It's tough to argue with someone who wants to hand you money.

But I'm going to give it my best.

After all, Amendment 1 is on the ballot Tuesday and it is just sitting there with its legalistic language, waving hundred-dollar bills at you like a horned-up 22-year-old investment banker at a strip-club bachelor party.

Prop 1 says, "Come on, take the money! We fixed our property tax crisis. There's something here for everyone. Your homestead exemption of $25,000 will be doubled. (Not exactly true, but more on that later.) You can take your Save Our Homes tax benefit with you to a new house. Come on. Do it. You know you want to do it."

As much as it pains me to tell you, as much as local governments feasted on rising property values and the taxes they produced over the past five years, as much as Floridians need some relief from the double whammy of soaring insurance costs and higher property tax bills, we really should say: "No, thanks."

And then we should tell our state legislators to get off their far-away-from-home-and-loving-it-in-Tallahassee butts and do something that will both fix our broken tax system and provide the impetus for real economic growth.

Amendment 1 doesn't do either.

Florida TaxWatch, an independent group that monitors government spending and opposes Amendment 1, put it this way: "Giving a larger cut to homeowners became more important to legislators than actually reforming the property tax system. But doing what is popular is not always doing what is right."

Here is the short version of what Amendment 1 is offering:

• You would be allowed to transfer a significant portion of the Save Our Homes tax cap to a new home if you want to move. Those tax cuts would apply to school funds, costing hundreds of millions to public schools in Florida. (The Legislature promises to make good on any money lost to schools. The check's in the mail.)

• The homestead exemption, which applies to all homeowners who live in their homes year round, would be raised from $25,000 of assessed value to $50,000. Lawmakers enjoyed saying this would "double" the homestead exemption. But that's not true, because the Amendment says that the additional $25,000 exemption won't apply to school taxes, which make up about 40 percent of our individual tax bills.

• It would put a 10 percent cap on assessment increases for non-homesteaded property, such as second homes, snowbird properties and businesses. This little bit of relief is a long way off, however, showing up only after years and years of rising property values — and just when the cap might start to pay off, it will automatically sunset in just 11 years.

• And just how much money would this amendment give the average home-owning taxpayer? A relatively paltry $240 a year. Renters, nonresidents who own property here, snowbirds and small businesses will see much less than that, if anything at all.

But still, as one CL staffer asked me this week, isn't $240 better than nothing? Because if we turn this down, the alternative is getting nothing, right?

Only in the short term.

Because the amendment hurts education, cutting taxes for public schools in a state that already ranks at the bottom of the nation in education spending. That means dumber kids and, more importantly, a dumber workforce, worse-paying jobs and an economy anchored — for better or worse — to housing sales and tourism for decades to come.

The amendment also continues pitting one homeowner against another to see who can shift his tax burden onto the other's back. It fails to address the underlying cause, the inequity of Save Our Homes, and it exacerbates that inequity by making the tax cap portable. Many legal scholars believe the Amendment's portability section is unconstitutional, anyway.

TaxWatch boils it down: "So, who has paid for the doubling of total property taxes in our state in the last six years? It has been mostly non-homestead property. So, who gets the relief under this proposed amendment? Of the estimated $9.3 billion in estimated five-year savings, nearly 80 percent goes to homestead property owners."

So you can take your $240 now and be happy with it. But don't come bitching in 10 years when the tax burden shifting is even worse, when our economy is still stuck in reverse, when there are few independent businesses that can keep their doors open, no new restaurants or shops around. Or when the crime rate hits new highs because our uneducated kids won't all be happy with careers at McDonald's. Or when our cities admit they can't pay for enough firefighters and police officers to keep us safe from those dumbass criminals.

Accepting that $240 check lets our legislators off the hook by approving a half-assed fix to our most serious challenge, instead of sending them back to the drawing board to come up with something better. A yes vote on Amendment 1 allows lawmakers to declare "Mission Accomplished!" and wash their hands of it.

As Woody Allen once famously said, "It's a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham."

Voting on Tax Reform

Florida's primary elections are closed to members of the parties involved, so only Democrats and Republicans can vote for the presidential slate in each party on Tuesday, Jan. 29. But all registered voters can cast ballots for or against Amendment 1, the tax reform proposal, regardless of party affiliation.

The polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Election Day next week.

Early voting has already started in Pinellas and Hillsborough counties and runs through Saturday, Jan. 26. You can cast a ballot at one of 13 locations in Hillsborough (call the Elections Office at 813-272-5850 for times and places) or in Pinellas at its three Supervisor of Elections Office locations from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. through Saturday.

PoHo on TV: CL's political expert will be talking presidential politics on Your Turn with Kathy Fountain on Fox 13 Monday, Jan. 28, at 12:30 p.m. He is also part of ABC Action News' Election Night coverage, on Channel 28, from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m.

This article appears in Jan 23-29, 2008.