swamp Supports Massive Tax Hikes to Benefit Them

We posted here about the downtown Tampa cronies who are collaborating to control billions of taxpayer dollars. Five donors, all connected to Jeff Vinik, contributed $150K each to Vinik's transit tax hike PAC All for Transportation (AFT) to advance their collaborative agenda.

With $750K in the bank, where has Vinik's AFT PAC money been spent? Below are the expenditures reported by AFT through their latest campaign filing.

$525K was spent paying Revolution Field Strategies who paid petition gatherers to collect petition signatures. Revolution Field Strategies website states they lead "grassroots" campaigns. Obviously that is not always true. This petition campaign, funded by five deep pocketed special interests who are all connected to Jeff Vinik, is anything but grassroots.

Another $15K was spent with Mercury PR firm. We understand Mercury is working with the campaign of Jane Castor who is running in Tampa's mayoral race. And who donated to Castor's campaign according to the SOE website? Sykes.

Sykes donates to Jane Castor

Mercury PR firm sound familiar? Go back to the Go Hillsborough (GH) debacle.

PR firms began salivating at the thought of getting a piece of a multi-million dollar tax hike advocacy campaign in 2015. The Mercury PR firm was pining for that business. According to this Tribune article in 2015:

“In our world — public affairs, strategic planning and advocacy — this is a big deal,” said Ana Cruz, a political consultant who works with Mercury, one of the firms that talked to the county about the campaign. “These big campaigns … we all want to be part of it. It’s what we do.” 

Kieran Mahoney, Mercury’s chief executive officer, met with Merrill more than a year ago, on Aug. 20, 2014, less than a week after the county Transportation Policy Leadership Group agreed it needed to hire a firm with experience in transportation referendums. Merrill described his talk with Mahoney as a general description of the Go Hillsborough process.

It makes sense Mercury is working on Jane Castor's campaign because Ana Cruz is Jane Castor's partner. She is also the daughter of Democrat state rep Janet Cruz who originally filed to run for county commission but then jumped over to run against incumbent Republican state senator Dana Young. Maybe Cruz jumped ship out of the commission race because she knew Vinik's transit tax hike was a power grab by Tampa and usurps the power of county commissioners for 30 years.

A Tribune article in April 2016, right before the first public hearing on the Go Hillsborough debacle tax hike, reported a poll taken by Mercury:

The poll, conducted by the Tampa-based Mercury firm and financed by unidentified business interests, indicates the strongest support yet for the proposed tax. A total of 66 percent of those surveyed said they would either “definitely” or “probably” vote for the tax. 

Hagan said the survey was financed by a group of businessmen in different industries who did not want to be identified. Asked if the group would ever come out of the shadows, Hagan said that was a “distinct possibility.”

We knew then and we know today who those unidentified business interests sitting in the shadows were who funded the poll.

That Mercury poll in 2016 was for the proposed GH one-half percent sales tax hike and no formal opposition was ever in place. The polling on a one percent sales tax hike was polling about 30% or lower.

Which confirms just how greedy the Vinik tax hike cartel are.

Mercury wanted the lucrative advocacy campaign for the crony GH tax hike so bad they did a poll funded by the very cronies who would dump millions into the advocacy campaign to benefit them all. Of course Mercury got the polling answer to help get them the campaign work they wanted.

That same April 2016 Tribune article also reported :

Hagan said that by design, the ballot question does not mention light rail — a mode of transportation that opponents focused on and that was highly unpopular among suburban voters. 

Sound familiar? That was a lie then and it's a lie now.

Go Hillsborough Rail/transit projects

The only reason Vinik demands a 30 year 14% massive transit tax hike is to fund costly rail in Tampa and fund all of it. The cronies are not planning to go to the Feds for funding because the cost is too high and the ridership too low to qualify for federal money. Vinik and his downtown Tampa allies plan to fund the ENTIRE cost of the costly trains in Tampa with YOUR COUNTY TAX DOLLARS -  most of which will come from unincorporated Hillsborough County.

Of course, Kieran Mahoney, the CEO of Mercury PR firm, donates to Tax Hike Hagan because Hagan has not seen a proposed sales tax hike in over a decade that he has not supported.

Mercury PR firm CEO donates to Hagan on 6/21/2017

Special interests keep circling money thru PAC's, PR firms and campaign coffers to push massive tax hikes that benefit them.

Expect Vinik and his special interests allies to dump $5-10 million into Mercury and perhaps some other PR firms over the next 90 days. With the Vinik owned media megaphone, they will drown out everything and everyone as if nothing else exists but their own greedy egregious massive tax hike.

It is a big circle of money!

And a big SWAMP!

Can Performance Audit For Massive Transit Tax Hike Be Done By Deadline To Put on November Ballot?

We posted here about the performance audit now required to be completed and published 60 days prior to the election for any local referendum that gets on the ballot - no matter how the referendum gets on the ballot.

The petitions are still being validated by the SOE. We expect the required number of valid petitions will be reached and the SOE will certify to the county commissioners shortly.

OPPAGA notified Hillsborough County on Friday, August 3, 2018 they have hired an auditor to begin the audit process.

We do not know the current status of the OPPAGA audit request from the Hillsborough school board who also wanted to put a sales tax hike referendum on the November ballot. However this was reported about the school board's referendum on June 26:

Prospects for a Nov. 6 referendum are shaky at best, as a new state law requires the district first to undergo a state performance audit. That process, including two months to post the results, could take eight months.

How did the audit for Vinik's transit tax hike get in front of the request by the school board? There were rumblings that someone from Vinik's AFT PAC approached the school board last month to ask if they could jump in from of the school board to get their audit done first. Hmmm…

Section 10 of Florida Statute 212.055 states:

For any referendum held on or after March 23, 2018, to adopt a discretionary sales surtax under this section, an independent certified public accountant licensed pursuant to chapter 473 shall conduct a performance audit of the program associated with the surtax adoption proposed by the county or school district.

At a minimum, a performance audit must include an examination of issues related to the following:
1. The economy, efficiency, or effectiveness of the program.
2. The structure or design of the program to accomplish its goals and objectives.
3. Alternative methods of providing program services or products.
4. Goals, objectives, and performance measures used by the program to monitor and report program accomplishments.
5. The accuracy or adequacy of public documents, reports, and requests prepared by the county or school district which relate to the program.
6. Compliance of the program with appropriate policies, rules, and laws.

We are about four weeks out from the 60 day pre-election deadline for completing and publishing the audit by September 6, 2018 before the November election. According to OPPAGA, one performance audit may audit multiple programs associated with a sales surtax referendum

There are multiple programs associated with Vinik's massive 30 year  $15-18 BILLION transit tax hike. There are transit programs, road programs, planning programs. These multiple programs are across multiple entities - the county, the city municipalities, HART and the MPO.

In addition, this 14% sales tax hike referendum grows government. It creates another government transportation bureaucracy that usurps power from duly elected county commissioners, city council reps and the governing HART Board of the special taxing district for the local transit agency HART - for 30 years.  

We know who wrote the ballot summary and the five pages of fine print in the lengthy petition that many probably never read. All the bureaucratic and regulatory burdens baked into the monster 14% transit tax hike were intentional because they benefit - for 30 years - those who wrote them.

We doubt the regulatory gobbly gook was written with any thought that an audit would be required.

As we reported here, Jim Davison has proposed a transportation funding plan that does NOT require a massive tax hike. Tampa Bay Beat reported Davison's recent comment about Vinik's unnecessary 30 year tax hike boondoggle:

The special interest, eight percent sales tax proposal over 30 years, Davison asserted, is an attack on unincorporated areas and Hillsborough County’s smaller cities. Tampa reaps the benefits with 27 percent of the county population siphoning 53 percent of the tax receipts.

Audits are very methodical. To do any audit, it takes time to plan, time to do the field work and time to complete the audit report.

Is it possible that a performance audit for a complex $15-18 BILLION tax hike referendum that includes multiple programs can be completed and the report published in about 30 days?

What happens to this transit tax hike petition effort if the audit is not completed and published by the 60 day pre-November election deadline?

The Eye will be watching!

Drain the Regional "Swamp" Before Its Filled

We're being setup AGAIN! 

As we posted here, Senator Latvala unscrupulously used his position as Senate Appropriations Chair to ram his crony TBARTA bill written by special interests thru the state legislature to create a new transit agency "Tampa Bay Area Regional Transit Authority."

While citizens in Tampa Bay never requested another transit bureaucracy, the largest supporter of tax hikes for rail boondoggles Tampa Bay Partnership did. Latvala obliged them by doing a back door end around the local delegations filing theTBARTA bill the weekend before the session started. He ensured the bill did not go through any of the local delegations and intentionally prevented citizens (including his own constituents) from weighing in.

While difficult for everyday citizens to get to Tallahassee, it's very easy for special interests to get there and lobby for their cause, as the Times reported Tampa Bay area business leaders lobby on contentious transit bill

The business delegation included Tampa Bay Lightning owner and developer Jeff Vinik, University of South Florida president Judy Genshaft, Sykes Enterprises CEO Chuck Sykes, Ashley Furniture founder Ron Wanek, influential Tampa attorney Rhea Law and the top Tampa executives of TECO Energy, BlueGrace Logistics, the BayCare Health System, PNC Bank, Vology and Florida Blue.

"It's so important for the legislative delegation from Tampa Bay to come together and support this," said Homans [CEO of Tampa Bay Partnership], "and recognize that transportation is unquestionably the biggest challenge facing the region."

Transportation needs addressing but we do not need another taxpayer funded transit agency to address it. We already fund our local transit agencies and local voters keep rejecting tax hikes for costly transit.

Because they keep losing locally, the special interests were forced to take their quest for costly transit boondoggles regional. The rail cartel needed a new regional bureaucratic "Swamp" to control that would empower them and take away local control.

Once a regional "Swamp" gets a big pot of money and a long term funding source, it becomes almost impossible to drain these Swamps no matter how deceitful, crony or corrupt they become. 

While Governor Scott unfortunately signed Latvala's bill to create the new TBARTA Swamp, he veto'ed their one-time appropriation from the state. 

The cry from the new TBARTA Board at their first meeting in August was TBARTA needs money and where is the money coming from. Hint: it's going to come from you thanks to Senator Latvala and the rail cartel. Watch out next legislative session.

Ray Chiarmonte, TBARTA's Executive Director, stated that TBARTA was established to be the hand off from the $1.5 million taxpayer funded regional premium transit campaign. 
,
That is exactly what the Eye predicted. 

But the timing of this regional transit campaign could not be worse.

Trust remains a big issue and all the campaign shenanigans does not help. There is probably less trust today than when transit tax hikes were on the ballot in 2010 and 2014.

Transit ridership is declining while vehicle miles travelled is set to be a record this year. More people are choosing (no coercion needed) to drive and/or use personal vehicles like ride-share than transit.   

Expensive rail systems must shut down days before an approaching hurricane or major storm. Trains can do nothing to help any evacuation effort in Tampa Bay and it takes days or a week or longer after the storm for trains to come back in service.  

Evacuation routes must be considered with any proposed mobility solution in Tampa Bay. If taxpayer big bucks are being spent on transportation in Tampa Bay, it better include accommodating evacuations.

Most importantly, this is a time of disruption for transportation/transit. 

But costly rail/fixed guideways are never about transportation and mobility. They are about land use and development.

The rail cartel cannot help themselves. Special interests want costly fixed guideways because they will greatly benefit from those projects paid for on the backs of the taxpayers. 

This latest taxpayer funded regional transit campaign was so predictable.

Taxpayers keep enriching the same consultants over and over who think the public is stupid.

Slide from Jacobs Engineering who is leading the
Regional Premium Transit Campaign

But these consultants, who operate mostly within their own echo chamber, keep pushing the same costly transit solutions repeatedly rejected by voters. They keep expecting a different outcome. Hmmm…Where's the stupidity?

This transit campaign is part of the regional "Swamp" shenanigans to set us up again for costly transit boondoggles. Rail is toxic in Tampa Bay but the rail cartel is tone deaf and prefers to ignore the will of the people and consent of the governed. 

We anticipate the regional "Swamp" herd will push another round of massive tax hike referendum(s) on voters in 2020 to pick the pockets of taxpayers to pay for their largesse.

But just as Amazon disrupted traditional retail, innovation, new and emerging technologies are disrupting traditional transit.

And the public knows it. 

Tampa Bay is well positioned to optimize and pursue new technology and rapidly emerging transportation innovation because we are not stuck paying for outdated costly rail boondoggles or bogged down yet in a regional "Swamp" bureaucracy.

Let's keep it that way.

Let's drain this regional "Swamp" before it's filled.

#RepealTBARTA