Where’s the big push for Hillsborough’s infrastructure tax? | Column

Would anyone leading the campaign for Hillsborough County’s infrastructure tax please raise your hand?

That’s the big question here only weeks before county voters begin deciding whether to extend the Community Investment Tax, a half-cent sales tax voters first adopted in 1996 to pay for schools, fire stations, a new football stadium and other big-ticket projects. For a tax so critical to the region’s future, the push behind it barely has a pulse.

Though county commissioners agreed in April to put a renewal of the tax on the Nov. 5 general election ballot, this referendum is far different from the original tax, with half the life span (15 years) and a sharply reduced share for the Hillsborough school system, to 5% of the proceeds, down from the current 25%.

The commission’s decision to stiff the schools and a parallel effort by the board’s four-person Republican majority to block a separate referendum in November for teacher pay has sapped enthusiasm for the Community Investment Tax this time around. For months, public officials and business leaders have shrugged when asked who will lead the campaign in what’s already expected to be an uphill struggle. There’s no political committee or war chest behind it, no messaging in place and no seeming coordination among the agencies that stand to benefit. In that sense, what’s changed from 1996 is not only the tax’s duration and payout, but the entire calculus and mechanism for selling it to voters.

By the early 1990s, local governments across Hillsborough faced billion-dollar-plus infrastructure deficits, and officials feared that without new investments in schools, public safety, roads, water and other everyday essentials, the quality of life across greater Tampa would decline, stunting growth and the region’s national appeal.

Tampa’s then-Mayor Dick Greco worked with his old friend Joe Chillura, a former Tampa City Council member and then-county commissioner, on what both called a buffet-style tax plan that offered everybody something. As envisioned, the Community Investment Tax would rally urban and suburban voters around a common fate by providing for a mix of projects, from new schools and roads to libraries and parks. They also included a new football stadium for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Widely criticized at the time, the move was ultimately credited for turning out enough sports fans to push the referendum over the top.

The Community Investment Tax passed on Sept. 3, 1996, by a margin of 53%-47%, almost exactly a year after Hillsborough voters soundly rejected two similar but separate tax measures for schools and public safety. Over the past 28 years, the tax has provided about $2.3 billion in funding toward some 750 projects (beyond Raymond James Stadium), including hundreds of parks, scores of roads and bridges, more than a dozen fire stations and improvements to schools, libraries, museums and utilities. Chillura, who died Feb. 3 at age 84, insisted that his role in crafting the Community Investment Tax was his biggest achievement over decades in office.

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But that win didn’t come easily. Sponsors assembled a broad range of political support, from officeholders and business leaders to civic and neighborhood groups. Supporters created a political committee, opened a campaign headquarters near the airport and cajoled Tampa’s movers and shakers to write four-figure checks, running what a spokesperson likened to a congressional campaign. Organizers hired public relations firms, printed yard signs, handed out bumper stickers (remember those?) and plunked firefighters at busy intersections. Betty Castor, a former Florida legislator and state education commissioner, then serving as president of the University of South Florida, made the rounds extolling the value of schools to the region’s economy. Countless days, Greco’s longtime confidant, Tampa businessman George Levy, would drive the mayor to two, three or four speaking engagements that often ended deep into the night. “We had a team that wouldn’t quit,” Greco recalled this month. “We worked 24 hours a day. Anything that we needed to do, we came together and did it.” The hubbub was credited for causing a record number of absentee ballot requests and a record turnout for a Hillsborough primary election.

Fast-forward to today, and the contrast is stark. Local political, business and civic leaders told the Tampa Bay Times in recent weeks they had no idea who, if anyone, would take the helm of a campaign this time, or if an organized lobbying effort was even forming. “As far as I know, there is no organized group like last time,” said Tampa City Council member Charlie Miranda, who famously opposed the original subsidy for a new Bucs stadium by wearing all-black clothing — suit, shirt and tie — to council meetings.

That a campaign has yet to surface is stunning, given that mail ballots for the general election go out Oct. 3, meaning voters will start deciding the ballot measure in six weeks. The lateness in acting also ignores how close the 1996 outcome was even despite the grim circumstances at the time and the organized blitz to voters. Supporters then had opportunity to make three strong pitches to three distinct audiences. Schools already laden with portable classrooms were facing double sessions. A crime peak nationwide in the early 1990s had fed the public’s appetite to fund police and jails. And without a new stadium, the Bucs would leave, damaging Tampa’s pride and national profile. Yet even with these selling points, a swing of fewer than 6,000 votes would have sunk the referendum. And since that election, the number of registered voters in Hillsborough has grown 90%. That’s 400,000 additional voters to reach.

Several political and business leaders who support the tax said the county commission erred by shortchanging the school district. After all, they note, virtually every new school the district needs is targeted for fast-growing south and east county, where support for schools among younger parents could deliver key votes in these heavily Republican areas. As a practical matter, they question the strategy of alienating education supporters and the 23,400 workers at the Hillsborough school system, the county’s largest employer. That’s a huge potential voting bloc. The commission’s decision also ran afoul of polling earlier this year that found that schools were a bigger driver for extending Community Investment Tax than public safety or other infrastructure.

Some supporters say the lack of a visible campaign reflects many things: a tired state of civic leadership, a growing cultural divide between the cities and suburbs, the shifting clout dynamics of political and corporate leaders and the county’s shorn ambitions. Widening Lithia Pinecrest Road is fine, but how does that signature project for east Hillsborough bring in voters from Tampa, Town ‘N Country or Lutz? The plans that local governments outlined for spending the tax through 2041 lack this sort of creativity and oxygen, with a time horizon and details that many fault as too lacking to generate excitement.

That’s what makes a public relations campaign so vital, Greco suggested recently — one that shows the continuing use for the sales tax by highlighting needs down to the neighborhood level. “It’s a different time altogether now,” Greco said, noting how the COVID-19 pandemic changed interacting in person and campaigning in particular. The former mayor is concerned that voters have taken the Community Investment Tax for granted and that the old notion of common cause is a tougher sell today. “It worries me,” Greco said about the tax’s prospects in November. “It can’t be about me; it’s got to be about us.”

John Hill is a columnist and editorial writer with the Times. Any opinions expressed in this column are his own.