Amendment 3 is the most reckless gamble out of Tallahassee since the 1861 convention that voted for Florida to secede from the union. The yahoos in our capital would wreck only the state this time and not the whole country, but the irresponsibility is the same.
The witless legislators who voted to put Amendment 3 on the Nov. 3 ballot should pray that the voters have better sense than they did. If it passes, counties and cities will be forced to beg Tallahassee to pay for the police, firefighters and free libraries that Amendment 3 would sacrifice.
The Legislature did nothing to determine what Amendment 3 would cost or how to make up for it. It all happened in less than three days with a shameful lack of policy discussion.
The estimates from state economists came later: $5 billion in the first year, when the new homestead exemption covers $150,000, and nearly $12 billion a year after when the exemption goes up to $250,000.
That’s about what the state could raise if it repealed the sales tax exemption on what Florida TaxWatch calls life’s necessities: groceries and prescription drugs, residential rents, hospital rooms and metered water, power and fuel for home use. Picture 6% more on your FPL statement and grocery bill.
The Sun Sentinel recommends an emphatic “NO” on Amendment 3. It is one of the most critical votes you will ever cast as a Floridian.
Political opportunism
Nobody enjoys paying taxes or seeing their money misspent. We understand that. But this is the wrong remedy at the wrong time for all the wrong reasons.
It is political opportunism by a governor, Ron DeSantis, who still thinks he sees a president in the mirror, and by gutless legislators who lazily passed it the day after he sent it to them. They thought for themselves only long enough to spare public schools, a small concession that predictably caused the prickly DeSantis to distance himself from the property tax cutting that he had initiated in the first place.
Broward municipalities would lose 70% of their public safety money according to Educate on 3, a detailed, city-by-city fact sheet by the Broward League of Cities (browardleague.org/educate-on-3). The estimated loss to Fort Lauderdale alone is $27.3 million.
The reliably anti-tax Republican Party of Florida is all for it. So are the Realtors, who put $10 million into promoting it. Their economic self-interest speaks for itself.
It’s not their worry if homeowner insurance premiums spike in response to police and firefighter layoffs. Or when local governments jack up their tax rates, adding to the unfair burdens already born by renters and business owners.
The Legislature didn’t think about that, either.
The harm to first-time homebuyers
Or how it would “drive up home prices over the long run and will make it harder for young families to gain access to the housing market,” according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
So much for Florida’s critical lack of starter homes.
In brief, Amendment 3 raises the homestead exemption, for those who have lived in Florida five years, to $150,000 in 2027 and to $250,000 in 2028 with annual inflation adjustments ever after. It also halves assessment increases on non-homestead property to 5% a year, and calls on the Legislature to establish a way for local governments to repeal homestead taxes entirely if they choose.
But nothing in it bars them from raising tax rates to the extent they can or from imposing creative new fees to keep from shutting down firehouses, libraries, parks and police patrols. Independent fire districts, which are commonplace elsewhere, would be one option if the Legislature agreed.
“Government rarely disappears. It rearranges itself,” warns Jeff Brandes, a former Republican state senator from St. Petersburg, whose thoughtfulness is sorely missed in Tallahassee.
“If local governments rely more on flat assessments and fees that aren’t reduced by homestead exemptions, some of the homeowners with the greatest tax protections today could unexpectedly pay more,” he has warned.
Kids, hospitals get hurt too
Some burdens would shift to homeowner associations. And commercial projects might begin to look more attractive than starter homes to city planners. Other critical services that depend on property taxes, such as children’s services, public hospitals and mosquito control, would also suffer.
An irony that should “give conservatives pause,” Brandes wrote, is that “a proposal intended to shrink government could ultimately centralize it.”