Handicapping the January Ballot Proposal

In the wake of the Florida legislature's latest property tax plan-- which voters will pass judgment on in January of 2008-- the handicapping has begun. Will the legislature's proposal garner enough support to pass the 60-percent threshold needed? The Palm Beach Post's Michael Bender gives an initial survey that suggests it's got a chance, both because special-interest money might get plowed into the effort, and because bills referred by the legislature have a pretty good track record with Florida voters. Bender also points out reasons why it may yet fall to pieces: it's quite possibly unconstitutional, and special-interest money may yet emerge to oppose it.

One interesting reason for the bill's possible passage is mostly implied, however: no one's ox gets gored, at least not obviously. And herein lies the true problem with the legislature's proposal.

One Republican lawmaker, Ellyn Bogdanoff, asks "What would you gain by voting against it?" And this seems initially to be a pretty sensible question. After all, in the short run, if this thing passes you're either better off or unaffected, in terms of your current property tax bill.

But the question (and the lawmaker's answer, "I don't know that we gain anything," demonstrates the legislature's biggest failing in this process-- its unwillingness to think about the long-term impact of its actions.

The long-run implications are very different from the short term, "no losers" view of this proposal. It's incontestably true that the legislature's latest brainstorm preserves some unwarranted tax breaks (by making the "Save our Homes" tax break portable), gives too-small tax breaks to some groups that deserve them (businesses) and entirely ignores other groups that deserve them (first-time homebuyers). In the long run, the well-founded complaints of these shortchanged groups will leave Florida's tax system just as unpopular, unfair and unbalanced as lawmakers found it last month. But nobody actually loses right now from this plan, which leads to Bogdanoff's question.

Truly forward-thinking lawmakers would ask whether this bill is the right approach for a sustainable, fair and (gasp!) popular tax system. An even marginally-forward-thinking legislature would ask whether the long-term impact of the plan would be better than doing nothing. But Florida's legislative leaders aren't asking even that. They're simply banking that by providing tax cuts for some and tax hikes for no one, they've come up with a solution a majority of Floridians can agree on. And that's a shame.