PANEL ESTIMATES COSTS OF TWO CONSTITUTIONAL BALLOT INITIATIVES

Law Covers Citizen Initiatives

TALLAHASSEE - A proposed state constitutional amendment that would cap the
size of Florida public school classrooms would cost between $20 billion and
$27.5 billion over the next eight years, a panel of state economists
estimated Thursday.

And providing a universal prekindergarten education to the state's
4-year-olds would cost between $425 million and $650 million a year, they
estimated.

Should the two measures -- sponsored by Miami state Sen. Kendrick Meek and
Miami-Dade County Mayor Alex Penelas, respectively -- qualify for the
November ballot, a new state law will require that those price tags
accompany the ballot language.

The panel also reviewed three other citizen-proposed initiatives, but
decided it could not determine the cost for two of the measures -- creating
a central state university governing board and allowing some nonviolent
drug offenders to choose treatment over incarceration -- and would say so
on the ballot. And the group decided the third measure, outlawing the
caging of pregnant pigs, would have no fiscal impact for state or local
governments.

Thursday's meeting was the first time the Revenue Estimating Conference, a
panel of four economists that represents the Republican-led Legislature and
Gov. Jeb Bush, wrestled with its new obligation of determining how much
citizen initiatives not yet on the ballot might cost government. The
Legislature, in passing the measure last month, exempted from the
requirement any legislative-sponsored ballot questions and citizen
initiatives that had already qualified for the ballot.

The panel found its new task tough going. Over a 10-hour period, the
economists debated assumptions about how lawmakers would actually implement
the broadly worded amendments, such as whether current funding for Head
Start would be allowed to be used for the new pre-K plan or what
combinations of permanent facilities and portable classrooms would be used
in the class-size plan.

Meek's plan would cap classrooms in 2010 at 18 students for kindergarten
through third grade; 22 students in fourth through eighth grade; and 25 in
high school.

"If we don't agree on anything else, I think we all agree there is a lot of
uncertainty here," a weary Ed Montanaro, the director of the Legislature's
Office of Economic and Demographic Research, said seven hours into the
review process.

Longtime Department of Education employee Spessard Boatwright, who heads
the department's facilities office, told the exasperated panel he had no
advice to give them about how to guess how many of the needed new
classrooms would be added by building permanent facilities or buying
portable classrooms.

"I have no idea. And I don't have a crystal ball," Boatwright said.

The panel eventually decided to base the low end of the estimate, $20
billion, on the state responding to the class-size plan by supplying 25
percent permanent facilities and 75 percent portables. The $27.5 billion
reflects the current system, with 88 percent of classrooms being permanent.

Those numbers, however, won the endorsement of just three of the four
economists. Montanaro argued unsuccessfully that the $20 billion to $27.5
billion figure should have been broken down between recurring operating
costs -- or hiring more teachers -- and one-time construction costs.
"Otherwise, we are just muddying the numbers," he said.

Meek and Penelas, both Democrats, said they expect the painstaking exercise
will actually help a lawsuit they filed last week seeking to invalidate the
new price-tag law.

"That was tantamount to a policy debate that belongs in the Legislature,
not here," Penelas said shortly after the panel wrapped up its discussion
on his prekindergarten education plan. "It lends fuel to the challenge of
this whole process."

Penelas has estimated that the cost of his plan would be would be between
$250 million and $350 million annually. Meek has not released an estimate
for his proposal.