Realty Blog

The Florida Supreme Court decided Wednesday to consider whether a proposed constitutional amendment on property taxes should be place on Jan. 29th ballot.

The court asked Gov. Charlie Crist's office to file a brief by Tuesday explaining why a lower court erred when it called the state;s ballot language "misleading" and struck the proposal for bigger homestead exemptions from the ballot.

The first hearing will be Dec. 3.

All week, lawmakers have been struggling to craft a new property tax proposal to substitute for the one rejected by the lower court. But negotiations between the House and Senate are stymied with both chambers deciding not to take up the issue again until Monday.

But they are facing a deadline of Tuesday at 11:59 p.m. giving them little time to reach an agreement.

The deadline is required by the state constitution which states that ballot questions must be submitted more than 90 days before the election. The property tax amendment would be added to the Jan. 29th presidential primary ballot.

"We're already making arrangements to have staff available through the night Tuesday, if needed," said Secretary of State Kurt Browning spokesman Sterling Ivey.

Lawmakers had been expected to easily reach agreement this week. But the House revamped its property tax proposal much to the annoyance of Senate Leaders who believed they already had an agreement.

Senate President Ken Pruitt decided this morning to send his members home until Monday. Hours later, House Speaker Marco Rubio did the same thing.

Crist tried to put a good face on the impasse.

"Mondays can be very good," said Crit, who had podded lawmakers to return to the Capitol for their second special session on property taxes this year.

Senate Majority Leader Dan Webster said House leaders broke the deal, and Senate President Ken Pruitt has refused to bring his chamber back to debate the House plan. The Senate has not met since Thursday.

Pruitt sent a memo to senators on Wednesday Day 13 of the special session saying the chamber would not meet until Monday "if we return."

"We have reason to be cautiously optimistic, "Pruitt said. "However, there is still much work to be done and the time clock is not our friend."

Mike Bender, Palm Beach Post

If House doesn't like Pruitt's proposal, property tax reform will have to wait until next year.

That will make the politicians popular, don't you think?

They are not very far away from reaching an agreement, but will they agree?

Pruitt is confident voters will be satisfied with the new amendment.

Tuesday is the last day for them to decide. Will they make it of break it?

Tomorrow or Wed. we will find out.

Roger Holden

The advantage of the new proposal for Crist and lawmakers is that it is straightforward compared with the June proposal now facing legal questions. That proposal would have replaced Save Our Homes with an exemption of 75 percent on the first $200,000 in value and 15 percent of the next $300,000, but Leon County Circuit Judge Charles Francis ruled that the ballot question was misleading because it didn't tell voters that it was replacing Save Our Homes.

For the Democratic Leaders who have complained about how budget cuts could affect local governments, the new proposal has the advantage of easing the cuts required of cities and counties.

It also would take care of complaints from many Democratic districts in South Florida that homeowners feel trapped in their homes.

"The biggest thing that people are complaining about is portability," said Senate Democratic Leader Steve Geller, who has become one of Crist's most influential advisers on property taxes.

That is partly because Republicans need Democratic votes to put a ne proposal on the Jan. 29th ballot. Placing a question on a special ballot requires a 75 percent vote in each chamber, and Republicans control only about 66 percent of the votes in each.

An additional advantage, especially for Crist and Democrats, is that the new plan would protect school districts, which face cuts of at least several hundred million dollars a year and as much as $1.9 billion a year under the "Super" exemption.

Crist has promised, to "hold education harmless" by replacing whatever was lost in property tax money with state money, and Democrats have made an issue of the cuts education would face under the super exemption.

PB Post

Tallahassee - Lawmakers appear close to a new agreement for cutting property taxes that would include doubling the $25,000 homestead exemption and offering homeowner's "portability" of their accrued Save Our Homes tax savings, top legislators and the governor said Monday.

The new plan would total $7.6 billion in property tax cuts over the first five years, rather than as mush as $16 billion expected from a proposed super homestead exemption constitutional amendment question from the Jan. 29th ballot, lawmakers and Gov. Charlie Crist have been forced to decide whether to replace the super exemption question o the ballot or fight the judge's decision in appellate court.

Crist said another property tax session would take place "soon" before the Oct. 31st deadline lawmakers face to put a new proposal on the Jan. 29th presidential primary ballot. Lawmakers can place questions on ballots no less than 90 days prior to the election in question.

Top Capital leaders said privately that the fourth special session of the year, or even an extension of the ongoing session to cut the budget, could begin Friday and wrap up by Monday.

The new plan would give Crist two solutions that he campaigned for last year, doubling the homestead exemption and portability.

"In some form or fashion virtually everyone's embraced it, "Crist said, but then added: "The caveat I have is: in some form or fashion."

The forms that seem most likely:

Doubling the $25,000 homestead exemption to $50,000 for local governments, but not for school districts. The second $25,000 exemption would apply to the $50,000-$75,000 increment of property value, not the $25,000-$50,000 piece, so that homesteads worth less than $50,000 would have to pay come county and city property taxes. Homesteads would pay school district property taxes on all but $25,000 of their value. This would account for about $4 billion in tax cuts over five years.

Letting homeowners take their accrued Save Our Homes benefit with them to a new home, but then allowing the new home's assessed value to increase at 8 percent a year until it reaches the value it would have been assessed at under the actual sale price and the Save Our Homes cap. From that point forward, assessment increases again would be limited to the lesser of 3 percent or inflation.

That would mean a tax savings for seven years for someone with $100,000 in accrued Save Our Homes savings who buys a $400,000 home. Under the new plan, the assessed value of the new home would be set at $300,000 and would grow at 8 percent a year until the eighth year, when the assessed value would be $514,147. That's the fist year the assessed value would be greater than $400,000 growing at 3 percent a year, or $491,950.

This part of the plan would account for $3.6 billion of the five-year tax cut.

PB Post

Because Democrats control about a third of the votes in each chamber, they will have leverage in preventing a new proposal from being placed on the ballot unless it includes what they support: Something with property tax cuts smaller than the proposal's $16 billion bottom line, and that lets homeowners take at least some of their accrued Save Our Homes benefit with them when they move.

Another special session is expected in the final two weeks of October to deal with the issue, but no date has been set.

PB Post 

The state is appealing a Leon County circuit judge's ruling that the "Super" Homestead Exemption lawmakers put on the Jan. 29th ballot to phase out the Save Our Homes limit is misleading and confusing. The legislature has until Oct. 31st to either fix the proposal or put a different one on the ballot instead.

Gov. Charlie Crist has said House Speaker Marco Rubio, and President Ken Pruitt should call another special session after this one to deal with the property tax issue. The two have agreed to do so, but that's the extent of the agreement.

Rubio on Wednesday repeated his belief that property taxes are unfair and that he would prefer even larger cuts than the super-exemption would provide.

"If we do not address the issue of property tax reform, we will have to have several of these (budget cutting special sessions) in the years to come," Rubio said.

In the Senate, though, leaders worry that even some Republicans who supported the proposal in June would oppose it now because of the reductions in education funding that it probably will require.

An even bigger roadblock: Putting a question on the Jan. 29th ballot, rather than the Nov. 2008 general election, would require a three-quarters vote of both chambers.

Because Democrats hold slightly more than one-third of the seats in both House and Senate, they effectively hold veto power on the Jan. 29th ballot question.

PB Post

State Farm wil return $23 Million to homeowners as part of a broad settlement with state regulators.

State Farm has agreed to increase the 7 percent discount on homeowner's insurance to 9 percent. State Farm has more than 1 million customers in Florida.

Its about time we get something back.

After being taken off the FL State Ballot because it was misleading infomation or lack of, regarding Tax Reform, Gov. Charlie Crist asked Republican leaders in the House and Senate to call another special session on property taxes before an Oct. 28th deadline to place a proposed constitutional ammendment affecting taxes on the Jan. 29th, 2008 ballot.

Senate President Pruitt and House Speaker Marco Rubio were divided on whether to revisit their proposed constitutional ammendment that gradually would replace Save Our Homes protections with a new, larger homestead exemption. A circuit court judge struck that question from the Jan 29 ballot, say it was misleading. The state has appealed that ruling.

Both the House speaker and the Senate president must agree to place this issue to the agenda, but the govener can call a special session unilaterally.