Florida GOP clash over property taxes heats up in House panel meeting

Property taxes are the biggest source of dollars for 51 of Florida’s 67 counties and almost half of the state’s cities – so getting rid of them could jeopardize a range of local services, topped by law enforcement, a House panel was told.

The Select Committee on Property Taxes, a 37-member, bipartisan panel, held its opening meeting May 13.

It was formed by House Speaker Daniel Perez, R-Miami, to meet Gov. Ron DeSantis’ demand for exploring how to overhaul local property taxes – possibly with a ballot proposal next year. The panel is set to meet occasionally until September and report back with recommendations by January.

But the committee’s first meeting came even as the deadlock deepened over the state budget and tax breaks, with Perez, Senate President Ben Albritton, R-Wauchula, and DeSantis bitterly divided.

Still, in a nod to DeSantis, state Reps. Toby Oberdorf, R-Palm City, and Vicki Lopez, R-Miami, the committee’s co-chairs, sent a letter to the governor urging that he appear before the panel to provide his ideas on cutting property taxes.

Invite falls flat

The letter went out just moments after Perez said DeSantis’ top plan to send $1,000 checks to homesteaded property owners was “the only option I have ruled out.”

DeSantis spokesman Bryan Griffin fired back at the panel’s invite. “This is the design of a committee intended to kill an idea like property tax relief,” Griffin posted on X.

Amid the caustic atmosphere between the state’s Republican leaders, the House panel’s opening session was mostly consumed by a presentation by state economist Amy Baker on the state of property taxes across Florida. Her analysis showed that while property taxes are central to financing county and city governments, communities do vary in their dependence on them.

In Flagler and Nassau counties in the state’s Northeast, property taxes provide more than 40% of total county revenue; in others, Miami-Dade and Sarasota among them, less than 20% of county dollars come from the levies imposed on homes and businesses.

Baker said the impact is “randomly distributed across the state.” She added “they’re very unique.” Even as the effect of property taxes varies, city and county spending is dominated by the cost of law enforcement, Baker’s analysis showed.

Replacement dollars? Not so fast

Lawmakers on the panel said that, given the dollars provided by property taxes, erasing them would rattle local governments. Some mentioned that replacement taxes would have to be considered.

But Oberdorf, the co-chair, urged panelists not to move too swiftly toward providing more dollars to cities and counties.

“I would challenge you to rein in revenue, instead,” Oberdorf said.

Lopez agreed: “We’re here cutting expenses and looking for efficiencies, and we believe local governments should do the very same thing,” she said.

“I think it’s a combination of two things: Where do you find other revenue sources, but more importantly, are you spending the money the way the taxpayers expect you to.”

Oberdorf added, “We’ve seen since the COVID years that money for these municipalities has increased, incredibly. It’s our duty to make sure this money is spent wisely … (so) we have to take hard looks.”

John Kennedy is a reporter in the USA TODAY Network’s Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at jkennedy2@gannett.com, or on X at @JKennedyReport.

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Florida GOP infighting haunts property tax meeting at Capitol