If gas tax break is such a good idea, why wait?

As our state legislators reassemble for yet another special session this week – this time, dealing with the crisis in property insurance as hurricane season starts – they ought to give very strong consideration to moving up the month of Florida's gasoline tax holiday from October to July.

In planning the state budget in their regular 2022 legislative session, lawmakers decided to suspend the state's gas tax for October, hoping to cut the cost 25.3 cents per gallon. Hang the expense, they said, we can always dip into Florida's share of federal coronavirus recovery funds to make up the $200 revenue loss.

What maintaining roads and bridges has to do with easing the financial impact of the COVID virus is not clear. But who's going to quibble when there's money to be saved at the pump?

Last November, Gov. Ron DeSantis held news conferences in Jacksonville and Daytona Beach to propose $1 billion in gas-tax relief with a five-month hiatus. He and the Republicans who run the House and Senate wound up with the one-month suspension and, to no one's surprise, they scheduled it for the month preceding the big election in which the governor and most legislators will be on the ballot.

Early this month, DeSantis signed a package of $1.2 billion in tax cuts, including 10 sales tax "holidays" on consumer items ranging from fuel and diapers to disaster supplies and tools. He said, "Florida's economy has consistently outpaced the nation, but we are still fighting against inflationary policies imposed on us by the Biden Administration.

"In Florida, we are going to support our residents and help them afford the goods that they need," he continued. "Florida has been fiscally responsible, so we are in a good position to provide meaningful relief for families, right now."

Drivers paying $4.50 to $5 a gallon might think October isn't exactly "right now." And it's not the state's financial caution, but the federal government's largesse, that makes this holiday possible. But if they're going to do it, why wait?

The idea of doing it in October, at least officially, was that slotting it for the summer would afford great benefit to tourists, rather than Florida residents. Suspending the gas tax in July or August would probably cost a lot more in lost revenue and spread the break to hundreds of thousands of drivers who don't vote in Florida.

And besides, people might not remember on Election Day. It'd be a shame to see a good pander like that go to waste.

"Our goal was to make sure Floridians are able to have as much access to the $200 million reduction," House appropriations chief Jay Trumbull, R-Panama City, was quoted at the time. Sen. Kelli Stargel of Lakeland, the Senate budget boss, said choosing October "had nothing to do with the election."

But gas prices have spiked to unprecedented levels all over the country. If they suspended the state tax in July, would any Floridian really resent the idea that out-of-state visitors are getting the break, too? Most of us probably wouldn't even think of that.

The state could even promote the idea in its tourism advertising — "Hey, come on down and we'll help you with the cost of filling your tank." Since when has enticing tourists been something to avoid?

Of course, suspending the state fuel tax, whenever it's done, doesn't mean saving about a quarter on the gallon. Prices will continue to climb and there's no assurance that retailers will pass the savings along to customers. But it can't hurt.

There's a bit of irony – some would call it hypocrisy – in a conservative Republican state government taking political credit for a bit of tax relief made possible by the Biden Administration's economic recovery funding. But that's not unusual.

Nor is it unprecedented for the Legislature to remake its agenda for a special session.

Just last month, we had one on redrawing Florida's congressional district boundaries and, with hardly any notice, DeSantis expanded the call of the session to include his plan for taking away Disney World's special governmental status. They could toss some new abortion restrictions, or that "constitutional carry" gun legislation, onto the special-session agenda if they feel like it.

Changing the effective date of a fuel-tax holiday seems like a minor detail, compared to some of the other things legislators have done in haste when they feel like it.

Columnist Bill Cotterell is a retired Tallahassee Democrat Capitol reporter. He can be reached at [email protected]