Gov. Ron DeSantis says Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties shouldn’t resist his proposal to eliminate homestead property taxes below $250,000 appraisals, arguing that these capital-flush governments should go further than the measure he wants on the November ballot.

“You don’t need to tax anybody’s homestead in Miami-Dade, because you’ve got massive money flowing in here, particularly very, very wealthy people. And so it’s like, why would you want to have all this wealth come in and then just price middle class people out?” DeSantis said.

Miami-Dade and Palm Beach “have all kinds of ability” to make cuts” and they should do so “more aggressively,” DeSantis argued.

As Gary Fineout noted via a Florida Association of Counties analysis, those counties’ budgets could be among the hardest hit if the amendment passed in November.

The proposal, which has yet to be considered by legislators, would allow for a $125,000 exemption for homestead taxes in 2027, doubling that the next year.

Miami-Dade could face a $610 million shortfall in 2028, while Palm Beach could take a hit of more than $523 million.

DeSantis politicked for the proposal throughout the press conference, which highlighted immigration enforcement. He suggested it may boost Republican turnout.

“It’s going to give some people a reason to come out and vote in November who might not otherwise come out and vote.”

The tax impacts for population centers throughout the state may present a challenge for the proposal even in a supermajority GOP legislature, as the proposal needs 60% of the vote in both the Senate and the House to make the ballot. Speaker Daniel Perez is from Miami-Dade, and DeSantis’ relationship with him is frosty, raising questions about how consensus will be built in the lower chamber.

The Governor’s proposal includes a trust fund that fiscally disadvantaged governments and agencies can appeal to for support, a mechanism that appears to put an added burden on urban areas with functional economic development plans to backstop backwaters in the state.

DeSantis says the grants are mere “chump change.”