Failure to Launch

As voters went to the polls on Tuesday to decide the fate of Amendment 1 and the county continued its weekly meetings examining the budget as commissioners prepare for 2008-09, the breathtaking failure of state legislators to genuinely address property tax reform was on full display.

Whatever its fate, Amendment 1 was never anything more than an hour or two of traction for a broken back.

Confusingly worded, it was left to be the subject to cloudy and off-the-mark platitudes by opponents and proponents and even those who were neutral - the Franklin County Property Appraiser made one significant error about the impacts in a newspaper ad last week.

Whatever the vote count on Tuesday, one has to wonder just how much residents understood about this long, densely written amendment.

Amendment 1 does provide some badly needed relief, providing small businesses with the equivalent of a homestead exemption, expanding the homestead exemption for residents and allowing the exemption to be linked at the hip to homeowners, not property.

But the amendment fails to fix a fundamentally-flawed system, the inequities in the state’s property appraiser/taxation system, the unequal distribution of taxation due to the inherent chasm between being a property tax state and the Save Our Homes constitutional amendment.

Former House Speaker Allan Bense, who is now chairing a state tax reform commission, was preaching the ills of the property tax system on the floor of the Florida House of Representatives a decade ago and he wasn’t the first.

Further, the amendment holds school districts harmless, a smoke-and-mirrors approach to disguise the state’s abrogation of public school funding to local districts over the past couple of decades.

Gulf County is a textbook case. While the county, as far as county government goes, is ranked among the “fiscally-restrained” by the state, entitled to certain tax breaks and abatements, the school district is considered one of just a handful or so in the state that are “property rich.”

So local taxpayers pay roughly eight cents of every 10 for public schools, underscoring how lawmakers have pushed more and more of public school funding onto local taxpayers, spiraling tax bills ever higher.

More fundamentally, Amendment 1 never addressed the spending side, not a surprise since on the whole state lawmakers never met a public trough that wasn’t tasty.

This is the also the basic weakness of the three-year property tax plan passed by the Legislature and taking effect during the current fiscal year.

After biting the bullet - laughter allowed - during the current year by shaving 9 percent from its budget, the county pretty much is locked to a status quo scenario over the next two years.

With a simple majority vote, according to the county manager, commissioners can collect the same amount as this year, plus growth in income, for the coming budget.

Four and five votes will bring even more all the way to 10 mills, or roughly double the current rate. Next year comes more of the same even though commissioners could slash the rate to 3.0 mills and roughly have the same property tax collections as six years ago.

The population hasn’t changed since that time, it’s actually dropped slightly.

In addition, commissioners are looking at various “service” taxes at a time when we would offer that most taxpayers are still waiting for services to reach the same stratosphere as their tax bills.

This is akin to packing on 148 percent body mass and instead of going on Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers, you go to the department store for clothes that provide the appearance of being thinner.

Heck, commissioners just got around to enacting a policy that the work day for county employees begins at clock-in and ends at clock-out. Hello?

All that underscores the main problem with Amendment 1, the damage has been done.

Until lawmakers dial back the clock to before the real estate market went piping hot - consider that among the top 10 counties in per capita taxation in the state, just one is not along a coast - local governments can continue to gorge on the back-door increases enjoyed the first half of this decade.

Amendment 1 could slow the train, yes, but for too many taxpayers its already too far down the track.

Standing Corrected

In this space last week, it was stated that the Road Department had “nearly 30 employees.”

During Monday’s budget meeting this was interpreted by the chairman of the Board of County Commissioners as the paper stating that the Road Department “had 30 employees,” both statements, it turns out, being incorrect.

The Road Department, according to the Clerk of Courts, currently has 18 full-time employees and two who supervise work crews and who had previously been listed under the Road Department.

So, we stand corrected on the numbers, but as is too typical of these commissioners, the numbers were entirely beside the point.

As commissioners demonstrated again this past Monday as they prepare for crafting the 2008-09 budget, there is little discussion about the county as a whole, only about impacts in each particular commissioner’s district.

That we provided an opening for the paper to be taken to task for one sentence and one number is entirely on us.

That commissioners continue to deflect their constituents’ desires, that they continue to express more concern - be it the Road Department, Mosquito Control, the Wewahitchka transfer station or parks - with their one-fifth of the county instead of the county as a whole is entirely on them.