State economists began their semi-annual pulse-taking of Florida's general tax collections Monday morning, and plan to hand some bad news to lawmakers and Gov. Charlie Crist by day's end.
The team of number-crunchers from the governor's office, Legislature and Department of Revenue are poised to downgrade state revenue growth anywhere from $535 million to $689 million, due mostly to an expected dip in sales tax of as much as $610 million.
The decline is widely attributed to a cooling real estate market and the halt of construction associated with it, directly evidenced by an expected drop in the documentary stamp tax on real estate sales of $75 million to $99 million.
Current-year revenues are down too, but not as much.
Crist has proposed making up for the downturn by using reserves to fund the $71 billion budget he proposed to lawmakers earlier this year. But the more conservative House is looking closely at slashing "inefficiencies" in agency budgets instead.
"That's still more money than last year," House Speaker Marco Rubio said of the expected downgrade.