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Save Our Homes May Get Reprieve

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By BILL KACZOR The Associated Press

Published: October 7, 2007

TALLAHASSEE - House Speaker Marco Rubio is ready to give up efforts to phase out the popular Save Our Homes Amendment that gives primary homeowners protection against dramatic increases in property taxes.

Rubio acknowledged that any replacement for a previously proposed tax-cutting state constitutional amendment would leave Save Our Homes intact. A judge has thrown that amendment off the ballot.

'It's clear Save Our Homes is a very popular protection that homeowners enjoy,' the West Miami Republican said Friday. 'In a time when people's taxes keep going up, it's very difficult to go to voters and convince them that they should let go of a security blanket like Save Our Homes.'

Budget-cutting and no-fault auto insurance issues have been resolved at a special legislative session ending next Friday with final but anticlimactic votes on spending reductions. So attention now is turning to property tax relief.

Rubio, a vocal tax-cutting advocate, and Senate President Ken Pruitt, R-Port St. Lucie, announced plans for a separate special session on that issue before the end of October. Lawmakers need to act by then to meet a constitutional deadline for putting a new amendment on the Jan. 29 presidential primary ballot.

Misleading And Inaccurate
Chief Circuit Judge Charles A. Francis of Tallahassee last month removed the amendment the Legislature passed at a June special session because he found the ballot summary misleading and inaccurate. It says the measure would protect Save Our Homes benefits, although it actually would remove them, he ruled.

Save Our Homes limits annual increases in assessments to no more than 3 percent for what are known as homesteads, but that has shifted tax burdens to owners of other properties, including businesses, second homes and rental units.

Without such a limit, non-homestead taxpayers have seen their tax double, triple or more in recent years because of soaring property values.

The Legislature responded to outcries over those increases, in part, by proposing the amendment that eventually would have replaced the Save Our Homes limit with a new 'superexemption' for all primary homeowners.

Initially, homeowners would have gotten a choice. They could have kept their Save Our Homes benefits or taken the superexemption. It would have knocked 75 percent off the first $200,000 of a home's value and 15 percent off the next $300,000.

That might be a good option at first for most homeowners, but if property values that are declining now in many areas start going up again it could be a bad bet.

Long-Term Forecast Tricky

Although the amendment would have resulted in tax savings at first, they could not be accurately estimated because there's no telling how many homeowners would take the superexemption. The long-term forecast was even trickier because of uncertainty over future market values.

Once a home is sold, only the superexemption could have been taken. Eventually, that would have gotten rid of Save Our Homes for everyone.

The superexemption would have been a better deal, though, than what homeowners get now when they sell. Sellers cannot take their accrued Save Our Homes benefits to a new house and only get the standard $25,000 exemption.

Rubio said any new plan likely would include an increase in the homestead exemption and a 'portability' provision that would allow homeowners to take at least some part of their existing benefit with them when they move.

Gov. Charlie Crist made portability and a doubling of the homestead exemption part of his election campaign last year.

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