Florida's Shaw may be munis' top advocate in next Congress.

WASHINGTON -- Rep. E. Clay Shaw, a Florida Republican who sits on the House Ways and Means Committee, may emerge as the next congressional champion of tax-exempt bonds, lobbyists said yesterday.

The sources said Shaw is among several top committee Republicans who have been receptive in the past to the idea of easing curbs on tax-exempts. The other GOP names mentioned most often are Bill Thomas of California, Nancy Johnson of Connecticut, and Amo Houghton of New York.

"We feel positive about how the Republicans on the committee will look at our issues," said John Vogt, vice president for external affairs with the Public Securities Association.

Vogt said it was not surprising to find a large number of Republican supporters of public finance because "our issues have never been partisan." He noted that the Anthony Public Finance Commission had a Democrat and Republican governor as members and was "bipartisan from the get-go."

While many Republicans may be receptive to tax-exempt financing, however, several lobbyists said they see Shaw as the one most likely to aggressively push legislation to ease bond curbs. Shaw has been a strong bond supporter and knows municipals well because he spent five years as mayor of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., they said.

An aide to Shaw said the congressman has been out of town since the election and he has not had a chance to talk to him about his future role on the committee. But given Shaw's past support for municipals, the aide said Shaw is probably "looking forward to being a strong advocate" of tax-exempt finance.

For the past few years the two top advocates of municipal finance on the panel have been Rep. Bill Coyne, DPa., and Rep. Ben Cardin, D-Md. Coyne introduced a wide-ranging bill to ease bond curbs in 1993. The bill never became law, but Coyne is expected to reintroduce his measure early in 1995.

Coyne and Cardin, however, may have lost their effectiveness now that the Democratic Party is unexpectedly out of power in the House. Rep. Bill Archer, R-Tex., the incoming Ways and Means chairman, has not said exactly how much he will include panel Democrats in the tax-writing process, but he signaled last week that he may give them little or no opportunity to participate.

Archer was quoted as saying "we're going to be at least as accommodating to them as they have been to us," an apparent reference to several years in which former Ways and Means chairman Dan Rostenkowski, D-Ill., shut Republican committee members out of the process of drafting tax bills.

That has left municipal lobbyists scrutinizing the current Republicans on the panel in an attempt to determine which are supporters of tax-exempt bonds. One way to gauge support, the lobbyists said, is to look at who signed on to Coyne's bond bill. Of the 11 Republicans on the panel, eight were co-sponsors of the bill.

Several lobbyists said they were encouraged that there appears to be no committee Republican who has criticized tax-exempt bonds in the past, along the lines of Rep. Sam Gibbons, D-Fla., or Rep. Fortney Stark, D-Calif. Gibbons and Stark are well-known opponents of private-activity bonds.

"There's nobody I can see on the list that's anti-bond," said a former House staff member. "I don't see any bomb throwers" who might try to attack public finance, he added.

But the former staff member said that there may not be a big opportunity to pass proposals easing bond curbs next year because the Republicans will be preoccupied with trying to pass the tax cuts they promised during the campaign, such as a reduction in the capital gains rate that they have been pushing for years.

"I don't know that you're going to see a whole lot right now because the Republicans are going to have a full plate, given the things they've traditionally talked about," the former staff member said. On the other hand, he said he does not see "any big danger at this stage that they're going to be looking at tax-exempt bonds as a way to pay for" their revenue-losing tax proposals.

But other lobbyists said they were concerned that the need for finding revenue-raising items would be great enough that proposals for restricting bonds could surface.

"We're going to be on the defensive for sure" during next year's tax-writing process, said John C. Murphy, the executive director of the Association of Local Housing Finance Agencies. Murphy's group strongly supports the tax exemption for mortgage revenue bonds and the low-income housing tax credit, both of which Congress made permanent in 1993.

"We're going to have to pay very close attention" to the taxwriting process and "be vigilant about our permanent extensions," Murphy said.

One big question mark about the committee involves who will be members in 1995. In 1994 the panel had 36 members: 24 Democrats and 14 Republicans. Archer has said he wants to trim the membership to 29 members, with 17 Republicans and only 12 Democrats.

If Archer goes ahead with his plan, that would mean a number of Democrats slated to return to the committee next year would be removed. Municipal lobbyists said most of those members have been strong bond supporters in the past. They include John Lewis of Georgia, Richard Neal of Massachusetts, and Bill Brewster of Oklahoma.

Archer's plan would also mean several new Republican faces on the panel, which could be a double-edged sword, lobbyists said. The incoming members could just as easily be bond opponents as supporters, they said.

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