Grappling With Growth: Florida gets a tax hike

Florida gets a tax hike

In his campaign to become only the second Republican Governor of Florida in this century, Candidate Bob Martinez offered a medley of the G.O.P.'s greatest hits, highlighted by such familiar classics as slashing the budget and cutting taxes. Floridians loved his tune and rewarded him with a resounding victory over his Democratic rival, Steve Pajcic, last November. Today, however, Governor Martinez is singing the fiscal-responsibility blues. The man who vowed to "sweat $800 million" out of the state's budget has instead proposed tax hikes totaling $850 million, the largest revenue increase in Florida's history.

Martinez ruefully attributes his reversal to the...

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