Florida League of Women Voters
Background Information
1994 Constitutional Amendments
Amendment 4, Florida Constitution
Revenue limits: May people's amendments limiting government revenue be allowed to cover multiple subjects?
This provision would expand the people's rights to initiate constitutional
changes limiting the power of government to raise revenue by allowing
amendments to cover multiple subjects. This provision is effective
immediately after voter approval for amendments effective thereafter.
Your choice will be YES to approve this amendment or NO to reject it.
The League reports: "The purpose of this amendment is to expand
citizen’s rights to initiate constitutional changes to limit the power
of government to raise revenue. At present, petition initiatives are
limited to a single subject and are reviewed by the Florida Supreme Court
for compliance.
"When the petition initiative process for constitutional amendments
was considered for inclusion in the constitution in 1968 it was felt
that there should be some limits placed on the complexity of amendments
since the petition initiative process does not provide for public
deliberation on the wording of the amendment and there is no coordination
between potential petition initiatives. Amendments by petition were
limited to affect one section of the constitution only. This was found
to be unusable and in 1972 the constitution was changed to allow a
petition to affect more than one section provided it involved only one
subject."
PRO:
- Gives voters more power to restrict taxation and fees by amending the
constitution through the petition initiative process because it permits
complex amendments, that is, amendments dealing with more than one subject.
CON:
- Does away with the court’s ability to remove misleading or deceptive
petition initiative amendments from the ballot that have to do with
limiting revenues.
- Would allow state revenues to be limited without the checks and balances
that occur between the branches of government and without the legislative
filtering process which allows careful review and determination of impact.
Amendment 1 (Start of regular sessions of the Legislature)
Amendment 2 (Limitation on state revenue collections)
Amendment 3 (Limiting marine net fishing)
Amendment 8 (Limited casinos)
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Source: Florida League of Women Voters
540 Beverly Court, Tallahassee, FL 32301