Despite being rejected by 20 states and a dismal failure in Colorado, a Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) is quietly making its way through the various committees of the Florida Legislature, having cleared a GOP-controlled Senate Budget Committee on Wednesday.
The TABOR proposal will limit state revenue growth by tying it to inflation and population growth, measures that are poor proxies for determining state spending.
Although Florida already has in place a balanced budget requirement and current revenue caps, the TABOR proposal, SJR 958, glossed over concerns from some groups, including unions and the League of Women Voters that, the cap would hamstring future lawmakers by allowing a minority of legislators to block spending, even in response to extraordinary events, reports the News Service of Florida.
A recent analysis of Florida’s TABOR’s proposal by the nonprofit, nonpartisan Washington-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, found that, implementation of SJR 958 would “immediately and over the long term raise Florida’s cost of borrowing to invest in infrastructure” and “cause a gradual deterioration of public services like education, public safety, roads, environmental protection, among others.”
The report also pointed out that the TABOR formula failed to strengthen Colorado’s economy and brought about a decline in that state’s support for K-12 education falling from 35th to 49th in the nation and from 35th to 48th in terms of higher education funding.
Florida has never hit the current revenue cap in place and lags behind the rest of the country in terms of funding for critical public services such as affordable higher education, health-care coverage for low-income seniors and children, transportation, public safety, tourism promotion and natural resource protection and development, all necessary to keep pace with the state’s economic growth. Nonetheless, the GOP-led Legislature seems bent on further stifling growth and development with the resurgence of the TABOR proposal.
As the report warns:
In past years, Florida and other states have rejected TABOR because it does more than control state spending, as its proponents often claim. Previous analyses have shown that if a TABOR with the population-plus-inflation formula took effect right away in Florida, it could require cutting the state’s budget by as much as 25 percent. The Florida Taxation and Budget Reform Commission, after a full and extensive consideration in 2008, determined that TABOR was not in the best interests of state residents and declined to put it on the ballot. Similar efforts to refer TABOR measures to Florida voters failed to make it to the ballot in 2009 and 2010.
Floridians should take heed that, the “new” TABOR proposal could well appear on the ballot in 2012, in view of the GOP super-majority in the legislature. A constitutional amendment, wherein at least 60 percent of Floridians support the proposal would be required for the measure to be implemented.
