The School Board has a proposal on the ballot for a 0.75 mil tax on property to support schools. The tax would sunset in 2023. The proposal is projected to raise $232 million per year. School Board members have pledged that 88 percent will go to teacher salaries and 12 percent to hiring new school security guards. If approved, the tax hike would increase property tax $0.75 per every $1,000 of assessed property value. That would cost the typical homeowner $142 a year.
TL/DR – Vote for the School Board referendum
There are three reasons to vote for this, and one that leans against, so I think the ayes have it.
The reasons to be for this tax are:
- The schools need the money, and teachers are in the main underpaid. (Although exactly which teachers will get what remains to be determined; and maybe we’d like to use some for more teachers?)
- The legislature has required that school hire security guards, but didn’t provide the funds for it. If we don’t fund that unfunded mandate through this increase, the money will come out of the budget for teachers and buildings.
- Other counties, including Broward, have passed similar taxes and are raising teacher salaries. According to WLRN, 40% of Miami-Dade teachers live in Broward, so if this doesn’t pass we risk losing our best teachers to a northern competitor.
The reason to vote against this is based Miami-Dade’s long history of misusing voter-approved tax increases. History suggests that earmarked money for one goal tends to crowd out other spending and we don’t end up much ahead in the long run. Perhaps this time will be different because this is the School Board and not the whole Commission, so all the spending has to go on education. Maybe.
But the fact is that, given the unfunded mandate from the state legislature if nothing else, we really have no choice but to approve this tax.
Links to other November 2018 election guides:
Let’s start with the most important one: Amendment 4. If you do nothing else with this year’s crop of amendments, you should vote for this one. Amendment 4 re-enfranchises persons convicted of felonies–excepting persons convicted of murder or rape. Currently, Florida is a national outlier, with one of the most arbitrary, unfair, difficult, and slow procedures for felon re-enfranchisement. Many states don’t strip voting rights at all; of those that do, most restore voting rights automatically after some number of years of good behavior. Florida has about 1.5 million people who would get their rights back with this change. Under the current rule, their only way to get the right to vote back is to petition a committee headed by the Governor, one which operates in an utterly arbitrary manner. (The process is so bad that it was struck down by a federal court, although the decisions has been stayed pending appeal. Read 
Amendment 3 will block the expansion of casino gambling by requiring voter approval for new casinos. I’ve gotten more misleading mailers about this one than anything else–the gambling people, who have way too much money, oppose it. They’ve been claiming that if we block new gambling our schools and teachers will starve to death, because, of course, there is no money for schools other than a tax on casinos? Even if I wasn’t for Amendment 3 on the merits, I’d be for it just because who opposes it and how they have run their deceitful campaign.
Amendment 9 will ban offshore oil and gas drilling and also ban indoor vaping. Strange bedfellows, but since I’m for both bans, this is an easy vote. A third part allows localities to enact even more stringent vaping restrictions.
Amendment 11 is mostly about tidying up stuff. The most important substantive changed worked by this amendment is that it opens the door to a form of retroactive leniency. Under current law, if the legislature softens or repeals a criminal law that changes does not, cannot, have retroactive effect. This amendment would remove the impediment to retroactive leniency, although it would not require it.
Amendment 12
Amendment 13 will ban dog racing in Florida, and allow existing dog tracks that get to have slots only because they have a dog track to continue to host slots even after the dogs are gone. I confess I feel like I don’t have a dog in this hunt, and that again this seems like something that belongs in legislation rather than the state Constitution, but the thing is going to pass, and there enough stories about dogs being mistreated at tracks to make me think that on the merits it is a good idea. Note that current tracks can still display and take wagers on out-of-state dog races.
