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 the elections for governor, attorney general, Senate president and House speaker 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, loudly 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 cities, towns and villages 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. Adding, not subtracting from, the housing problem, communities that need millage rate increases will see higher rents.
Supporters of the amendment do not view turning most of Florida’s local governments into beggars as a bug. It is a feature. The amendment provides a narrow list of services local governments can support with property tax revenues and says no attempt to vary from the list would be tolerated unless the legislature approves it. It is virtually certain that most of our local governments will have to beg the state for money, and that money will come with strings.
The supposed reason for Amendment 3 is property tax relief. The 1992 Save Our Homes Amendment already provided it. Fixes like the Save Our Homes Amendment, however, added to a crazy quilt of laws that taken together have led to unfair consequences. For example, many families long enjoying lower property taxes from Save Our Homes find themselves trapped by tax consequences from downsizing to a smaller home or apartment at current real estate values. While that provided a band-aid, it has proven inadequate in the current market. Amendment 3 would simply add more crazy to the quilt.
The argument that Amendment 3 will allow first-time homebuyers to enter the market is laughable. The barriers to homeownership are price, interest rates and property insurance. Amendment 3 addresses none of that.
Florida needs a complete overhaul of its property tax laws that recognizes the problem’s lack of uniformity — that high real estate prices in Miami are a poor excuse for the state’s leadership to seize control of many local governments. Perhaps an honest, intelligent review of our property tax laws could create a tax source on occupants of residential properties, other than property taxes based on assessments, that would fairly provide adequate revenue to fund schools and county, city, town and village government. Real reform will never come, however, from a legislative body in Tallahassee beholden to dark-money interest groups and shielded from criticism by independent voices.
The Republican argument that local governments waste money and can tighten their belts is rich coming from people who, according to a grand jury, diverted health care revenues to oppose referenda supported by more than half of the voters and channeled $5 million in Medicaid to the Republican Party. The same leadership proudly spent over $1 billion in taxpayer dollars to open an ICE incarceration facility in the Everglades, proudly naming it Alligator Alcatraz. Most of Florida’s local governments, by contrast, are fiscally strong, carefully managed, and each year make tax and spending decisions in the glare of the sunshine. We should be so lucky that the State did the same.
As a former Republican who served four years as Mayor of a successful Village government, I know of what I write. Amendment 3 must be rejected.
Michael W. Davey is the former mayor of the Village of Key Biscayne.
