Bryan Martin wrote:
Probably because AOPA received a bunch of e-mails from members
expressing concern over this issue. Those members probably heard about
the issue form the internet through e-mails or web site articles. It
could be that the whole issue stated with the ANN article and then
snowballed into the present fog of rumor and misinformation mixed with
a small grain of fact.

Indeed. Here is Phil Boyer's letter to the Florida governer:

http://download.aopa.org/epilot/2008/080320fl.pdf

In it he explicitly states what motivated the letter:

"I am writing because of the rapidly growing concern expressed by our
members over what appears to be recent aggressive enforcement of Florida's
Use Tax, which has been the subject of numerous articles in the aviation
media."

Only Aero News Network (ANN) appears to (so far) have any stories on the
subject.

The AOPA may have been sucked into this tempest
the same as many others and is now aggressively trying to cut through
the fog to get at the truth.

Hopefully they can find out how much substance there is behind ANN's
stories.