Article published Jan 18, 2008

 

Time has run out for the state's anti-tax activists to gather enough signatures to get their tax-slashing amendment on the Florida ballot in November.

Organizers are instead scrambling to gather upwards of 350,000 signatures demanding a statewide property tax cap and put them into the hands of Tallahassee policy crafters -- legislators and members of a special tax and budget reform commission.

Both the commission and the Legislature still have time for a comprehensive property tax cap in November 2008.

The activists intend to use the state's Jan. 29 vote on presidential primary candidates and the Save Our Homes portability amendment as an opportunity to pick up signatures for their proposal, which would put a permanent 1.35 percent lid on the amount of property tax that could be collected on the taxable value of any and all Florida property.

"Whatever way we can, we are going to push to get this on the ballot this year," said one of the chief organizers, Dr. David McKalip, a St. Petersburg neurosurgeon.

Dubbed the "1.35 percent solution," the proposal has, at the very least, become a unified rallying point for the state's disparate tax-cutting activists. Until just a few months ago, they were each pushing their own utopian dream for holding the line.

"This is the largest anti-tax coalition that has ever been assembled in Florida," said Doug Guetzloe, chairman and founder of Orlando-based Ax the Tax, which has thrown his group's considerable support behind the 1.35 percent proposal.

Collectively, the regional groups -- including Ax the Tax, Cut Taxes Now in Tampa, the Coalition Against Runaway Taxation in the Sarasota-Manatee area and many smaller groups -- have 75,000 to 100,000 followers who have signed up in some form or other.

"I would say we have in excess of 1,000 people who are really fire-breathers," Guetzloe said.

The granddaddy of the groups involved, Ax the Tax was founded in 1982 and claims to have been involved in $25 billion in tax cuts already through various referenda.

While the Legislature's Amendment 1 would give some portability to an already homesteaded homeowner, the 1.35 percent solution would be a rather dramatic, across-the-board property tax limit that would reduce or cap the tax bills paid by any property owner, whether the property is a primary residence, a vacation home, a shopping center, or a vacant lot.

On average, it would cut property taxes by 25 percent around the state, promoters say.

If an individual's property is already taxed at less than 1.35 percent -- the case in unincorporated Sarasota County -- the proposal would serve as a barrier to higher taxes at some future date.

Hovering in the parking lots of polling places, volunteer activists plan to tell voters that their proposal can work alongside the more limited Save Our Homes portability amendment that they consider that day.

"They can vote for Amendment 1 and get portability and still vote for ours and get some good, real tax relief," McKalip said.

Lawmakers have erected a fairly high threshold for citizens to get an amendment onto the ballot: 611,000 signatures, verified by each county's election supervisor, by Feb. 1 of the election year in question.

McKalip says the activist coalition has about 80,000.

"The Legislature rigged the game so citizens have a hard time getting initiatives on the ballot," McKalip said. "So they are going to have to step up and solve that problem."

Even if the tax-cutting volunteers gather the other 531,000 signatures by staking out polling places on Jan. 29, they would still have to wait while county supervisors verify all those signatures -- making a Feb. 1 deadline virtually impossible.

Supervisors have up to 30 days to accomplish that mission once they are presented with signed petitions.

"The supervisor is not going to drop everything and verify signatures on a petition when they are trying to certify an election that just happened," said Sterling Ivey, a spokesman for the Florida Division of Elections.

While McKalip thinks the 2008 Legislature is still an avenue, another coalition leader, Don Schroder of the Coalition Against Runaway Taxation, said the state's Tax and Budget Reform Commission is an even better target for change.

The appointed group has the power to place an amendment directly onto the November ballot, and happens to be convening this year. The group will not be reassembled for another 20 years.

"We don't have any problem getting the 600,000 signatures by the 2010 ballot," Schroder said. "But what we are trying to do at this stage is put as much pressure as possible on the Legislature and the TBRC to come up with viable programs that will give major tax relief to all owners of property, rather than just those who are homesteaded."

On Longboat Key, winter visitor Winnie Nelon is paying property taxes of 16.64 mills on a nonhomesteaded waterfront home that her grandfather built.

She says she understands why someone who is homesteaded would vote in favor of the portability amendment on Jan. 29.

"If you are homesteaded it is hard to tell somebody not to. For the rest of us, it is money in their pockets that just came out of our pockets."