Property tax cuts sound great — until your city can’t fund schools or police | Opinion

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis apparently wants the grand finale of his term to be slashing property taxes. Sounds good — unless the cuts are so deep that the reductions could send local governments into serious decline or create gaping holes in school budgets.

That’s certainly a legacy, but probably not the kind he envisions.

These are early times, of course. The term-limited governor has been talking about property tax cuts for more than a year, but it wasn’t until Wednesday that he finally released an outline of his proposal and announced a special session June 1-3 for lawmakers to consider it.

Details were in short supply, but the general idea seems to be increasing property tax exemptions for homesteaded properties to $250,000 — which he said would offer relief to 60% of Floridians who live in the homes they own — and eventually raising the deduction to $500,000, eliminating taxes for 92% of those Floridians.

Here’s the fine print: In many parts of Florida, average property values don’t even reach $250,000, much less $500,000, meaning those homeowners would probably end up paying virtually no taxes. That also means that the communities those taxes support could be financially gutted. How would they pay for schools, public safety, parks, libraries and other basic government operations?

DeSantis’ solution to this problem is to create a multibillion-dollar state trust fund that would dole out grants to local governments. But where is that money coming from? Will it be at the expense of bigger counties like Miami-Dade and Broward? Florida is expected to see budget deficits in coming years.

A state-run trust fund also means more state control of local decisions. Florida’s current system — where local property taxes pay for local services — keeps decisions in the hands of local officials, where it should be.

DeSantis has a few other ideas, too: a 5% limit on how much the taxable value of commercial and non-residential property could increase in a year and a five-year wait for new residents to be eligible for the property tax relief.

None of these ideas addresses renters, who make up a large portion of South Florida’s financially-burdened population. In fact, as the Herald Editorial Board previously said, they might be hurt by property tax cuts if more of the tax burden falls on rental property owners.

DeSantis called his tax proposal “historic.” On X, he tried to paint local governments as the problem:. “Property tax revenue collected by local governments has nearly doubled in the past seven years (from $32 billion to $60 billion) and is expected to reach an astounding $83 billion by 2032.”

He has also frequently claimed — wrongly — that homeowners are only “renting” their homes from the government as long as they have to pay taxes. That’s a distraction from Florida’s sluggish response to a big driver of the state’s rising cost of living: property insurance. Florida homeowners’ insurance premiums rose nearly double the national average between 2021 and 2025, increasing by 75%, the Herald reported last week.

No doubt the jumbo-sized exemptions DeSantis is proposing will have tremendous appeal for voters. A reduction of $250,000 in taxable value sounds lovely — until you think about what those taxes pay for, mainly schools, police and fire rescue.

Legislators recently considered expanding homestead tax exemptions, with the House passing a proposal that kept schools taxes intact. The Senate did not take up the bill. DeSantis’ proposal appears to cut taxes equally, though more information is needed.

DeSantis insisted on X that his tax cut proposal won’t mean a “collapse” of public services. That’s a critical concern that he hasn’t answered in detail. As the Editorial Board has written, addressing affordability is vital to South Florida’s future, and voters are understandably suspicious about government spending. But municipalities could be hit hard, especially cities and towns in Miami-Dade County with little commercial property.

That will be a vital point for voters to understand. If legislators hammer out an agreement next week, the proposal will be on the ballot in November. Beyond the hype of tax cuts, voters will have to weigh in what DeSantis’ proposal may mean for their quality of life.

This story was originally published May 27, 2026 at 5:16 PM.