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Hernando Today

Tax Crusader Back In Business

Hernando Today photo by BOB EAST III

Tax activist Linda Hayward displays the petition she is circulating for a constitutional amendment that would cap all government spending and revenues and prohibit new taxes without voter approval.

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By TONY MARRERO

Hernando Today

Published: November 20, 2008

Updated:

BROOKSVILLE - Linda Hayward is back in the petition business.

Hayward, the Brooksville resident who earned the title of tax crusader two years ago by collecting more than 11,000 signatures for a petition to encourage local government to cut property taxes, is using the same strategy to garner support for a constitutional amendment for the 2010 ballot that would set a cap on government revenue.

Hayward has visited or called more than a dozen businesses asking owners if she can place petition forms on their counters. By Friday, she'd met her goal of 25 businesses and was looking for more.

It's time once again for citizens to take matters into their own hands to limit government growth, she said.

"If we had had this established 10 years ago, none of us would be in the trouble we're in today," she said. "Government would never have grown so fast. Our businesses are getting killed, resulting in us losing jobs and making the housing industry even worse. If our representatives had actually represented the people instead of government, we wouldn't have to do this."

The amendment would cap government revenue at a base year and then allow annual increases equal to inflation and population growth. That includes every item on a tax bill, from county and city governments to special taxing districts for fire rescue services and stormwater management.

If government brings in more than projected, the money must be set aside and returned to residents through equivalent decreases in taxes or fees or put toward projects approved by voters.

It's a holistic approach to controlling government, rather than attacking the issue piecemeal as the Legislature did last year with what turned out to be a largely ineffective stab at property tax reform, said Allen Douglas, legislative affairs director for the Florida chapter of the National Federation of Independent Businesses, the lobbying group behind the petition effort.

That reform set caps that could be broken with a majority vote of a commission or council, and some 40 percent of governments and taxing authorities used that option, Douglas said.

"We need to get a hold of their total revenue and then work on the details of what to do with property taxes," Douglas said. "This is not about forcing governments to cut anything. It's about giving citizens some level of control."

The formula would allow government to grow by about 5 percent a year, which should be plenty "if local governments really look at their budgets and cut the waste," Douglas said.

That rate of growth is "the ideal," said Cragin Mosteller, spokeswoman for the Florida Association of Counties, which adamantly opposed a similar cap proposal when it was being considered by the state's Budget and Taxation Reform Commission earlier this year.

"But expenses like health care don't necessarily grow by just 5 percent a year," Mosteller said.

The cap would cripple local government's ability to set appropriate tax rates to meet ever-increasing costs to provide basic services, Mosteller said. She cited Colorado, which set a similar cap called a Taxpayers Bill of Rights, or TABOR, but ran into trouble when revenue fell short.

Voters in other states have rejected similar caps, including Maine, Nebraska and Oregon.

"It debilitates local governments," she said.

Douglas calls that a scare tactic.

He said Colorado's cap is based on a prior year's revenue, not a base year. Voters in that state approved a measure in 2005 to spend excess revenue on the school system for five years. And they rejected a measure on this year's ballot that would have would have eliminated the constitutional requirement that revenues in excess of a TABOR-imposed lid be refunded to taxpayers.

The effort in Florida needs to garner support from 8 percent of the voters in the last presidential election, or roughly 675,000 signatures, to get on the ballot.

Hayward wants to collect 20,000 signatures in Hernando County, but said she can't put in 40 hours a week like she did during the last effort.

"I think we can do it if we can get the word out and as long as some other people are willing to help," she said.

On the Web

To find out more about the petition for a constitutional amendment that would cap tax revenue, visit www.hernandocountytaxpayersalliance.com.

Reporter Tony Marrero can be reached at 352-544-5286 or lmarrero@hernandotoday.com.

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