Welcome to Florida Sunday!

The proponents of a referendum on cutting property taxes that will be on the Jan 29th ballot have been claiming that it would double the homestead exemption actually maybe exaggerated a little. It's being reported that the increased exemption would fall far short of doubling the value of the current $25,000 homestead exemption.

Representative Jack Seiler says that by telling voters that a yes vote would double the homestead exemption is just the simplest way to promote the tax cut. He claims that "If someone goes to the polls and truly thinks they're getting double, then they haven't been reading up on it".

I think it is very important for voters to be knowledgable about what they are voting on before they go vote, but It doesn't give them the right to say if you vote yes on 10 it will double the homestead exemption if it actually doesn't. They can easily just say vote yes on 10 and your homestead exemption will increase or something. Then they won't have worry about having to explain that it doesn't really double or why they said it would double if it isn't. Many people will find this to be misleading.

(Source http://www.theledger.com/article/20080106/NEWS/801060482/1039)


State lawmakers started back to work this week. The Senate finance committee members where briefed throughout the week on the state of the local government investment pool. Senators this week also got the latest information on the property insurance market as they reviewed rate requests that where submitted to the office of Insurance Regulation. Last year lawmakers passed a measure to increase the money in the hurricane fund in the hopes that it would help lower property insurance rates witch it did not and now lawmakers are trying to figure out what happen.

Another major issue witch the Legislative will be facing is the budget. Our state is excepted to bring in $2 billion less then what was previously expected.Last year they cut $1 billion out of the budget and this year it look like they will have take cut $2 billion more in spending. The major causes of this budget shortfall is our local housing market and the national economy.

This week the Supreme Court stepped into a partisan clash over access to the ballot box. The case is about Indiana's voter identification law, which requires every voter to present a photo id card. Democrats and civil rights groups charge that the law is a Republican ploy to present thousands of poor, elderly, and minority citizens from casing ballots. Republicans however say that it won't present any qualified person from voting. Instead they say, it guards against vote fraud and heightens public confidence in the integrity of elections.

Why is this case important to Floridians? it is important because this case is the first big election law dispute heard by the supreme court since it decided the 2000 presidential election. The court is expected to decided on this case before the 2008 general election. I feel that voters should have to provide some type of identification in order to vote. We need identification to do almost anything that the government is involved in why not require it for voting also? Voting fraud would be harder to commit if we require voters to prove that they have the right to vote then if we don't require them to do so.

Gov. Charlie Crist continued this week to push for passage of a property tax amendment. The Gov said that the amendment would signal a radical shift in the state's economy. Supports of the amendment say that homeowners would see a 26 percent savings on property taxes if the referendum is passed.

Stiffer penalties are being sought in our state for the use of fake weapons during a robbery. Apparently robbers are opting to use what are known as hoax guns to commit crimes because they are aware of a loophole in Florida law which prevents them from being charged with a first-degree felony because the Florida law does not consider hoax guns as a firearm. Orange County Sheriff Kevin Beary says "There's no difference, A robbery is a robbery, and when you use devices" like a hoax gun "it ought to be a first-degree robbery." Currently criminals who use hoax guns can be charged with a third-degree felony, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

This week U.S. Education secretary Margaret Spellings visited Florida to congratulate educators on leading the nation in accountability and collected data. Florida was Spellings first stop on a national tour to promote the reauthorization of the education reform law No Child Left Behind. The law requires that all states test students in reading and math and report which schools are failings. House Minority Leader Dan Gelber said that the law forced "state governments to spend sorely needed school funds on testing" and should be overhauled or left to Sunset.

Accountability is needed in the school system, we can no longer just hope that children who are attending school are learning we need to be able to know if that child is learning or not and if not we needed to find out what the children are not learning and provide help either for that student or for the school. The No Child Left Behind Act and the FCAT may not be the most perfect system but they do allow us to measure the progress that schools are or are not making and that is very important. I know that people have varying views on this but I think we all can agree that we need to be able to tell if the children are being educated or not.

In other Education news this week our state schools ranked 14th Nationally with a grade of C+ on a report card issued Wednesday by Education Week Magazine, although our state placed 38th in public education spending. They credited our teaching profession and our system of standards, assessments and accountability for our rankings. It has been proving that more money does not mean that we get better schools. Accountability provides the highest rate of return in my opinion.

This week the Senate Finance and Tax Committee where looking at a potential sale tax revenue of $35.3 billion. This extra sale tax revenue would come from repealing sale tax exemptions on such items as Super Bowl tickets, collectible coins and other items and some services witch are currently exempt from sale tax. The Republican Chairman of the committee said that if any exemptions or exclusions are repealed, that the money should be used to lower other taxes. So that there are no net increase in state revenue. The Vice Chairman of the committee said that any additional revenue that is raised from the repeal of these exemptions should be used to avoid impending budget cuts to schools, health care, and other public services.

I don't understand why people think that the government shouldn't cut its expenses when the government is taking in less money. If the money is not there to spend its not there. The government does provide very important and critical services to the public and those services should be funded as long as the government can afford to fund them. I wonder if when there's every been a study done to see if when government revenue goes down if the use of some government services goes down as well. This type of study would be very helpful in helping to figure out witch services should be fully funded and witch services the government could cut back funding on until it can provide additional funding.