March 28, 2024

Government Spending

Tinkering with Taxes

State pols battle local officials for hearts and minds of voters.

Neil Skene | 6/1/2007

State legislators, legends in their own minds when it comes to delivering great government, seem determined to pre-empt local elected officials and declare local government profligate.


St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker (left) talks with Senate President Ken Pruitt about property taxes during an April visit to the Capitol. "In June the people here (in Tallahassee) will be celebrating," Baker said, "and in August when local governments are doing their budgets, people will be screaming." [AP Photo / Phil Coale]
A special session starting June 12 is designed to fulfill Republican campaign themes about rolling back property taxes and imposing caps on local taxes for the future. "Save Our Homes," a tax cap originally created to help people stay in their fast-appreciating homes, may be extended to people who don't want to stay in their fast-appreciating homes. School boards, those paragons of effective spending, are exempted from the tax reductions under almost everyone's proposal; in fact, the $72-billion state budget for next year increases the amount of tax school boards are required to impose.

Why, one might wonder, if local citizens are so outraged about their local taxes, did they re-elect so many local officials last year and why did they bypass those officials and appealing instead to the state Legislature?

Maybe this "tax revolt" is the last hurrah of the Jeb Bush Republicans looking for one more statewide anti-tax crusade. Maybe legislators are loving all this tax-cut rhetoric without having to cut spending. And maybe it was the inevitable consequence when some residents pay higher taxes while the folks next door do not.

"In June the people here (in Tallahassee) will be celebrating, and in August when local governments are doing their budgets, people will be screaming,"
St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker said in April as he took a lunch break during a lobbying trip.

Instead of letting local politics work this out and making local politicians deal directly with any uprising over local property taxes, the state politicians are stepping in with one big scythe, whacking at tax rates across the whole state at once.

"It is an indication of a failure in the political system," acknowledges Republican Sen. Don Gaetz, who nevertheless is a strong advocate of the mandated property tax cuts (and who owns millions of dollars in real estate). Gaetz chafed at mandates from the state when he was Okaloosa County's school superintendent. He declared, in an interview last winter, that as many government decisions as possible should be made by local officials, "people you can reach out and grab by the neck" ["Golden Gaetz," February, FloridaTrend.com].

The property tax issue "should be handled face to face between local taxing authorities and local taxpayers," he said in late April as the Legislature entered its final days. "We're doing the business that local governments should have done" because "thousands and thousands of Florida citizens are looking past local officials."

But that is a reason not to act, rather than to act. The biggest single risk to the sustainability of the republic is not $50 a month in property taxes but the decline in clear accountability of elected officials. Every level of government is involved in everything. The U.S. Congress is funding local swimming pools. The same local governments complaining about property tax cuts are getting millions in state grants for water and sewer projects, parks, arts centers, stadiums, roads and more.

They're like post-adolescents who want independence but won't move out of the parents' house. State legislators need to let them grow up and face the consequences of their decisions. Let them eat steak. More parks? Enough cops? Too many bureaucrats? That's for local voters to decide.

Gaetz is right, though, that local government performance is deficient. A lot of local governments simply haven't won the trust of their citizens when it comes to cost-effective local government. Here in Leon County, the generally Democratic taxpayers rejected a sales tax increase for healthcare proposed by an ever-squabbling county commission with a vague plan for spending the money. Commissions and councils spend hours on administration, then give citizens three minutes to speak. You get there on clogged local streets and muddle through incomprehensible agenda handouts.

Tags: Politics & Law, Government/Politics & Law

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