{"id":987,"date":"2007-06-22T10:18:50","date_gmt":"2007-06-22T14:18:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shermandorn.com\/wordpress\/?p=987"},"modified":"2007-06-22T10:18:50","modified_gmt":"2007-06-22T14:18:50","slug":"tax-cuts-and-adequate-school-funding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/?p=987","title":{"rendered":"Tax cuts and adequate school funding"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Florida Governor Charlie Crist has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.miamiherald.com\/569\/story\/147556.html\">signed into law the statutory part of the proposed Florida property-tax reform and cut<\/a>. The law that Crist signed is an immediate roll-back in non-school local property taxes. The next issue is a proposed constitutional amendment on the January 29 presidential primary ballot that would create a different structure for residential property taxes (essentially creating a progressive property tax) and effectively cut and limit tax rates permanently. <\/p>\n<p>The statutory part of the plan does not directly affect schools, but there are plenty of related services that local governments currently provide out of the affected property taxes: police officers in school, mental health services, etc. The constitutional amendment <em>would<\/em> directly affect school funding from local property taxes, what the Florida Education Association has estimated as a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.feaweb.org\/page.aspx?a=2660\">$7.1 billion cut over five years<\/a>. While legislative leaders <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tcpalm.com\/tcp\/opinion_columnists\/article\/0,,TCP_24463_5593103,00.html\">have promised that the state will and has to make up any gap<\/a>, many are skeptical of that promise.<\/p>\n<p>Voters may <em>not<\/em> end up approving the constitutional amendment, since Florida now requires 60% approval for amendments, and the last property tax reform won with a majority under 55%. Reductions in county services between now and January may either convince voters to reject the amendment or may create a backlash that boosts the amendment (a &#8220;why was this cut the first choice you made&#8221; reaction). Or they may be irrelevant.<\/p>\n<p>If the amendment passes, though, it may finally set up a viable adequate-funding lawsuit in the state. A 1998 amendment to the state constitution established education as the <em>paramount<\/em> duty of the state with a number of goals, and in its 2006 voucher decision, the state Supreme Court <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shermandorn.com\/mt\/archives\/000391.html\">gave notice<\/a> in <em>dicta<\/em> that the 1998 amendments raised the obligations of the state to a &#8220;maximum duty.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>That amendment opened the door to an adequate-funding lawsuit, but no one has filed one&#8230; yet. If the legislature does not fill the gap created by a successful amendment in January, it will set up a lawsuit with very good chances, and it will provide a good motive for plenty of actors to file such a suit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Florida Governor Charlie Crist has signed into law the statutory part of the proposed Florida property-tax reform and cut. The law that Crist signed is an immediate roll-back in non-school local property taxes. The next issue is a proposed constitutional amendment on the January 29 presidential primary ballot that would create a different structure for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education-policy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pag0MB-fV","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/987\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}