The Republican legislators who wrote Amendment 3 tell us it will allow voters to fix property taxes. That is not why they put it on the ballot. Amendment 3 was intended to eliminate the ability of local governments to defend against a state government that has gone rogue, with its elections dominated by hundreds of millions of dollars in dark money.
The sheer magnitude of the dark money pouring into our state allows the candidates who are taking it to use television and social media to falsely paint their opponents as close to incarceration and themselves as saints.
If the amendment is adopted, it would bring all but the richest local governments to their knees and in the process silence local leaders who have, as part of their responsibility to their constituents, monitored what is going on in Tallahassee, blowing the whistle when the public interest is given second place — an increasingly frequent occurrence.
In a state dominated by lobbyists who don’t have term limits, strong local governments provide a voice that would otherwise be unheard.
Amendment 3 would strip Florida’s 67 counties and its 411 municipalities of their independence by taking away billions of dollars of unreplaced revenue. In 2028 alone, the revenue loss would be $12 billion.
If the amendment is adopted, each local governing body will have to reduce services, lay off employees, increase property tax rates (called millage rates), impose higher fees or some or all of the above. For many local governments, defunding police, fire/rescue, park and recreation programs, road and street maintenance and other local services will be on the table out of sheer necessity.
Turning most of Florida’s local governments into beggars is not viewed by the supporters of the amendment as a bug. It is a feature. The amendment provides a narrow list of services local governments can support with property tax revenues and provides that no attempt to vary from the list would be tolerated unless approved by the Legislature. It is a virtual certainty that most of our local governments will have to beg the state for money, and with the money will come strings.
Read the full Opinion Editorial by Michael W. Davey, a former mayor of Key Biscayne, on the Miami Herald