Amendment 5

From the FASA …

We Won!!!


Yesterday in Tallahassee, Circuit Court Judge, John C. Cooper, ruled in FASA's favor by striking Amendment 5 from the November, 2008 ballot. He ordered it removed on the grounds that the ballot title and summary accompanying the proposed amendment are incomplete and misleading.       

We anticipate that the Secretary of State and the Taxation and Budget Reform Commission (TBRC) will appeal immediately, and that the District Court will certify it directly to the Supreme Court based on what occurred with a similar order entered last week dealing with two other TBRC proposed amendments.

This is due to the short time between now and the time that the General Election ballots will actually have to be printed. It is pretty clear from Judge Cooper's ruling that Amendment 5 was deliberately deceptive and the ballot summary failed to meet the standards of accuracy required by the Courts.
 
However, this costly struggle is far from over. The TBRC will immediately appeal yesterday's ruling and we still have amendments 7 and 9 in appeal process.

Thanks to all of you who have already contributed to FASA's "Protect Our Public Schools" PAC. If you haven't done so already you can get more information by clicking: http://fasa.net/Political-Action.cfm

Jim Warford, Executive Director
Florida Association of School Administrators