Usually, there’s a sigh of relief when the Florida Legislature adjourns its annual session— as they did mid-afternoon Friday. At this point in a normal year, Floridians have a good tally of what passed and what failed, and whether or not their budget priorities were funded.
This is not a normal year, and this was not a normal adjournment. Legislators will head back to Tallahassee in a few weeks for another swing at initiatives that didn’t pass during the first 9-week session. They must approve a balanced budget. And they will be asked to redraw congressional district lines to favor Republicans even more heavily. (This is something Florida lawmakers have never before done: Tinker with district boundaries for purely political reasons, and just because they can.)
The biggest task — the one that carries the most potential for lasting harm to this state’s economy and way of life — will be the negotiation of a property-tax cut leaders want to lay before voters in November. And if you’re wondering “what could possibly be bad about a property tax cut?” then please let us explain.
Florida’s local governments — cities, counties, school boards and others — rely on property taxes to fund roughly half their annual budgets. For that money, Floridians get police and fire services, parks, environmental preservation, public schools, animal control, responsible growth planning and much more.
Most cities and counties set their property tax rates low. While no city or county government is perfect, the reality is that local governments are the closest to the people and often, the most responsive and fiscally prudent.
WAVE OF AGGRESSION
In recent years, they’ve also become the targeted punching bag for Gov. Ron DeSantis and the GOP-dominated Legislature. Blaise Ingoglia, who is acting as Florida’s chief financial officer, accusing local governments of wasteful spending (though almost never producing actual evidence of waste.) Meanwhile, the Legislature has become increasingly blatant about its attempts to strip power from local officials — most particularly, the power to manage growth at a steady, deliberate pace.
Lawmakers have also worked to undermine local governments’ ability to celebrate different cultures or work toward diversity, equity and inclusion in their own work space and through their interactions with the community. And in the session that just passed, lawmakers approved a bill that allows them to be stripped of their elected offices if they don’t toe the line.
Property taxes are just another avenue of attack. By starving cities and counties of revenue, they restrict local leaders’ ability to meet the needs of their communities. Among things threatened: Youth sports leagues. Senior programs like Meals on Wheels. Services for homeless people and domestic-abuse victims. It goes on and on.
There are theories about why GOP leaders undermine the cities and counties they are supposed to be representing. After all, many lawmakers got their political start by serving on a city commission or town council — they know first-hand that most local governments run their operations responsibly.
There are a few we find plausible.
FIGHTING DIRTY
First, there’s the distraction factor. If local residents are outraged at actions coming from City Hall, they may pay less attention to the ludicrous excesses flowing south from Tallahassee — stunts like lavishing billions of dollars to build a detention camp in the middle of the Everglades with no planning or permitting.
By itself, that’s not enough to justify the extraordinary aggression that Gov. Ron DeSantis and top lawmakers have directed toward local government officials. So here’s another: Big-money donors in the homebuilding and manufacturing industry don’t want to mess with locals fussing about the impact of another brand-new, sprawling community or the pollution potential of a new manufacturing complex. It’s much more convenient — one-stop shopping, if you will — to lean on lawmakers with demands to eviscerate community growth and development controls.
A LOCAL EXAMPLE
That’s where betrayal can hit the hardest. When legislators travel to Tallahassee for their sessions, they drive through their own communities first. They understand the history of community initiatives like conservation land-buying programs or regulations that protect the tranquil beauty of rural areas against the threat of urban sprawl.
Seminole County has had such a barrier in place for more than 20 years and rarely faced a challenge. In fact, the boundaries are so popular in this Republican-dominated district that they are regarded as , all but untouchable. Orange County just adopted its own set of growth controls.
So explain why, on the last day of this year’s session, Sen. Jason Brodeur, whose district includes much of Seminole County, tried his damndest to kill the barriers by supporting a last-minute amendment that would essentially force both counties to erase those protective lines. The amendment, sponsored by Sen. Jonathan Martin, R-Fort Myers, would have enabled any landowner on the “rural” side of the boundary to sue the county — and by extension, county taxpayers — for damages, even if they had no plans to develop the land.
There’s not enough space to unpick all the false and misleading statements offered by Martin, Brodeur and few other lawmakers during an intense hour-plus of debate on Martin’s plan. We’ll link the video on our website. See how many exaggerations and omissions you can spot.
TIME TO LEAD
The property tax proposals are just another front for attack. And lawmakers seem pretty confident that county and city residents will approve it without much thought.
It’s time for local leaders to fight back. This is not a conservative vs. liberal issue, it’s a power play, and elected officials in each community can’t afford to keep surrendering. Starting this week, they must mobilize: Have every county and city elected official hard at work explaining to their constituents what is at stake —- and urging them to contact legislators in a mass public message of condemnation. This is the message: They see through the sparkly promise of a tax cut. And they are tired of lawmakers trying to make themselves look good by beating up city and county officials.
This is war — in fact, it has been for a long time. And the attacks have only become more violent with each passing session. It’s time for local leaders to defend their constituents and the autonomy and authority voters entrusted to them.
The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Krys Fluker, Executive Editor Roger Simmons and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. Use insight@orlandosentinel.com to contact us.