It's not enough that Florida's counties have been branded bad guys for raising your taxes.
Now they've hired Enron's PR firm.
Future House Speaker Dean Cannon asked Polk County Commissioner Bob English Friday at a property tax hearing if he thought it was OK for the Florida Association of Counties to hire New York-based Hill & Knowlton, which "previously represented Big Tobacco, Enron and companies like that."
Cannon then said the statewide association had decided to charge counties more money for membership to hire the firm for a campaign against the House Republican tax plan.
Not so fast, FAC says.
New communications director Cragin Mosteller said Hill & Knowlton was hired in a pinch when their last communications director quit before the start of session. Their contract ends with the session in May. And the price will not be passed along in an assessment, Mosteller said.
FAC does have an upcoming board meeting to discuss its PR, though.
No word if it'll be in a smoke-filled room with Big Sugar and Fidel.

House Democrats gave themselves cover Friday by forcing Republicans to vote against a series of amendments to exempt police, firefighters, hurricane expenses, ambulance drivers and unfunded mandates from the GOP's property tax cut bill.
The GOP-stacked Policy and Budget Council naturally beat them all back. But the exercise prompted some interesting dialogue over who was the bigger fiend to local government.
Cities and counties have screamed for weeks that they'll shutter fire departments and lay off police if they lose billions of dollars in property tax.
"We need to send a message from Tallahassee that we care about local government," Democratic Rep. Jack Seiler of Broward County said during debate on exempting police from budget cuts.
"In order to afford my home, I don't want to say I'm the one who has to defend it myself," said Rep. Shelley Vana, a Palm Beach County Democrat who complained of gang activity in her neighborhood.
Republicans were ready to hit back by arguing the Democrats were trying to "micro manage" local budgets, and reminding them that the bill lets locals blow through the cap with a two-thirds vote of city councils or county commissions.
"This is absolutely micromanaging," an annoyed Rep. Ellyn Bogdanoff said.
Democrats suggested locals might be happy for a little heavy-handedness from Tallahassee.
"What are we doing by this entire bill but micromanaging local government," said Rep. Curtis Richardson, D-Tallahassee.

House Republicans say they're still serious about passing sweeping property tax reforms this year. But it's clear the wind is no longer at their backs.
Stung by the cold shoulder from cities and counties, Democrats and rural lawmakers, House leaders are softening support for an ambitious proposal to slash local budgets by $5.8 billion announced last month.
Today, House Republicans will amend their plan to exempt hospital districts, children's services councils and poor counties from those cuts, and to add some rent relief to the proposal.
The House plan still attempts to roll taxes on all property back to 2000 levels, to change the way property is appraised and to offer businesses tax breaks on computers and machinery. But House Republicans conceded the centerpiece of the proposal to impose massive cuts on cities, counties and other taxing districts had become a bargaining position with the Senate that was likely to soften.
"It'll end up being a big chip," said Rep. Dave Murzin, R-Pensacola. "And we're not going to give away all the cards right now."
House Republicans are in a bind partially due to the constitutional restraints they face. Any proposals that would go to voters this year require a three-fourths majority in the 120-member House and 40-member Senate, meaning every disgruntled member holds great sway in shaping the plan.
Last week, smaller counties and cities told House lawmakers their plan would produce Draconian cuts in services for poorer governments that hadn't seen giant run-ups in property values, an argument that won over some rural House Republicans.
"We took to heart what we thought local governments were saying," said House Budget Chief Ray Sansom of Destin. "They made a very good case."
Senate lawmakers, meanwhile, want a far smaller rollback, perhaps to a 2004 or 2005 level that would shave only 10-20 percent from the budgets of cities and counties.
The Senate also remains unsold on a constitutional amendment to swap homesteaders' property taxes for a higher sales tax.
"That's going to cause more unpredictability," said Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, who said he feared the sales tax would drive shoppers from his home Okaloosa County to Alabama.
Instead, the Senate is leaning toward a plan to target second-home owners, rental and commercial properties with a leaner property tax reduction that wouldn't hit counties and cities like the House plan does with 30 percent to 40 percent tax revenue losses.
Senate Finance and Tax Chairman Mike Haridopolos, R-Indialantic, also said he favors a broader spending cap on local governments or perhaps Gov. Charlie Crist's plan to impose Save Our Homes-like caps on non-homesteaded property instead.
"We're going to focus on non-homesteaded property, because they're the ones that have borne the brunt of the run-up in property taxes," Haridopolos said.

Think Tallahassee is dropping off the national Republican radar without a Bush in the Governor's Mansion?
Go fish.
GOP presidential wannabes John McCain, Mitt Romney and Rudy Guiliani have all scheduled stops in the capital city over the next few weeks to court all-important Republican state legislators and fund-raisers.
The House Majority office announced Thursday that Sen. McCain would be in town march 27 to speak to the Republican conference somewhere close to the Capitol. Former NYC Mayor Giuliani will follow on April 4, and once-Massachusetts Gov. Romney will touch down April 23.
Democratic contender Barack Obama is still scheduled to make an appearance in town March 30 after a fundraising swing through South Florida, but no other Democratic bigwigs are lined up for now.

Talk about bravado.
Barney Bishop, president of Associated Industries of Florida, issued this gutsy call to action Wednesday afternoon, a few hours after the trial lawyers' "False Accusations" bill squeaked through its first House committee stop on a 5-3 vote.
"Florida 's business community refuses to stand by idly while the trial lawyers again attempt to strip fairness from the courts in favor of big bucks for their pockets," Bishop said in the statement. He then goes on to poke fun at the trial lawyers for changing their name to the Florida Justice Association, and promise stern resistance.
"This is the first round in a heavyweight bout, and we remain confident the Florida Legislature will continue to uphold current law and fairness in the courts."
How much weight do they have to throw around?
Here's what the business groups that supported the repeal of "joint and several liability" last year spent on their boxers, er, lobbyists:
AIF: Up to $1.36 million.
Florida Hospital Association: Up to $1.1 million.
Florida Retail Federation: Up to $719,000.
American Tort Reform Association: Up to $675,000.
Florida Chamber of Commerce: Up to $549,000.
Trial lawyers, when they still went by that name, spent up to $536,000 in a losing effort last year.

Score one for the trial lawyers.
But it may be a short-lived celebration.
A bill that would forbid defense lawyers from deflecting blame for injuries they caused in negligence lawsuits cleared its first committee stop Wednesday over a drumbeat of criticism from businesses, medical providers and insurers.
But three Republicans on the House Constitution and Civil Law Committee voted against the bill trial lawyers are calling the "False Accusations" act.
Trial lawyers say the bill is needed after the ground rules for assigning blame where changed in companies' favor last year by Republicans and Jeb Bush last year.
Now, trial lawmakers can't ask a company 50 percent at fault for an injury to pay any more that half the damages at trial.
In return this year, the plaintiffs' bar would also like to prohibit defendants from further reducing their liability through a common practice known as the "empty chair," where they argue that someone else who isn't being sued was partly responsible.
Republican Rep. Mitch Needelman, a Melbourne Republican carrying the bill, says it's only fair to stop defendants from a blame-shifting game that was caused by the now-abolished "joint and several liability" legal doctrine.
But business groups, like tort reform guru William Large with the Florida Justice Reform Institute, say there's "no proof, and no need" for the change.
And with a mixed, 5-3 endorsement from its first committee stop, the bill will definitely draw more consternation at future stops and the House floor, where business groups, insurers and doctors hold tremendous influence among ruling Republicans.

The battle over who provides your digital cable is heating up in the Capitol.
Florida lawmakers have bragged this year that they've "collapsed the pyramid," parlance for putting more decisions in the hands of more members rather than concentrated with the House speaker and Senate president.
So, it peeves Sen. Mike Fasano and Rep. Rene Garcia to see one of the most special-interest laden bills of the session – House legislation opening up Florida's cable markets to phone companies – shuttling through the process.
Both lawmakers held a press conference Wednesday to promote alternative bills they called better alternatives to the telecom legislation that could hit the House floor next week.
They say the telecom companies' bill will allow companies to discriminate by offering cable and broadband packages only to affluent, white neighborhoods, if they want.
The industry bill also allows them to negotiate their franchise agreement with the state instead of local governments.
The phone companies, of course, call the discrimination argument poppycock. And apparently, a large number of House lawmakers with more control over the process agree.
Asked if it was a sign the telephone companies that outspent every other industry lobbying Florida government last year were too powerful, Fasano shrugged.
"Telecom companies have been as aggressive this year, they've hired more lobbyists and spent millions of dollars to promote a cherry-picking bill," the New Port Richey Republican says.
The numbers from last year are daunting.
BellSouth spent up to $1.9 million on Florida lobbyists last year. AT&T, which has since gobbled up BellSouth, spent up to $853,000. Sprint spent up to $446,000. Verizon, Cingular, T-Mobile and MCI weren't far behind.
On the other side, cable providers Time Warner and Comcast spent a combined $170,000 to fight back.
All that money couldn't buy a bill last year, when a skeptical Senate refused to pass it.
But this year, consumer groups say momentum is building for it. Both telephone and cable companies have attacked each other with television commercials.
Fasano said fellow Republican Sen. Mike Bennett of Bradenton had promised him a hearing on his bill soon. Bennett also showed up to champion the competing telecom bill two weeks ago.
Ben Wilcox, executive director of Common Cause, says it looks like telecom companies have double-downed on the Legislature this year.
"I would say (the lobbying pressure) is more this year, because it's so intense already," Wilcox said.
And it's only the second week.

House lawmakers want to open up an experimental virtual classroom program to possibly hundreds of thousands of Florida's home-schooled and private school students.
The K-8 Virtual School Program was funded at $7.2 million last year, which allowed just under 1,400 kindergarten through eighth-grade students to get a free computer, Internet account and books to take all their classes online. Students were only eligible if they'd attended public schools the prior year.
But a House bill that cleared its first committee stop Tuesday would open the doors to all 240,000 private school and 52,000 home-schooled students in those grades statewide.
That could cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and it's sponsor, Rep. Will Weatherford of Wesley Chapel, said he and other lawmakers would work to cap the number of students let in due to the tight budget year. He said it could be "well below 10,000" students.
But even that many students would cost $52 million, based on what the state spent last year per online student.
The bill also provides for the money to come through the state funding system for public schools, which alarmed Democrats on the House Education Innovation and Career Preparation Committee.
"I don't want to do anything that's going to hurt the existing public schools," said Weatherford, who was home-schooled with his eight brothers and sisters, including current Florida State quarterback Drew Weatherford.
"We're not looking to go crazy."
Two companies, Florida Connections Academy and Florida Virtual Academy, are approved to provide the service through nine public school districts.
The bill could also face legal scrutiny by defining the online academies as public schools but then capping the students who can participate.

House Speaker Marco Rubio's chief of staff abruptly quit Monday, saying he was moving his wife and four children back to their home Citrus County.
But he may be back in Tallahassee soon.
Richard Corcoran, who last worked on legislative campaigns for the state Republican Party before becoming Rubio's chief last year, is planning to run for the state Senate District 3 seat currently held by Nancy Argenziano.
The district is one of Florida's largest, geographically, reaching from Crystal River in Citrus County up to Leon and over almost to Jacksonville.
Argenziano won the seat in 2002 after re-districting and can run again in 2008, but may leave sooner if she's named to sit on the Public Service Commission. Last week, she advanced to the round of 12 contenders for two PSC vacancies, and is thought to be one of Gov. Charlie Crist's favorites for the post.
Corcoran's resignation letter released late Monday says he is returning to Citrus County to practice law, but Rubio's statement adds: "If he chooses to run for the state Senate, I believe he will serve his constituents with the same thoughtful and energetic focus that has made his work in the House so valuable."
Deputy chief of staff Bob Ward, who was former House Speaker Allan Bense's No. 1, will move up to replace Corcoran.

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.