With nearly a quarter of the 60-day regular Florida legislative session on the book, a clear dilemma regarding the push to provide property tax relief for homesteaded properties is emerging in the Legislature.
On Tuesday, the House Ways and Means Committee approved a joint resolution for a proposed constitutional amendment to reduce property taxes that will now go to the full House of Representatives for a vote.
That makes three joint resolutions to date that have cleared all of their assigned committees and will now move to the chamber’s floor. However, there have been no corresponding companion measures in the Florida Senate, meaning that all of these proposals could end up going nowhere by the time the session is due to end on March 13.
“We have another chamber that apparently doesn’t have any interest in talking about these very important subjects,” cracked Rep. Philip Griffitts, R-Panama City Beach, in his closing argument before the committee.
Gov. Ron DeSantis, House Speaker Daniel Perez, and Senate President Ben Albritton have all said that they are united in giving voters this November a chance to reduce property taxes on homesteaded properties. And all three of them now say that it would be preferable if there were just one such initiative for Floridians to vote on.
However, only the House seems intent on doing something about the issue during the session. While DeSantis hasn’t said that he will call for the Legislature to meet in a special session to deal with the issue in the spring, it’s apparent that, at least to date, he’s not that interested in pushing anything right now. Nor has the Senate shown any interest in doing so — thus far, at least.
Griffitt’s joint resolution would work differently than the others that have advanced so far. It would limit annual rate increases to 3% or the change in inflation (whichever is lower) for homestead properties to apply every third year instead of each year. The proposed amendment also would change the assessment increase limitation for non-homestead property to be 15% every third year, instead of 10%.
“This is not a cut,” Griffitts told the committee. “We keep hearing about a tax cut. This not a tax cut, this is a cap. … It’s going to require local governments to make hard decisions. To prioritize what they want to spend on.”
As has been the case in other committee meetings, the public comment portion was dominated by locally elected officials making the case that a drastic reduction in property tax revenues would be devastating for their communities.
Local officials again show their disapproval
Woody Brown is mayor of Largo, a city in Pinellas County with about 85,000 residents. He told the committee that property taxes bring in approximately $44 billion annually, whereas the budget for police and fire is about $69 million. Since 2020, the costs to provide for public safety has outpaced the growth in property tax revenues, he said, and any “significant reduction in ad valorem revenue would result in cutting essential services that our residents expect.”
Those reduced revenues could result in reducing library hours, closing or neglecting the maintenance of city parks, or delaying roadway or sidewalk repairs, he said.
A rare Democratic amendment is added
While the proposal again passed on a strict party-line vote, with Republicans in support and Democrats in opposition, Broward County Democratic Rep. Christine Hunschofsky did have an amendment approved by the committee that would prevent an assessed tax increase in a three-year period if the just value of the property had either stayed the same or decreased.
Hunschofsky said that many constituents reached out to her to offer the proposal.
“So, their property value had decreased, for example, in their condos by like $40,000, but because there was a spread between their property value and their assessed value, their assessed value increased so the tax they had to pay went up,” she said.
In addition to the three joint resolutions on their way to the floor, another four joint resolutions sponsored by Republican members of the House remain alive in various committees.
For a joint resolution to become a constitutional amendment, it must be approved by three-fifths of the members of both the House and Senate. Once on the statewide ballot, it must receive 60% support to become law.
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