Florida TaxWatch

Uh, but if someone were to come in tomorrow and they were a new homeowner and they bought my same house, they would probably see a tax bill that is double, even close to three times what I'm paying for the same house.

Former Florida Lieutenant Governor Jeff Kottkamp, now the head of Florida Tax Watch, describes himself as a fiscal conservative who supports lower taxes and less government.

But even he has little good to say about Amendment 3.

He dinged the measure for its one-size-fits-all approach.

that if Amendment 3 passed, there would be a substantial tax cut.

Florida Tax Watch, independent, nonpartisan fiscal organization in Tallahassee, did a study and showed that in the first year, the average taxpayer would probably save about $1,100, and in the second year, about double that in property taxes.

So for people who are kind of concerned about the impact that inflation and other forces have had on their property tax bill, there's no question Amendment 3 will impact that.

The question will be for most voters is to measure those costs and benefits.

So what is that savings potentially going to do to local revenue? And that's sort of the other side of the equation, why you've seen city and county officials, sheriffs, fire organizations, and leaders across the state come out against it because they're very concerned about the impact on local government revenue.

Again, you look at that Florida Tax Watch study of Amendment 3, According to Florida Tax Watch, over the next five years, if it were to pass, local governments in Florida will lose almost $50 billion in revenue, $46 billion in revenue.

That includes $1.5 billion in revenue right here in the city of Jacksonville, more than $700 million in St. Johns County, more than $300 million in Clay County.

And the city council auditors have even put a finer point on that and said that in year one, the city of Jacksonville will lose about $200 million in revenue and in year two, closer to $300 million in revenue.

And that was great.

But like two months ago, the Florida Tax Watch, who are, you know, ordinarily small government, pretty fiscally conservative minded individuals, published an analysis of that plan and gave it high, high marks.

And so that could be like a first chink in the armor of how we can start to see the investment now, which preserves a tax base later.

So if your listeners search up the Broward County Resilience Plan and Florida Tax Watch analysis of it, and you might see what this could look like.

So I think all of that is important.

So that's one big bucket.

Amendment 3 would cause significant reduction in government funding across Florida.

According to Florida Tax Watch, the amendment would cut local property taxes by $45.8 billion over five years, and two-thirds of those cuts would be to county governments.

How would that impact government services? Would some counties and cities shift the tax burden to other places to make up for the lost income? Joining Business Breakdown to discuss is Joseph Abruzzo, the county administrator in Palm Beach County.

He previously served as Palm Beach County Clerk of Courts.

that's interesting.

And one more question, and Joseph, I think you could help this because you have a pretty good statewide perspective.

When you look at the Florida tax watch data, there are a number of small rural counties in Florida that would have their budgets dramatically curtailed by Amendment 3 because they don't have a lot of commercial property and their homes aren't very expensive.

Do you expect the state would step in and fund those small counties? And would that come from statewide dollars that could be South Florida would have a hard time competing for statewide dollars because now they'd be going to support the basic services of rural counties?

The Ryan Gorman Show Podcast, presented by Farah & Farah, Accident Attorneys, Tampa.

Florida TaxWatch says large data centers could be a huge boost to local tax bases if communities make them pay their own way.

It modeled a hypothetical 500-megawatt, $10 billion data center and estimated it could generate more than $1 billion in tax revenue, with about 94% going to local governments and other local taxing agencies.

Now, the reason is these facilities, they involve billions of dollars worth of buildings and equipment, so they can generate a lot of property tax revenue without adding a huge number of residents who need schools, police, and other government services, because you don't have a lot of, like, permanent jobs tied to these data centers.