The Taxation and Budget Reform Commission will soon consider placing an amendment on the ballot to tightly limit revenue growth for state and local governments.[1] This proposal, CP 45, deserves a great deal of attention because it shares the fundamental characteristics of Colorado’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR):
- it is a constitutional amendment,
- it restricts revenue growth at both the state and local level to a formula based on population change and inflation, and
- it is difficult to override if circumstances make that desirable.
The limit can therefore be expected to cause deterioration in public services in Florida similar to that produced by TABOR in Colorado.
Under CP 45, budget cuts would be required in good economic times because revenues above the limit could not be spent. Budget cuts already occur in bad economic times because revenues are insufficient to support expenditures. The outcome of CP 45 would be a state in which vital services that residents want and need — education, health care, public safety, roads, environmental protection and others — deteriorate in most years, through good times and bad.
During the twelve years since TABOR was adopted in Colorado, K-12 funding declined from 35Th to 49th in the nation, and higher education funding dropped by 31 percent. In addition, the share of low-income children lacking health insurance doubled at a time that it was dropping nationally, and Colorado fell to near last in the nation in providing on-time full vaccinations to the state’s children.
These problems and others led business leaders and Chambers of Commerce across the state to push for the suspension of TABOR’s population-growth-plus-inflation formula for five years in order to allow the state to restore a portion of its fundamental public services. In November 2005, Colorado voters approved this suspension. To date, Colorado is the only state to have adopted a TABOR, as well as the only state to have voted to suspend it.
Florida already ranks near the bottom among the states on a number of key public services and can’t afford any further declines in the public services upon which Floridians depend, such as health care, education and public safety. But as the Colorado experience has shown, this is likely to happen if the proposed revenue limit is adopted.
The following are the key provisions of CP 45:
- Revenues of the state and all local governments would be limited. The limitation applies broadly to taxes, fees, assessments, licenses, fines, and charges for services. There are very few exceptions: revenues to meet the requirements of bonds, lottery revenues that are returned as prizes, receipts of the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund and Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, and a few others.
- Revenues would not be allowed to grow faster than specified by a formula. The formula is the sum of the inflation rate (CPI-U), population growth, and 1 percent. For school districts, student enrollment is used instead of population growth. For all other local governments, the local population growth is used.
- A large supermajority would be required to override the limit. For the state limit, a ¾ supermajority of each house of the legislature must vote to override. For local limits, ¾ of the governing board of the local government must vote to override.
- A vote of the people would be required to impose a new tax or fee.
Click here to read the full-text PDF of this report (10pp.)
