Several lawsuits filed to block Florida's property tax amendment, arguing "misleading" ballot language

Earlier this year, the Florida legislature approved the language for the "Save Our Homes from Excessive Property Taxes" amendment, which will be on the ballot in November.

Several lawsuits have been filed in recent weeks to block the initiative, arguing that the ballot language and even the title are misleading. CBS Miami's Jim DeFede spoke to former Republican State Senator Jeff Brandes, president of the Florida Policy Project, who is behind one of those lawsuits. 

"It uses the words like, 'save our homes from excessive property tax,'" Brandes explained. "Well, we can find a constitutional amendment that was about saving the Everglades that the courts threw out because of that word 'save', because it assumes you're going to lose something. So, there's that. This amendment says it's going to help small businesses. Well, and I'm sure there will be some small businesses that it will help, but it'll hurt some small businesses as well. There's probably about seven or eight other phrases in that amendment that we think are not neutral, that are leaning comments, and the courts have historically thrown those out. So, if they follow precedent in this case, we think that we have an excellent chance of prevailing."

As the lawsuits work their way through the courts, the state released initial estimates of how much local cities and counties would lose if the amendment were to pass. The state projects it would be $12 billion annually by 2031.

"It may be that certain cities will have to disband their police departments and join with the county sheriffs as their solution because they can't afford their police department anymore," Brandes said. "I think those are the types of things you're going to start seeing" if this passes.