Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio does his populist bit by throwing his support behind a constitutional amendment that would cut property taxes for everyone.

This is a tale of two petitions: Two citizen efforts with the potential to profoundly change local government have entered their last act. These are independent battles that spring from the same frustrations. The question each asks: Why are we paying the government to make our lives worse?

One fight is for a state constitutional amendment to cap property taxes at 1.35 percent, unless otherwise approved by voters. The other, calling itself Florida Hometown Democracy, is a proposed amendment requiring that anytime a local governing body, say a county commission, wants to change its comprehensive growth plan, voters must approve the changes.

Both represent Floridians’ attempt to bitch-slap their elected officials. We are fed up with your lyin’, cheatin’, stealin’ ways, politicians. So we’re putting you on an allowance. Petition supporters must collect 611,000 voter signatures by Feb. 1 to place the proposals on the November 2008 ballot.

The first petition is as simple as it gets. People want to keep more of their money. Property taxes, insurance and the cost of living have gotten much too high for many to comfortably pay. That pain is why, after much wailing and gnashing of teeth, the state Legislature passed some tepid tax reforms and put a plan to slash taxes up for a citizen’s vote. Gov. Charlie Crist has thrown his full weight behind it.

Voters will decide Jan. 29 whether they like this plan, even if it won’t result in much of a change to anyone’s tax bill — for most homeowners it’s only a few hundred bucks a year. Plus, teachers, firefighters and other groups that depend on tax money are fighting it.

Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio, who knows a good populist issue on which to eventually campaign for governor when he sees one, said the tax cut wouldn’t do enough for property owners. He backed a disjointed bunch of tax reform efforts, which coalesced into a united front under the Tampa-based group Cut Property Taxes Now. Their plan would cap taxes for everyone — homesteaders, snowbirds and businesses alike.

In Miami, that front is represented by Dr. Jose Valladares, a surgeon who has been working on property tax reform for years. Valladares is president of Fair Property Tax for All (www.fairpropertytaxforall.org), a group that has operated mainly in Spanish-language media. It is mostly a phenomenon of the Cuban community, but has made attempts to branch out by including Colombian, Venezuelan and African-American members on its board.

Valladares describes a volunteer army of little old men and ladies riding buses to his office to collect or drop off petitions. They are people who’ve owned their homes for decades, but now can’t afford the taxes, or have to forgo insurance. Past efforts to tackle property taxes never really got off the ground because, as a political observer once told Valladares, “the elderly [in Miami] don’t speak English, don’t have computers and, most importantly, they don’t have money.”

“It’s come to a crisis because people are hurting so bad,” Valladares says. “Let’s say you forget the old people. Well, it’s happening to the young people too. They are wiping out the middle class. My taxes were doubled one year to the next. What am I going to do, rob banks at night?”

The petition effort has been going well in Miami, Valladares says, although he’s not sure how it’s doing statewide. He credits Rubio’s support for galvanizing the movement. “You see the desire of everybody who comes to my office,” he says. “They see for the first time there’s something they can do. I love it.”

As for Florida Hometown Democracy (www.floridahometowndemocracy.com), well it’s a much harder sell. For one thing, it’s just not an easy concept to sum up in the 10 seconds a signature gatherer has to engage a voter trying to squeeze past them on a sidewalk.

“It’s hard to explain when most people don’t know what a comp plan is,” sighs Nancy Lee, an activist who lives in Aventura. “It’s exhausting to explain. The more educated the people are, the easier it is to get them to sign it. Women were easier than men because they would actually stop and listen.”

Lee figures she personally collected about 300 signatures, from friends and from strangers outside grocery stores and at public meetings. She’s supporting the effort because she believes it would curtail the Miami-Dade County Commission’s ability to move the urban development boundary and allow the Kendallization of rural parts of the county. “It would affect the UDB big time,” she says.

It’s not surprising that most people don’t know what a comp plan is. Even local governments aren’t too clear on the concept. Comprehensive plans are allegedly created to manage a community’s growth intelligently. If development proceeds too quickly or in the wrong places, infrastructure can’t keep up, leading to overcrowded schools and roads, and inefficient services — the reasons we pay taxes in the first place. As Floridians well know, intelligent growth ain’t what we’ve got, which is why it is not a shock to learn that a recent poll found that some 20 percent of state residents are considering moving — because their quality of life is declining.

That’s what motivated Palm Beach attorney Lesley Blackner to sink nearly half a million dollars of her own money into her brainchild, Florida Hometown Democracy. “I’ve lived in Florida all my life,” the 46-year-old recounts. “I just got so disgusted with the lies and how contemptuous most commissions are of average people. It’s government of the developer, by the developer and for the developer. We have to change the politics. Let’s let the people have the final say.”

The Florida Chamber of Commerce, which launched a competing petition drive called Floridians for Smarter Growth (www.flsmartergrowth.org), describes Hometown Democracy as “a statewide ‘vote on everything’ initiative [that] would imperil Florida’s prosperity and quality of life.”

There are reasonable pro and con arguments to be made regarding this petition — such as whether it would result in a lot of expensive elections that few would bother to participate in — but the developer and real estate-funded opposition to Blackner’s crusade has been sleazy enough to make one want to vote for it on that basis alone.

Florida Hometown Democracy’s message is reaching voters. As of the end of the year, the state verified about 460,000 qualified signatures. Blackner says that a holiday push garnered another 100,000. The petition needs another 50,000 or so signatures to make the November ballot.

Blackner says she can’t wait for Feb.1 and an end to three years of pushing the proverbial rock up the hill.

“It’s been a roller coaster,” she admits. “I think I’m going to have to go to a mental institution when this is finished. I’m exhausted.”

Comments? E-mail wakefield@miamisunpost.com.