TALLAHASSEE — A Leon Circuit Court judge heard arguments Wednesday over whether the property tax cut proposal to be placed on the November ballot is misleading to voters.
Three groups of plaintiffs, including former local government elected officials and a former Republican legislator, contend the title and ballot summary approved by the GOP-led Legislature in June uses “emotional and political rhetoric” designed to sway voters.
The proposed constitutional amendment (HJR 1F) would increase the current $50,000 homestead exemption to $150,000 next year and $250,000 the following year. The exemption, however, wouldn’t apply to the portion of the property tax bill levied for K-12 public schools.
Another provision of the measure would lower the cap on annual assessments of non-homesteaded properties from 10 percent to 5 percent.
Attorney Jamie Cole argued the title of the amendment “Save Our Homes from Excessive Property Taxes” pushed voters to favor the proposal by using biased language, in violation of previous court rulings.
“The ballot question, the thing that the voters see when they vote, has to be fair and it has to be accurate,” Cole said. “It should not be political rhetoric, it should not be emotional language … it should not hide the ball and it should not mislead.”
Cole pointed to a Florida Supreme Court opinion from 1994 that a proposed “Save Our Everglades” amendment was misleading because “it implies that the Everglades is lost, or in danger of being lost, to the citizens of our State, and needs to be ‘saved’ via the proposed amendment.”
But Benjamin Gibson, an attorney representing the state, said the onus was on the plaintiffs to prove the ballot summary was defective. Also, the measure’s title wasn’t misleading because it spells out the danger to homesteads: excessive taxes.
He also downplayed arguments the measure would essentially give the Legislature veto power over how local property taxes are spent because it restricts such spending to infrastructure, education, public safety and other major needs.
“The ballot title and summary does not need to explain unknowns or hypothetical consequences,” Gibson said.
The measure was largely the product of a year-long campaign by Gov. Ron DeSantis, who toured the state highlighting the surge of property tax revenues in the last six years. But he chided the Legislature for changing his proposal to exempt school taxes before passing it. DeSantis has said he’ll vote for the measure but won’t campaign for it.
Some local government officials, fearing massive cuts to their budgets if the amendment were to get the 60 percent support from voters needed to pass, have campaigned against the proposal.
Judge David Frank didn’t immediately rule from the bench after the two-hour hearing. If he finds part of the ballot measure defective, Attorney General James Uthmeier would have 10 days to correct the issues.
There could be a time crunch, however, as general election mail ballots would start being printed at the end of August.
Former Sen. Jeff Brandes, a St. Petersburg Republican, brought one of the lawsuits filed against the property tax cut proposal
“I don’t think there is anybody who can say when this amendment was drafted that It’s not partial and it’s not advocacy,” Brandes said. “All we are asking the court to do is follow the law and follow what the Constitution lays out when it relates to advocacy.”
But DeSantis has warned opponents of the measure that moving to get Uthmeier to fix any issues with the proposed amendment could backfire.
“We’ll win at the trial court, but if we don’t then you’ve got to go and do a quick appeal,” DeSantis said previously after the lawsuits were filed. “If, somehow, you lose on that then they say the attorney general writes the language. I’d say to some of these big government advocates, ‘Be careful what you wish for’.”