by Michele Newbern Gillis
Staff Writer
The Amelia Island/Nassau County Association of Realtors got an update on the latest legislative issues at their monthly meeting last month when many turned out to hear John Sebree, vice president of public policy for the Florida Association of Realtors, speak at the association’s office.
“There is so much happening right now in the state and there is a lot happening on the national level, but I want to focus on the upcoming legislative session,” said Sebree. “A lot of people wonder what can really happen in this legislative session because there is such an interesting dynamic happening right now.
“Gov. Jeb Bush is in the final year of his eight years in office so he has his legacy to think about and what he wants to happen and what he doesn’t want to happen. I happen to think he won’t want taxes to be increased. He won’t want certain things to happen in his final year because he doesn’t want to be remembered as that governor when taxes were increased. That is a good thing.
“On the other side, we have two members of the cabinet running for governor: Attorney General Charlie Crist and Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher. We have a Senate president who is running for CFO and a House speaker who may potentially be a lieutenant governor candidate. We have all these interesting dynamics with everyone in the leadership positions running for other offices.”
Sebree said there is a lot of speculation as to what might really occur this session.
“Some people think it will just be a stalemate - everyone so focused on getting their thing done that nothing gets done in the end - but we have a lot of major priorities and we know we are going to work them hard,” said Sebree. “The reason that I’m successful in Tallahassee is because those of you here are so close to you elected officials and you are so involved in the community that you can report back to us what the legislators are saying.
“When I see them in the hallways of the capital, they come up to me and say ‘My Realtors back home said they can’t get homeowners insurance. What do I need to do about that?’ Those are the things that help us move issues through the process.”
Sebree said the common denominator this year is affordability.
“Whether it is insurance issues or tax issues, everything comes back to affordability,” he said. “People can’t afford to live where they work because property values have increased so dramatically over the past four or five years and their salaries haven’t. Teachers’ salaries haven’t increased 70 percent while the home values have increased 70 percent. So, we have to figure out how we get them into a house. We are tackling a lot of issues like that this year.”
The Sadowsky Affordable Housing Trust Fund was established in the early 1990’s. A portion of documentary stamps from every sale Realtors have goes into the trust fund. The real estate market is so busy right now that the trust fund is expected to be about $900 million.
“The problem is that for the last few years, the legislature has basically said that affordable housing doesn’t need that much money,” he said. “So, they put $193 million toward the trust fund and the rest they diverted into the state’s general revenue.”
Sebree said FAR fought that and now they have a figure closer to $600 million for the Sadowsky Affordable Housing Trust Fund.
“Even though it is not the $800 or $900 million we expected to be in there this year, it is much closer to actually fully funding the trust fund,” said Sebree. “That will be one of the major issues we will be talking about over the course of the next legislative session. FAR urges the legislature to allocate all monies generated by the William E. Sadowski Housing Act to workforce housing programs.”
He said that already there have been over 1,000 bills introduced for the two-month session and they monitor all of them. There will probably be about 2,000 bills introduced for this session.
“We fight really hard to make sure our industry is getting heard,” said Sebree. “We have the attention of the legislature and I really think we will have more money for the affordable housing fund through state’s housing finance agency.”
Another idea FAR has to raise money to help affordable housing is to sell a Realtor license plate.
“We really have to get creative because there really isn’t one silver bullet to fix the affordable housing crisis,” he said.
FAR has 156,000 members and Sebree said that would be great if that was the pool that was buying the license plate, but he really wanted to open it up to everyone in the state of Florida.
“The largest selling license plate in the state of Florida is the cancer plate, which has about 90,000 subscribers and has raised $28 million dollars,” he said. “How many members did I say we have? We want to shoot up to the highest selling license plate in Florida. FAR President Mike Dooley and I came up with ‘Homeownership for all’ to go on the license plate.”
He said the idea is on a bill to be submitted to the legislature and should be passed.
The next issue he discussed was property tax relief. In 1992, the citizens of Florida passed a constitutional amendment titled “Save our Home.”
It caps property taxes and they cannot increase more than 3 percent a year.
Sebree said there is considerable interest among legislators this year in revising the Save Our Homes property tax scheme.
“Now, we have people saying they are locked in their houses and can’t move because the new taxes on the new house they buy, even if they are downsizing, are going to cost them so much more money than they are paying today,” he said. “This is a tough problem. We have a tax committee that commissioned a couple of studies. If we are able to take our save our homes with us, that could cost the local government about $4 billion per year.
“We know that if something is going to cost the local government $4 billion per year that they will find a new tax to put on it and local real estate will end up paying for it anyway. This isn’t just passing a bill and trying to fix a situation, this is a constitutional amendment. So, in order to fix it, we have to go back to the constitution. We either have to get a bill through the legislature saying that this will go on the ballot this fall.”
Sebree brought information on several bills that concerned Save Our Homes and affordability that are being introduced this session. Most involved taking Save Our Homes with you under various circumstances.
“We support being able to take Save Our Homes with you if your property has been taken by eminent domain,” said Sebree. “We support taking Save Our Homes with you if your home has been taken by natural disaster and we support taking Save Our Homes with you if your local county puts it on a ballot and your local county agrees to it. That means it would only be within your county.
“We don’t feel FAR should be taking a position right now on whether everybody moving anywhere in the state can take it with them because of the impact it will have on the local jurisdiction. It’s a little hard to tell. After we get it on the constitutional ballot in November, you can then vote on it here at the local level. We believe it should be a county by county decision.”