The Florida Legislature's "super exemption" will be the only property tax provision offered to voters on the January ballot.
A law that went into effect this year precludes citizens' initiative ballot questions from being on anything but the general election ballot in November.
So a cadre of would-be tax revolters who do not think that lawmakers went far enough in addressing high taxes for part-time residents and businesses will only be able to contend with the issue in November at the earliest.
But if they are successful in both getting a ballot question before voters and winning them over -- a monumental undertaking by everyone's estimation -- their proposal would supersede the new tax system put in place by the super exemption, legal experts said.
"When you have a newly adopted initiative and it conflicts with a pre-existing constitutional provision, the new amendment or initiative supersedes the previous provision," said Sam Batkins, a tax law researcher and spokesman for the National Taxpayers Union.
The Herculean task has some of the grass-roots citizens groups thinking that it might be better for them to pool their resources than for each to push their own broader set of constitutional caps on taxes and spending.
The Legislature has the latitude to put a constitutional amendment into any election, hence the presidential preference primary on Jan. 29.
Earlier this week, organizers of Citizens for Property Tax Reform, a Miami-based group pushing the 30-40-50 Plan to alleviate Floridians' tax burden thought they could still get their tax-slashing amendment onto the January ballot, side-by-side with lawmakers' proposal.
But Citizens founder Bernie Navarro, a Cuban mortgage broker representing various citizens and business interests in South Florida, acknowledged Thursday that he had not been informed by his attorneys about the time limitations imposed by the new state law.
"November seems more likely," Navarro said, in something of an understatement.
Navarro was not counting on Florida Statute 1S-2.0091, "Constitutional Amendment Initiative Petition Submission Deadline," which went into effect this year.
Under that rule, citizens must get their entire package together by Feb. 1 of the year in which the general election is held, just to get on that November's ballot.
Because the statute cites only "general elections," it precludes special elections like the one in January, by omission.
"The Legislature can place it on a special election ballot. All initiative petitions from the people have to be on the general election ballot," said Doug Guetzloe, founder of Orlando-based Ax the Tax.
His group would preserve Save Our Homes, and would extend the same 3 percent per year tax cap to non-homesteaders.
Three accompanying but separate amendments would cap expenditures by county, school district, municipal and special district governments at 3 percent per year.
Big mountain
Even getting a major property tax initiative onto the November ballot will be a tremendous challenge, tax-cutting activists admit.
They must first get a petition approved by the Florida Secretary of State, which some have already done.
They then need 61,000 verified signatures just to put the petition in front of the Florida Supreme Court for review, and each county's supervisor of elections is involved in all verifications.
Assuming the high court acts in a timely way, the activists must then gather another 550,000 verified signatures, get those approved by the supervisors, and get the whole package completed by Feb. 1.
"Keep in mind, during the next six months, supervisors are also preparing to change their voting systems and are getting ready for a presidential primary," said Sterling Ivey, a spokesman for the state Division of Elections. "I don't think supervisors will have an unlimited amount of time to verify signatures before the Feb. 1 deadline.
It all comes down to a huge obstacle course for activists.
"If we get scattered and are promoting different things, we are all going to go down in flames," said John Hallman, a Boca Raton-based political consultant working with Ax the Tax and with Cut Taxes Now, the west coast Florida group headed by St. Petersburg neurosurgeon David McKalip.
Next week, those groups and others will have what could be their best and only chance to get together in a meaningful way.
Representatives of many of the tax-cut activist groups will assemble in Tampa on Thursday as the James Madison Institute hosts a panel discussion to figure out what happened at the special session in Tallahassee, and what it means to Florida's future.
"It's already a full house," said Thomas Perrin, the institute's director public affairs. "Tax issues are something we follow very closely, and we are still trying to sort this out."
While Guetzloe and Hallman were very familiar with the new statute and its implications for would-be tax-cutters, the law came as a surprise to Perrin.
"We hadn't even heard that," he said. "That was something that definitely was under the radar."
The idea that a victory in November would supersede the super exemption might be consoling to the deepest tax cutters.
But John Hallman, the political consultant, is afraid that if the lawmakers' proposal passes, voters would be less inclined to pass a broader property tax cut in November.
"I don't know if my groups understand this. Job No. 1 is to defeat the super homestead amendment in January."
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Join the Tax Revolt at www.AxTheTax.org
Doug Guetzloe
Chairman
Ax the Tax
www.axthetax.org
750 South Orlando Avenue
Suite 202
Winter Park, FL 32789
(407) 388-1776 - office
(407) 629-7760 - telefax
(877) Ax-Taxes - toll free
doug@axthetax.org
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