BREAKING: Judge pulls Amendment 5 off the November ballot ("Tax Swap")

[seafan]

Judge pulls Amendment 5 off the ballot

August 14, 2008

A court in Leon County has thrown out a ballot measure advocates say could reduce property taxes by as much as 40 percent citing the measure is not properly explained in voting materials.

U.S. Circuit Court Judge John C. Cooper issued the ruling Thursday on Amendment 5, a state constitutional movement offered by the Taxation and Budget Reform Commission that wanted to remove a portion of public education funding from property taxes and move the responsibility to other methods of taxation, including possibly an increase in sales tax or the re-implementation of a service tax.

Nancy Riley, president of the Florida Association of Realtors and a proponent of Amendment 5, said the ruling was a disservice to the voters.

“The Taxation and Budget Reform Commission is a constitutionally mandated commission that has the unique power to go directly to the ballot without having legislative approval, gubernatorial approval, or signatures,” Riley said. “The judges denying this amendment to be put on the ballot is denying the citizens of Florida their constitutional right to have this commission who represents them go directly to them for approval.”

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“The court finds that the ballot title and summary provided in the proposition for Amendment 5 fail to fairly inform the voter, in a clear and unambiguous language, of the chief purposes of the amendment and the language of the title and summary, as written, is misleading in the foregoing respects,” Cooper wrote in his opinion.

While the move means that Amendment 5 comes off the Nov. 4 ballot for now, Riley says it’s not necessarily dead.

“I’m positive that no matter what way this had come out, the losing side would have appealed this,” she said.

The next stop would be the District Court of Appeals, and likely will end up in the Florida Supreme Court.

Opponents to the ballot measure says that the amendment would remove some $11 billion from education, which the Legislature would have to find some other way to fund. Proponents say that closing sales tax loopholes and adding a penny to the sales tax could fund it, but those against the move say the amendment is nothing more than a way to open up service tax, a move they said was already tried and failed in 1987.

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