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Reduced Expectations
A stable tax structure befitting Florida's megastate status.
Cabinet reform providing the governor with power to match the title.
Elimination of the state's unsavory system of electing trial judges.
An independent commission to conduct legislative reapportionment.
Restrictions on initiatives, which keep cluttering the constitution with popular but ill-conceived amendments.
Now, however, a combination of factors - voter distrust, political partisanship and a chronic lack of consensus in the business community - are ratcheting down expectations for the commission.
Perhaps sensing the lack of momentum, teacher union leader Pat Tornillo already has announced that his Florida Education Association/United won't wait for the 1998 commission and will push its own constitutional initiative to increase funding for education. "We can't rely on what the commission can or can't do," he explains.
Overload
The commission was an innovation of the state's 1968 constitution. It was added as a safety valve after Florida's postwar Legislature which was dominated by rural counties and refused to reapportion itself during the 1950s and 1960s. As a result, the balance of power on the commission favors non-legislative officials. The House speaker and Senate president choose 9 members each, the governor 15 and the Supreme Court three; the attorney general also sits on the panel.
The 1968 constitution decreed that the commission would meet and make recommendations in 1978, and every 20 years thereafter. In fact, the first commission in 1978 provided ample reason for pessimism. In a more activist era, the 1978 commission proposed almost 100 substantial changes in state law. Confused over all the new ideas, voters rejected every one of them. The lesson, veteran state leaders say: You can't try to do too much.
"If you overload (the 1998 commission) it could become a significant risk," explains former Gov. Reubin Askew, who appointed many members of the last commission. "I'm sure the commission will be mindful of that."
"There is a danger in loading up constitution revision with a lot of proposals," agrees Jon Mills, a former House speaker who's now a think-tank executive at the University of Florida. "It's probably pretty important to be reserved."
Cabinet makers
Nowhere are the expectations lower than in the area of Cabinet reform. With Askew's support, that issue became the centerpiece of the ambitious 1978 commission's agenda. But a backlash by some regulated businesses, which liked having their own elected regulators, helped drag down the proposal, along with the entire slate of commission-proposed reforms.
"I think that what the commission might have to guard against is provisions such as the one that I recommended for abolition of the Cabinet," Askew says now. "The commission after 1978 is going to have to be attuned to the political reality of what gets proposed," agrees former House Speaker Peter R. Wallace, "not only whether people favor something in the abstract but whether there will be active opposition when it's out in the rough and tumble of election season."
Taxing
In the case of tax reform, the early outlook isn't much more optimistic. At the state level, an education task force is likely to make recommendations soon for expanded funding for education. One of the co-chairs, Lt. Gov. Buddy MacKay, has previously floated the idea of a one-cent increase in the sales tax for education. But Republicans already were griping about the group even before it started meeting, suggesting a lack of consensus.
Another possibility is a sunset of the numerous exemptions to the sales tax. If voters approved the sunset, it likely would force the Legislature to end the exemption for some services, such as legal work.
But opposition by some businesses doomed a services tax in 1987. And much more than the 1978 commission, the 1998 commission is likely to pay close attention to voter attitudes toward taxes. So far in recent years, Florida voters have proved to be hostile to new taxes.
The commission might take up tax-related proposals from a local government reform commission that's now meeting. Those ideas could include freeing up existing dedicated funding sources. The local government panel also might recommend raising debt ceilings, to make future residents pay for more of the facilities being built for them now.
However, it's possible that the commission will back away from any significant tax proposal. "It's going to be difficult for the commission to tackle substantial tax issues," admits Wallace, himself a leading supporter of more revenues for government. "There's going to be reluctance even where the issues are worthy of support."
"I think the tax structure has got problems, but I don't know if politically we have the will to deal with it," says Tallahassee lawyer Steve Uhlfelder, the executive director of the 1978 commission.
Grass roots
Instead, the commission might have to expend much of its attention and effort on yet another controversial area, the constitutional initiative. An innovation of Florida's 1968 constitution, the constitutional initiative has proved to be troublesome ever since federal court decisions voided state election laws that capped campaign spending.
That's led to repeated attempts by rich gambling interests to legalize casinos. It's also produced a taxpayer revolt that already rivals California's storied Proposition 13 movement. Through measures like the Save Our Homes amendment, it's already begun to shift more of the tax burden off homeowners and onto Florida businesses. More initiatives are in the works that could make restrictions even tougher than California's. In a state as big and fast-growing as Florida, that could prove disastrous.
Among the remedies being discussed: Making constitutional initiatives more difficult to put on the ballot, but allowing so-called statutory initiatives. Statutory initiatives - the kind most often used in California and other Western states that pioneered the initiative process - are regular laws adopted by voters that can be repealed by a state's legislature.
With those big issues to wrestle, it's less likely that the commission will fully address some other topics that once appeared to be crying needs:
Collapsing of the two-tiered trial judge system -- county and circuit --into one tier.
Appointing of all county school superintendents. Some are still elected, contributing to local gridlock.
Lengthening of legislators' terms to soften the effects of term limits and ease partisan gridlock.
Chiles administration officials insist they're optimistic. "It gives an opportunity for people who are not elected to study the constitution, a job the Legislature cannot do," says Chiles general counsel Dexter Douglass, a leading candidate for commission chairman. "Anyway, that's the theory."
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Loophole of the Month
While the state's leadership frets over taking a stand on new taxes, lawyers keep boring more loopholes in the old ones.
The latest trick: so-called FLINTs (for Florida Intangible Trust) that allow wealthy individuals to avoid the state's tax on intangible personal property such as securities. Some legislators are looking into the new dodge, out of concern that it could start cutting into the state's $700-million-a-year take from the tax. The state Department of Revenue (DOR) and legislative staffers can't estimate losses. But some lawyers are marketing the trust aggressively. One Southwest Florida lawyer, Charles M. Kelly Jr. of Naples, even has set up a toll-free number, 1-888-FLINTIT.
"Based on the numbers of (DOR advisory letters) in last three or four years it seems to me they've become very prevalent," one staffer says of the devices.
Typically, the owner of the taxable securities creates the trust around Nov. 1. Because the trust and trustee are out-of-state residents, the trust assets aren't subject to the intangibles tax, which is figured as of the end of the year. The declaration of trust contains a specific condition that the trustee will transfer all the assets back to the owner in four months.
Out-of-state partnerships reportedly are being used as well to avoid the state's intangibles tax.
Yet another source of concern: increased use of another intangibles-tax loophole by businesses. This one allows businesses to avoid the tax by transferring their accounts receivable by Dec. 30 to out-of-state affiliates. That loophole has existed since 1965. "But it seems to be picking up momentum the last couple of years," the staffer notes.
