The Impact Fees Tax Shift

Florida Sen Mike Bennett is sponsoring SB 630. The bill is designed to favor the development industry. Florida is second in the country in foreclosures. It is no coincidence the real estate industry is Bennett's top campaign contributors. New development would drive down the already unstable real estate market and forced the public to pay for new roads and sewage. Infrastructure costs will not go away. The expenses will be shifted away from developers. Welcome to Florida's tax shift game.

The last thing needed is the construction of new homes. A Miami Herald and CBS study found it will take years to sell current empty homes. This study was done before the recession.

CBS and the Miami Herald collaborated to report that at the current sales pace, it would take nearly three years to sell all the condominiums on the market. For single-family houses, it would take almost two years. Meanwhile the U.S. dollar is plummeting to record lows.

The text from Bennett's bill.

An act relating to impact fees; providing for a 3-year moratorium on the imposition or collection of impact fees by a county or municipality; providing for future expiration of the moratorium; providing an effective date.

The Hillsborough County Commission is using the recession has an excuse to waive impact fees. The county is experiencing a 20-month backlog of homes. Smart Growth activist Mariella Smith wrote, "Incredibly, four of the seven commissioners — Jim Norman, Ken Hagan, Kevin White & Al Higginbotham — see the solution to our housing glut as MORE housing." And many Florida pols would rather have you pay the impact costs than developers.