JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 The Florida House is pushing ahead with eight proposed constitutional amendments that attempt to lower property taxes in a wide range of ways. <\/p>\n
All eight options cleared their first legislative hurdle Thursday afternoon. <\/p>\n
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/a><\/p>\n The options range from an immediate elimination of non-school property taxes, a 10-year phase-out and various proposals to increase homestead exemptions to lessen the tax burden on homeowners.<\/p>\n All of them faced opposition from Democrats, including State Representative Anna Eskamani (D-Orlando), who argued any property tax reduction will simply be replaced by sales tax hikes or increased service fees.<\/p>\n \u201cWhich doesn\u2019t just mean that your essentials become fee-based. It also means that if you don\u2019t have money, you can\u2019t access certain services, you can\u2019t go to the public park, you can\u2019t go to the library,\u201d said Eskamani.<\/p>\n With the backing of the Governor and other top state leaders, odds are Florida voters will get a chance to vote on something related to property taxes in 2026. <\/p>\n The question is, how many choices will they have?<\/p>\n While in Jacksonville this week, Lieutenant Governor Jay Collins called for House lawmakers to coalesce around a single proposal.<\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/p>\n \u201cIt confuses the legislature, it confuses the people on the ballot, let\u2019s do one,\u201d said Collins.<\/p>\n State Representative Dean Black (R-Yulee) is Vice Chair of the Select Committee on Property Taxes.<\/p>\n He noted there are still several stops ahead where the proposals could be whittled down or changed, but his goal is to give voters the ultimate say.<\/p>\n \u201cThere will be a great debate and people will get informed, and they\u2019ll make wise decisions. And I trust the citizens of this state to do what they think is right for themselves,\u201d said Black.<\/p>\n The eight proposals in the House all still have two more committee stops before reaching the floor. <\/p>\n The Senate and the Governor have still not unveiled their proposals, but the Governor has indicated he\u2019ll be rolling out his plan soon.<\/p>\n [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/a>] <\/p>\n Click here<\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here<\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here<\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/p>\n Action News Jax Top Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 The Florida House is pushing ahead with eight proposed constitutional amendments that attempt to lower…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56177,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[982,34858,34862,8131,28,34857,6281,5052,969,116,118,117,970,10417,34860,34859,634,34863,4214,10418,16656,34861],"class_list":["post-56176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-action_news","tag-anna_escamanti","tag-dean_black","tag-democrats","tag-florida","tag-florida_house","tag-governor","tag-house","tag-jack","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-jake_stoan","tag-jake_stowan","tag-jay_collins","tag-lieutenant","tag-local","tag-select_committee_on_property_taxes","tag-senate","tag-state_representative","tag-vice","tag-yuli"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}