The constituents are mad: just ask Florida's local government budget chiefs.

• Author: MacManus, Susan A.

A survey of local government finance officials in Florida registers citizens' growing hostility toward their governments - particularly in school districts and where governments are in poor fiscal condition.

Adding growing citizen hostility to the volatile mix of scarce resources, changing age profiles, and intergovernmental funding uncertainties can produce a formula for calculating the fiscal politics confronting many local governments today. For several decades, citizen hostility has been greatest toward the federal government, as documented by the U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations. But as Florida finance officers can attest, the public now is aiming its animosity at local governments for a variety of reasons.

In the fall of 1994, the chief finance/budget officers of all Florida counties and school districts, along with the municipal members of the Florida League of Cities, were surveyed by mail. The survey, conducted by the University of South Florida Graduate Seminar in Issues in Florida Budgeting and Finance, asked a series of questions probing the degree to which citizen attitudes toward a respondent's jurisdiction had changed over the past two years and why. Overall, 56 percent of those contacted returned the questionnaire: 64 percent of the counties, 55 percent of the cities, and 66 percent of the school boards.

Knowing what pushes the public's "anger button" is vital to crafting successful budgetary strategies in the 1990s, particularly when igniting fireworks can be avoided. While some of the factors contributing to citizen hostility may be specific to Florida's political environment and constituency profile, many are likely to affect local governments everywhere. Nonetheless, it is important to describe Florida's fiscal environment briefly.

Florida: The Antitax State

Florida has ranked among the four fastest growing states in every decade since 1920. Much of its growth has been fueled by an influx of retirees from the Northeast and Midwest, foreign immigrants from Latin and South America seeking refuge from repressive environments, and young adults attracted to Florida's expanding economy. As a consequence of this in-migration, the state's age profile has changed dramatically. Florida now has the highest proportion of residents 65 and older: 18 percent.

Due to rapid growth, property values in many jurisdictions have escalated sharply. This trend, along with regular increases in the local property tax millage rates, has led many Floridians to conclude that property taxes are out of control. Their animosity toward property taxes has carried over to other local taxes and user fees (now referred to by some citizen groups as "fee taxes").

The growing antitax sentiment among Floridians has prompted a frenzy of petition drives aimed at constitutionally limiting taxing and spending. Proposals that have made it to the ballot have passed overwhelmingly. Among recently adopted constitutional amendments is one in 1992 that limits the annual growth of assessments on homestead property to either 3 percent or the inflation rate whichever is smaller and another in 1994 capping spending. Some now call Florida the "second California" due to the rapid increase in citizen-initiated petitions.

Political pressures to contain tax growth and formidable legal constraints on taxing authority have combined to make life difficult for many of Florida's local governments. While the state legislature has slowly granted local governments more taxing powers (especially large cities and counties), it has often done so with the caveat that new or increased taxes be approved by the voters.

Florida's local governments not only have more legal restrictions on their revenue-raising capacity than their counterparts in many other states, they also are more dependent on state intergovernmental transfers than is common elsewhere. This dependency increases the likelihood of uncertainty on both sides of the budgetary ledger: 40 percent of the budget officers responding to the survey indicate that "changing state funding levels" make their efforts at projecting future revenue quite difficult, and 43 percent identify "anticipating new state mandates" as a major impediment to their spending forecasts in spite of the fact that Florida voters approved a constitutional amendment limiting unfunded state mandates several years ago.

In a nutshell, many of Florida's local government officials blame the state for putting them between a rock and a hard place. The rock is unfunded mandates, and the hard place is a legally restricted revenue-raising capacity made even more onerous by a tax-hostile constituency.

Rising Levels of Hostility

More than 40 percent of Florida's budget chiefs report that citizens have grown more hostile toward their government during the past two years, while 22 [TABULAR DATA FOR EXHIBIT 1 OMITTED] percent say their constituents...