By Charles T. Bowen
The Tampa Tribune Tampa Tribune (Florida)
METRO EDITION
SECTION: PASCO, Pg. 1
Tuesday, September 19, 1995

David Stockman called it the magic asterisk.

It’s kind of like filling in the blanks later. Except the blanks are in your checkbook. On the side for deposits.

Stockman, in his 1986 memoir “The Triumph of Politics: How the Reagan Revolution Failed” confessed the Reagan administration balanced its budget projections with an asterisk.

*Future savings to be identified.

In other words, when Stockman, Reagan’s budget director, and others didn’t have the stomach to cut any more, they just threw in an asterisk and said, “Hey, we’ll figure out these billions of dollars worth of cuts later.”

The only problem, Stockman said, was the cuts never got identified, and the federal budget deficit kept growing each year.

Not a good way to run a country.

Don’t look now, but Pasco County just did a little magic of its own.

Last week, the Metropolitan Planning Organization – the commission and elected officials from Dade City and Zephyrhills – endorsed a long-range road plan even though now there’s not enough money to pay for it.

The shortfall is $ 42 million.
Hocus-pocus.

*Future revenue to be identified.

Or, more appropriately:

*A tax nobody wants to talk about right now considering the butt-kicking the penny sales tax proposal took at the polls last week.    A 20-year plan  The dilemma facing the county is a fast-approaching deadline from the federal government. By the end of the year, the county has to finalize its plans for a road network through 2015.

And in order to meet public hearing and other time requirements, the county had to endorse a plan by mid-September. The issue was whether to cut $ 42 million worth of road construction or approve a plan first presented in July knowing there’s not enough money to pay for it.
The most likely way to pay for the red ink is the local option gasoline tax. Each penny of tax is expected to raise $ 1.1 million a year.

There’s one more consideration. Even though we’re talking about roads that won’t be built for 15 years or so, the county needs to start collecting the extra gasoline tax by the end of this decade to pay for everything.

The county’s road planning consultant, Bob Wallace, stood waiting for an answer.
Commissioners, understandably, were weary that agreeing to the plan meant committing to increasing the gasoline tax to pay for it.

Can you blame them? Three of the five face re-election next year, and they just watched nearly two of every three ballots cast say “no’ to a one-cent sales tax increase to build new schools.

Cutting $ 42 million meant forgetting 19 road projects like extending Collier Parkway north to Ehren Cutoff, widening Alternate U.S. 19 in Holiday and building the rerouted State Road 54 (now called State Road 56) east from County Road 581 to U.S. 301.

Bill Munz, chief assistant county administrator, cautioned against the cuts. That could mean, Munz said, lowering the level of service on Pasco’s roads beyond acceptable levels.

The bureaucrats and builders call that a concurrency problem.

In plain English, it means the roads would be so jammed, you could be facing a freeze on your tax base. A building moratorium is the likely scenario when there’s inadequate roads to handle traffic.    The $ 42 million question  So, to avoid future problems, the question remained. Where’s the $ 42 million going to come from?

“He (Wallace) doesn’t need to know,” said Munz, “And you don’t need to say.”
*Magic.

“That’s good,” chirped Commissioner David “Hap” Clarke Jr., MPO chairman.

Sylvia Young suggested the slight-of-hand solution be found in Tallahassee.

Don’t think so, even if your road lobbyist is a magician named Clyde Hobby.

The Legislature lacked the political courage to adopt the gas tax itself in 1994. Instead, it created the local option gas and sales taxes that pushed all the tough decisions to the city and county governments.

Kind of their own magic asterisk.

*Future revenue for which somebody else will have to take the heat.
No wonder Stockman called it the triumph of politics.