A political committee spearheading a ballot initiative to legalize medical marijuana in Florida raised and spent more than $400,000 in August, according to a newly filed finance report.
People United for Medical Marijuana, which also is known as United for Care, collected $437,220 during the month, with much of the money coming from the Orlando law firm headed by committee Chairman John Morgan. The Morgan Firm PA contributed about $363,000, the report shows. The political committee also spent $459,271 during the month, with about $352,000 of that amount going to PCI Consultants Inc., a California-based firm that does such things as gathering petition signatures.
The committee had submitted 95,327 valid petition signatures to the state as of Friday morning, enough to trigger a Florida Supreme Court review of the proposed ballot wording. If the Supreme Court approves the wording, the committee would need to submit a total of 683,149 valid signatures to get the proposed constitutional amendment on the November 2016 ballot.
A similar ballot measure in 2014 narrowly failed to get enough votes to pass.
Hukill seeks more cuts to communications tax
Senate Finance and Tax Chairwoman Dorothy Hukill, R-Port Orange, filed a proposal Friday that would continue cutting taxes that Floridians pay on cell-phone and pay-TV services. Hukill’s proposal (SB 256), which will be considered during the 2016 legislative session, comes after lawmakers this year trimmed what is known as the communications-services tax. Gov. Rick Scott made a priority of cutting the tax, arguing that it would be a broad-based way to help consumers.
Hukill’s 2016 proposal would reduce the tax by an additional 2 percentage points. That would bring the tax to 2.92 percent for services such as cable television and 7.07 percent for satellite television. The cut approved this year is projected to total $226 million, according to a House analysis.