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Opponents of Amendment 4, such as Florida Chamber of Commerce's President & CEO Mark Wilson, are fond of saying, “If you like the recession, you'll love Amendment 4.”
That's the controversial state constitutional amendment on the Nov. 4 ballot that would require citizens to vote on all amendments to city and county comprehensive plans — everything from minor, technical amendments (some say typos too because nothing is excluded by the ballot language's wording) to whole new plans of enormous detail and complexity.
Unfortunately, a lame financial impact statement prepared by the state as required for proposed constitutional amendments only states that Amendment 4's impacts on local government expenses “cannot be estimated precisely,” and that “Local governments will incur additional costs due to the requirement to conduct referenda ....”
Now, thanks to Florida TaxWatch's new research, those fighting the “Vote on Everything” amendment can modify Wilson's phrase to something like, “If you like paying taxes, you'll really love Amendment 4.”
The Tallahassee-based private, non-profit, non-partisan research institute has looked at the costs of special elections and anticipated litigation costs.
Based on actual experience with a city of Tallahassee election, and what TaxWatch considers conservative assumptions, researchers estimate “the direct annual cost to the taxpayers throughout Florida would be $44.6 million to $83.4 million.”
And that's not all.
To illustrate what the potential for litigation costs might be in a post-Amendment 4 world, TaxWatch also looked at the recent experience of St. Pete Beach (pop. 10,000) and Levy County's Yankeetown (pop. 730). Those two towns have had Amendment 4-like experiences that have cost its taxpayers close to $800,000 so far, almost all falling on residents of the larger St. Pete Beach community.
According to TaxWatch, based on an average $54 per capita litigation costs of those two towns, multiplied by the state's 18.9 million residents, the total cost tops $1 billion — more than $135 per household annually.
Further, TaxWatch concludes, “ ... it would be reasonable to expect Amendment 4 to result in Florida taxpayers incurring additional litigations costs in the tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of dollars annually.”
TaxWatch will be releasing an econometric analysis of Amendment 4 soon. To no surprise, the group states that “... our preliminary findings indicate the amendment would have serious long-term negative impacts on our economy.”
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