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Amendment 1: Good Trumped By Pure Awful

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By TOM JACKSON, The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 20, 2008

While negotiating with myself over where This Space ought to stand regarding the upcoming vote on Amendment 1: Armageddon or Utopia?, the image I can't shake is President Bush, feet planted on the deck of the USS Lincoln, a celebratory banner - soon to be a long-legged symbol of controversy - pulsing from the observation deck overhead.

Even now, Americans of intelligence and goodwill can come nearly to blows over whether that banner reflected the president's shallow understanding of the struggle to come, or the carrier crew's good cheer over the rousing success and completion of its tour. But when it comes to Amendment 1, I keep seeing Gov. Crist and legislative leaders exulting in Florida Air National Guard flight suits, the iconic banner as a backdrop and a prevailing sense in Tallahassee that, about property tax reform, it's "Mission Accomplished."

In fact, it would be anything but. This goulash of a proposed state constitutional amendment bubbles with morsels for Florida's current homesteaders (Save Our Homes portability, doubling of the homestead exemption) that, taken together, tend to exacerbate the worst inequities of existing property tax law. Meanwhile, there's a minor break for businesses and the back of the hand for everyone else who owns a vacation home or commercial property.

What Would Reagan Do?

One measure of Floridians' lack of enthusiasm for this "reform" package is a widespread disdain for the estimated average savings in store for the typical homeowner: $240 annually, or about 65.7 cents per day (less in leap years). This Space would never resort to such condescension, holding firm to its conviction that there is no tax cut too small to be celebrated.

Still, many in the "No on 1" camp have embraced a dismissive attitude that says, unhelpfully: "If the state can't part with any more than $20 a month, they might as well keep it." These people are in need of an intervention. Don't need an extra $240 this year? Write a check to the animal shelter.

Listen, few of the arguments against the amendment move a devout free-market conservative to rue its passage. Actually, if what opponents say is true - in essence, government, starved for revenue, would shrink - no self-respecting Reaganite would dare root against it. Let's start with the guys paid to point at the ground while one guy digs.

But wisdom and experience suggest that whenever government starts favoring one group of citizens over another, mischief ensues. That has been the problem with Save Our Homes all along.

Needed Now: Bold Imagination

Consider. SOH became entwined with the state constitution as a result of a single, terrible argument: Neither rising property values, nor rising costs of government, should result in homeowners being taxed out of their homesteads. Fair enough. But the remedy - cap assessments on homestead property - was bogus, serving to divert Floridians' attention from the real culprit.

Given their favored status, SOH beneficiaries naturally enjoyed diminished interest in how state and local governments spent tax collections. After all, they weren't hauling the freight. Small wonder public spending in Florida skyrocketed in the last 10 years.

Knowing the score, lawmakers guided by a primary ethic - guarantee re-election - reduced the halls of government to little more than trading floors where gaming the system involved (a) an ever wider and deeper spreading of public sector duties while (b) limiting the number of heavy-lifting bill-payers to electoral minorities. In that respect, if Save Our Homes didn't exist, the Legislature would have to invent it.

That's no way to run a representative democracy.

Florida's property tax system needs an overhaul far beyond the edges-nibbling, favorites-playing, responsibility-dodging smorgasbord currently offered. It needs a level playing field that keeps all of its property-owning tax payers in the game, so that whenever some county commissioner says he wants to hire a consultant, or some state representative says she'd like to fund a performing arts center, or some county supervisor recommends yet another round of across-the-board 5 percent raises, a bona fide majority will be interested enough to interject, sternly, "Guess again."

Until then, we have Amendment 1, a bad revision to a bad idea.

And if those who predict swift and terrible justice sweeping down from a federal courtroom - exactly how many portions of the U.S. Constitution are violated by allowing existing homeowners an advantage (SOH portability) when they compete against Rust Belt newcomers in the state's real estate market? - we just may get the property tax reform we needed in the first place.

Mission accomplished, indeed.

Tom Jackson can be reached at (813) 948-4219.

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