Election Transparency

For a state that prides itself on its open records and meeting laws, Florida’s election laws are often convoluted and seem aimed at shading.

Every election cycle each candidate must file with the local Supervisor of Elections what is known as a Form 6, essentially a financial disclosure statement.

In it a candidate is to list all assets in excess of a certain level and all liabilities in excess of $1,000 and must file it by June of the year of the election.

That same form must be filed each subsequent summer by each office holder, be it commissioner, school board member or constitutional officer.

During the years in office, the form is sent directly to the Florida Commission on Ethics, the repository for such election forms.

While a seemingly straightforward form, the section on liabilities contains fine print that is, to say the least, unusual if the effort is full disclosure.

Among the items that do not have to be disclosed under liabilities are any taxes owed, unless they have been “reduced to a judgment.”

The key here is judgment.

According to a spokesperson with the Commission on Ethics, the definition of what constitutes a judgment is murky as is the question of at what point a tax liability would have to be listed on the Form 6.

A written opinion from the Attorney General on the subject is from 1984 and dated considering that the definitions on the form have been changed in the ensuing 16 years.

Florida lawmakers, resistant as they can be to openness in government, should step in and clean up the language.

To exclude taxes owed to any government entity seems counterintuitive to the spirit, if not the mandate, of the Form 6.

In this day and time, when the economic weight on the working man and woman is back-breaking, when the tax burden’s of many are onerous, when too many folks are barely scraping by from week to week, knowing if public officials are holding up their end of the bargain, leading by example to get corny, seems the least to ask.

Particularly those elected officials with the responsibility of establishing the taxing levels for property owners in the municipality or the county.

For example, the county’s delinquent property tax rolls are published annually for myriad reasons, but one of them could be said to be keeping tabs on the elected officials who have not done what they ask of their constituents – and in the case of county commissioners the remaining four-fifths of the county.

That two county commissioners have appeared each of the past two years as being delinquent on their property taxes is noteworthy considering the county’s tax burden which falls under the responsibility of these two among five.

But neither of them had to list that among those tax liabilities when filing their Form 6 with the state, at least according to the Commission on Ethics, though to his credit one of those two commissioners did so for 2008.

What neither listed, and were under no legal mandate to do so, were federal tax assessments.

Notwithstanding that while listing a net worth of more than $6 million in 2008 and $5 million in 2009, one county commissioner did not disclose a significant federal tax obligation.

On March 5 of this year, a notice of a federal tax lien was filed with the Clerk of the Courts in an effort to collect more than $1 million from this commissioner and his estranged wife.

The IRS “assessment” dates on the taxes owed were March 17, 2008 and August 3, 2009, for taxes owed from 2004 and 2005, respectively.

A question not even the Commission on Ethics could answer – and an Attorney General’s opinion can only be requested by the person filing the Form 6 – is whether there was an obligation to at least list the first federal tax assessment, which was assessed prior to the June date for filing Form 6.

Additionally, no one, apparently, at the Commission on Ethics can answer when a tax bill becomes a judgment.

The county commissioner in question won a fairly close election in 2008 over an opponent surely hurt at the last minute by allegations that he had used taxpayer-funded resources to produce some campaign material and under-reported the in-kind contributions.

Would it, or even should it, make a difference in that race if the commissioner had fully disclosed his tax bills?

More importantly, why should any candidate or office holder who decides tax policy have their taxes owed excluded from legal election reporting requirements?

The logic is illogical.

Florida lawmakers should step in and pass a bill that cleans up the Form 6 mandates, requires listing of certain tax obligations and defines those tax obligations in clear and unambiguous language.

A federal tax “assessment” from the IRS dated March of 2008 to collect taxes of over a quarter of a million dollars owed for more than four years has the ring of a judgment.

Lawmakers should codify into law what is and what is not a tax obligation. Federal taxes delinquent four years sounds like a liability.

Ask all those who have been forced from their homes by foreclosures due at least in part by heavy-lifting property tax bills.

Full transparency; that is what is preached in Tallahassee. Overhauling Form 6 is long-past due.