Today, let's talk about economic data and reports and their importance even to elected government officials in Lake County. The Orlando Sentinel's "CFB" Business section is issuing their economic forecast info in tomorrow's edition. But, it probably is based on the UCF report we talk about further down.
When I go to Lake School District meetings or read reports, it is extremely rare to see any economic data provided to the Board as part of the data used in evaluating budget or spending decisions. Use of such data is COMMON in the corporate world. For example, a division wants to justify the building of a new plant, and they may show rising house sales as a reason, when an economist's research indicates there is no underlying population increase, thus the increased sales is due to speculation which will result in a collapse in housing prices in the future. True story - no, not central Florida, but Juneau, Alaska which suffered a major housing recession after the collapse of speculation in the 1970's. The company economist correctly forecast the downturn and the company avoided building a plant where sales would have collapsed. (Perhaps Romac should hire an economist here in Lake County, then they would have known...).
The Tax Foundation provides many different reports on federal and state level taxes and comparisons. You can go there to get comparison data for Florida vs other states. There is also a new 90 page Florida & Metro Economic Forecast report from UCF discussed below.
Above is a Tax Foundation map showing the different levels of residential property taxes and Florida is rather low at .80% (less than 1 percent). This is interesting since Florida doesn't have an income tax, I expected the property tax to be higher, but it wasn't. One reason could be that the Save our House Tax Initiative may be holding down taxes below the 2-3% rate we always hear about. Since Florida has no income tax, it must raise taxes from property, sales and other taxes, which I would have thought would be higher. It indicates one reason why government revenues for education are low vs other states (another report). BUT, this data probably doesn't reflect increases in property taxes due to impact fees, which are new or rising.
This is the type of data that local agencies should be collecting in an objective manner to educate elected officials and citizens of how Florida or local Florida regions compare to other states and locations. Compare Florida to Texas, which DOES have an income tax, but their property taxes are more than twice Florida's. It would be interesting to see a technical analysis why Florida is so low. If the local agencies did have an organized presentation of facts like these on their websites, they might have more credibility when asking for more tax revenue to pay for schools.
Here is another another Tax Foundation study on property taxes, comparing the tax among all 788 US Counties, and you can download a pdf OR excel version of the report to play with the data:
Property Taxes on Owner-Occupied Housing, by County, 2007. Ranked by Property Taxes Paid
The study found that Lake County, FL ranked 396 among 788 Counties in the US on Property taxes paid on owner occupied housing (we assume they mean it was homesteaded):
County: Lake County Florida:
Median Property Taxes Paid on Occupied homes: $1,624
Ranking among 788 counties in US: 396
Median Home Value: $202,800
Taxes as percent of Home Value: 0.80%
Rank: 451
Median Income for Home owners: $51,028
Taxes as percent of income: 3.2%
Rank among counties for tax percentage: 297
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Click HERE to see the Tax Foundation page on property taxes.
UCF Annual Florida & Metro Economic Forecast published Dec., 2008: And finally, if you REALLY want to see economic analysis, go read the 90 page annual economic report from UCF HERE. Look at the section for the Orlando- Kissimmee MSA (which inlcudes Lake County) and also all the Florida wide economic analysis charts on employment, house building, etc.
Conclusion
Although I have had three economics courses, I don't pretend to know the underlying principles in these comparisons, so the purpose here is to ask why we don't see the local School District or County government disclosing objective economic analysis like this (which is commonly used in corporations to evaluate future spending plans) in their meetings, board packages or websites before spending decisions. Without proper professional analysis of data like this, then capital and other spending decisions don't have the credibility if budgets were tied to economic indicators like this.
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