TALLAHASSEE — After spending the last year talking about eliminating or cutting Floridians’ property taxes, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Monday that he won’t campaign to help pass an amendment on the ballot that he first proposed.
That’s because the Legislature didn’t pass his amendment exactly as he wanted it, he said at a Tampa news conference.
“What the Legislature did wasn’t my proposal,” he said. “We had a proposal, and I felt an obligation if that were on the ballot, to have to lead the effort.”
DeSantis said he will vote for it but won’t put his political weight behind the amendment like he would have if his version was on the ballot.
“If someone asked me to do something, I’m not saying I wouldn’t,” he said. “But in terms of leading the effort, in terms of me saying, ‘Here we go, we’re going to do this, we’re going to do all that,’ you know, I’m not going to do it.”
The statements are a dramatic reversal from DeSantis’ rhetoric for the past year, in which he took to Fox News, news conferences and other public events proposing to eliminate Floridians’ property taxes through a constitutional amendment. But he kept his plan a secret until last month, giving lawmakers just days to vet and study it before a rushed special session.
DeSantis’ property tax plan would have raised the homestead exemption to $250,000 from the current $50,000 cap. (The homestead exemption reduces the taxable value on owner-occupied homes to give Floridians a break on their tax bills.)
The amendment the Legislature approved still does that — except it doesn’t apply to property taxes that go to schools.
“I for one can’t support removing billions of dollars from public education today,” said Sen. Jay Trumbull, a Panama City Republican, during the Legislature’s special session.
To many observers, the Legislature’s plan made the amendment more palatable to voters, at least 60% of whom need to vote for it to become law. Already, the amendment is facing a wave of opposition from anti-tax advocates and local government officials. Last week, a new committee launched to oppose it.
DeSantis has hardly mentioned the amendment since the Legislature’s action. On Monday, he said he didn’t know if voters would approve the Legislature’s version.
“I think most people are going to be supportive of it, but I don’t know that,” he said. “I know ours would have passed because we did a lot of research on exactly how to structure it and how to do that.”
He said his amendment would have been “historic” but didn’t say why. The amendment’s ballot summary states that it requires the “full elimination” of property taxes, but the actual text of the amendment does not do that.
“Ours was part of a larger vision, and I think it would have really been something that would have been historic,” he said. “This could lead to that, but you’re going to have to do other things in the future, and I kind of felt like this was the one shot we had to really put us on this pathway.”
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