A Leader Just Like Us

Judith Warner wrote this week in the Times:

One of the worst poisons of the American political climate right now, the thing that time and again in recent years has led us to disaster, is the need people feel for leaders they can “relate” to. This need isn’t limited to women; it brought us after all, two terms of George W. Bush.

Jon Stewart's Daily Show makes the same point, hilariously:

A.G. Nixes Business Lease Fee Credit

UPDATED BELOW
The Pensacola News Journal is reporting tonight that state attorney general Bill McCollum last week issued an advisory opinion that it would be unconstitutional for county commissioners or the Santa Rosa Island Authority to credit Pensacola Beach commercial lease fees against newly-imposed real estate taxes. The newspaper explains:

Santa Rosa Island Authority attorney Mike Stebbins had requested the legal opinion in response to a move in January by county commissioners to work with a group of commercial leaseholders concerned with having to pay both lease fees and property taxes on their Pensacola Beach businesses.

Some of them they say [sic] the burden of paying both is cutting too deeply into their profit margin making it near impossible to continue doing business on the beach.

Beach business lease fees for island property rented from the Santa Rosa Island Authority are calculated as a percentage of monthly gross sales revenues. The percentage ranges from two to five percent of the gross, and occasionally more. Beach businesses say that when real estate taxes are added to that, "they pay significantly more than other non-beach commercial businesses in Escambia County," the News Journal reports.

County commissioners were considering granting a dollar-for-dollar credit against real estate taxes owing for all Pensacola Beach businesses that paid lease fees. But McCollum's advisory ruling casts a dark shadow over that possibility now. Concluded McCollum:

[I]t is my opinion that the Santa Rosa Island Authority has no authority to offset lease fees payable to the authority from commercial leaseholders equal to ad valorem taxes collected against commercial leaseholders as such action would amount to an exemption from taxes where the exemption has no constitutional basis.

Attorney General Bill McCollum's advisory opinion can be found here.

UPDATE
9-3 am

Jamie Paige harvests island quotes about the McCollum advisory ruling in today's updated print edition version of the same news.

• County commissioner Grover Robinson IV says he's "disappointed" and doesn't know "where we go from here."
  
• Fred Simmons proposes abolishing business lease fees.
  
• June Gerra says, "It's difficult to be positive about a government that is insensitive. It just kills your spirit."

Sucker Punch

"It's been said that negligent local government is Northwest Florida's most lucrative source of revenue."

Navarre Beach residents just can't catch a break. First, they lose their leaseholder tax appeal. Now, they're up in arms over escalating Santa Rosa County MSBU assessments for public beach renourishment, according to William Rabb's report in today's PNJ:

"The county set up a taxing district for the beach renourishment work in 2003 and sent bills to beach residents last month. The renourishment fees were based largely on the 2005 appraised value of the property. But because of rising housing prices after recent hurricanes, those values have little basis in reality, property owners said."

Rabb's article includes the obligatory individual tale of horror. It's compelling -- and probably representative of a good many other Navarre Beach residents and businesses:

"Adrienne Wilson and her husband purchased a condominium unit on Navarre Beach a decade ago so they could rent it out and build their retirement nest egg.

"'Now, we're going to have to sell it because we can't pay the assessment fees,' said Wilson, a dental hygienist from Atlanta.

* * *
"Wilson, for example, must pay $13,000 over six years for her 14th-story unit at The Pearl condominium, while a similar unit on the second floor pays much less, she said. She can't rent her condo for much because the development's swimming pool is still out of service, but she still must pay more than owners in other high-rise developments on the beach, she said."

"'It's just not fair,'" Wilson said.

What Rabb has missed is that Navarre Beach residents actually asked for the MSBU tax to be imposed on themselves. Worried some years ago that Santa Rosa County was dragging its feet addressing the issue of post-Hurricane Georges sand replacement, Navarre Beach residents went so far as to propose taxing themselves as a way of persuading the county to undertake the project.

Even the Navarre Beach Leaseholders & Residents Assn. supported the move. The organization's leadership told others at the time it was a "good will" gesture.

The county apparently saw it as a sucker's move. First, Santa Rosa county created the new MSBU taxing authority, as requested, to make beach residents shoulder a substantial part of public beach renourishment expenses. Then, tax assessor Greg Brown went one better and imposed ad valorem taxes on all Navarre Beach leaseholds. Now, it seems, he's calculating the special MSBU assessment on the basis of artificially inflated property values.

So much for good will gestures. If beach renourishment is a good idea -- and as Cornelia Dean has documented there are plenty of reasons to think it may not be -- as long as the beaches remain public, paying for it should be a public responsibility, not a private burden.

It's been said that negligent local government is Northwest Florida's most lucrative source of revenue. Haven't planned for picking up hurricane debris? Let FEMA pay for it. Don't have enough storm shelters? Ask the state legislature for money. Idiotically located a smelly sewer plant in downtown Pensacola? Have the feds pay to move it. Avoided sensible zoning to keep dangerous dioxin plants away from residential neighborhoods? Let EPA pay the clean-up costs.

They don't call this the "Florida Panhandle" for nothing.

The next time a Northwest Florida city or county ducks its public responsibility in hopes someone else will pay for it, remember the "good will" gesture of Navarre Beach residents. More likely than not, all you'll get is a sucker-punch.