By Jim Turner and Ana Goñi-Lessan — After hours of debate, a major property tax cut plan devised by Gov. Ron DeSantis was changed by lawmakers Monday ahead of scheduled floor votes Tuesday.
Democrats warned the measure could “bankrupt” local governments, and GOP members of the House State Affairs Committee and the Senate Appropriations Committee amended the bill (HJR 1F/SJR 2F) to carve out the effect on school districts.
Before the bills were changed local governments were projected to lose $8.4 billion in revenue per year, with firefighters warning of up to 25 percent cuts.
Under the measure, the current $50,000 property tax exemption would increase to $150,000 in 2027 and to $250,000 in 2028, but it wouldn’t apply to school districts levies.
If the full Legislature approves, it will appear on the November ballot for voters to consider, and it will require 60 percent support from the electorate to take effect.
“What this is going to do, and what the governor has put forward in his proposal, and what we believe Floridians have a right to make a determination about, is whether or not the revenue coming into local governments is where it should be,” said Rep. Sam Garrison, R-Fleming Island, who is slated to be the House Speaker after the November elections.
Future legislators would be allowed to further expand the exemption.
Senate Democratic Leader Lori Berman of Boca Raton questioned the speed of the proposal. DeSantis has talked about the need for a large property tax cut measure for more than a year, but a concrete proposal was only released last week. She added that DeSantis had time to set up a website for people to calculate their individual savings but had no time for state economists to conduct a fiscal analysis of the changes.
Berman called it “a political stunt that threatens to bankrupt our local communities, close small businesses and jack up rental prices even further.”
Both bills passed through the committees along largely partisan lines, but some Republican senators raised concerns.
Sen. Gayle Harrell, R-Stuart, voted for the bill but said the ballot summary needs to be clear about the potential effects on local governments.
“I’m hoping by (Tuesday), there can be some adjustment to that so our citizens have the ability to really understand the impact of this,” Harrell said. “There is no doubt, if the voters vote for this, we’re going to have a whole restructuring of how or cities and counties work.”
New Smyrna Beach Republican Sen. Tom Wright said the proposal was being moved "too fast, too quickly," would "hurt" the services Floridians use every day and has drawn massive opposition from people in his district.
The bill would also lower the current 10 percent cap on annual assessment increases for non-homestead properties, which include vacation and investment homes and apartments and commercial properties.
It would also limit the use of property taxes to core services that include fire, police, stormwater, education, infrastructure and the constitutional offices, such as supervisors of elections, property appraisers and tax collectors.
Both committees removed a provision from DeSantis’ proposal to create a trust fund to assist small, rural counties.
Sen. Erin Grall, R-Vero Beach, noted there was no dedicated source of money for the trust fund, which on the ballot would confuse voters who might think money would automatically be set aside in case of a shortage.
"Here we have the permission to set up an empty bank account," Grall said.
The House passed a proposal earlier in the year to eliminate non-school property taxes for homestead owners, but the Senate didn’t go along. During the debates on the issue, local government representatives have pleaded lawmakers not to impose such a large cut to their revenues, and that continued Monday.
Sanibel City Councilmember Holly Smith, president of the Florida League of Cities, said the overall proposal is a tax shift.
“When homesteaded properties come off the tax roll, the cost of services they don’t disappear, it shifts to businesses and non-homesteaded properties,” Smith said.
Jack Cory, a lobbyist whose clients include Jacksonville Beach, told the House committee the “unstudied” proposal will be made up with fees and is simply “a get out of vote drive in ’26, not caring what happens in your communities in ’27.”
A House staff analysis put the drop in revenue at $4.6 billion a year to non-school governments, growing to $8.4 billion a year.
House Minority Leader Fentrice Driskell, D-Tampa, envisioned the “creation, frankly, of welfare counties, particularly where you have the smaller rural counties and the fiscally constrained counties who would have to come to the state and be made whole.”
But supporters of the measure pointed to skyrocketing tax bills for homeowners in recent years and noted voters still get a say.
“What are we afraid of? That we pass this and the voters actually get a choice?” said Sen. Jonathan Martin, R-Fort Myers. “If they want lower taxes they can vote yes, f they don’t want lower taxes they can vote no.”
The Florida Association of Counties put the collective revenue hit to the state’s 67 counties at $3.6 billion in fiscal year 2027-2028 and $6.4 billion in fiscal year 2028-2029.
Republicans rejected Democratic amendments to sunset the changes in 2031 or to include water management districts as an allowed use for property taxes.
