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Florida voters give thumb up to Amendment 1

By Alison Markham, Broker-Associate, GRI, Realtor® | January 29, 2008

By Associated Press

TALLAHASSEE — A ballot proposal that would cut property taxes an average of $240 a year for primary homeowners passed Tuesday, easily getting the 60 percent vote it needed.
With 71 percent of the expected vote counted, the proposed state constitutional amendment had 2,169,402 yes votes, or 64 percent, and 1,203,329 no votes, or 36 percent.
Amendment 1 is unlikely to be the last word on property tax relief in Florida, however.
Gov. Charlie Crist, who led the campaign to pass the proposed state constitutional amendment, said it’s just one step in a process he compared to a football game.
“This is the second play,” said Crist, a former high school quarterback. “We’ve got to keep driving down the field to get into the end zone for our people. This is just the start.”
The first play was a tax rollback, which did not require voter approval, that the Legislature passed last year. It’s estimated to save taxpayers up to $15 billion over five years, including $174 for the average homeowner in the first year.
Amendment 1 is expected to cut taxes another $9.3 billion in the first five years. It offers primary homeowners, or homesteaders, the estimated $240 annual savings — more for those who move — and other reductions for businesses, second homes and other non-homestead properties.
Local officials, public employee unions and other critics, though, said it would exacerbate inequities in Florida’s tax system and reduce vital public services including schools, fire protection, law enforcement.
The tax-cutting push was a response to exploding property values that jacked up tax bills mainly for owners of second or vacation homes and businesses rather than homesteaders who already benefit from an existing 3 percent cap on annual assessment increases.
The state’s current housing slump, though, is expected to reduce assessments somewhat.
The Taxation and Budget Reform Commission, which meets every 20 years, is considering other tax relief ideas including a proposal that would replace school property taxes with a broader sales tax on services and some goods now exempted. The commission will discuss its options Wednesday in the wake of the amendment’s passage.
The Legislature also could take another stab at property taxes, and a citizen initiative backed by House Speaker Marco Rubio, R-West Miami, is gathering signatures for a proposal that would limit annual taxes to 1.35 percent of a property’s value. It’s not expected, though, to get on the ballot this year.
Amendment 1 cleared a high hurdle — it was the first Florida ballot proposal that needed 60 percent approval instead of a simple majority.
The Republican-controlled Legislature put that requirement on the 2006 ballot at the request of business interests that wanted to make it harder to amend the Florida Constitution. It was enacted with 58 percent voter approval.
The 60 percent advocates were worried mostly about citizen initiatives such as one measure voters passed in 2002 mandating bigger pens for pregnant pigs and another still in the petition phase that would require voter approval for changes in local growth plans.
Amendment 1, though, was supported by some of the same Republican lawmakers and business leaders who backed the 60 percent requirement.
A judge last year threw a more far-reaching tax-cutting measure off the ballot because it had a misleading summary. That proposal would have phased out the 3 percent Save Our Homes cap for homesteaders, who could have opted, instead, for a complicated “super exemption.”
When homes changed hands, though, the new owner would have received only a super exemption, so over time Save Our Homes would have disappeared.
That proposal was designed to reverse the shift in tax burden from homesteads to other types of property caused by Save Our Homes.
Worried how homeowners would react to the phase-out once obscured by the misleading ballot summary, lawmakers instead offered voters Amendment 1.
It was heavily tilted in favor of homesteaders, who make up the biggest segment of the electorate.
Amendment 1’s greatest benefit for primary homeowners comes from increasing the existing $25,000 homestead exemption. It will double, but only for non-school taxes and just for homes valued at more than $50,000.
Many homeowners have been saying they feel trapped because they would lose their accrued Save Our Homes benefits if they moved. Amendment 1 offers them a “portability” provision. It will let them take up to $500,000 worth of Save Our Home benefits to a new residence retroactive to homes sold in 2007.
Critics, though, said portability will widen the existing tax gap between homesteaders and other property owners. A lawsuit challenging the portability provision on constitutional equity grounds already has been filed.
The amendment also has a couple provisions to help non-homestead property. Businesses will get a $25,000 exemption on equipment and other tangible personal property and all non-homestead property will get a 10 percent annual assessment cap.
That cap, though, is unlikely to have much effect because few properties increase in value that much every year, particularly in today’s declining real estate market.

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