Daniel Perez predicts ‘fiscally conservative’ Session, remains bullish on property taxes

House Speaker Daniel Perez, presiding over his second and final Session with the gavel in hand, is predicting a “fiscally conservative” Legislative Session that responds to a three-year outlook that’s not, as he describes it, as rosy as some would like.

That means a potentially tight budget where lawmaker pet projects may not get the deference they once enjoyed.

Nevertheless, Perez said he believes it “will be a productive Session,” and he’s not backing down on what has become the banner issue for the upcoming 60 days: property taxes.

Gov. Ron DeSantis has called for a Special Session to be held after the Regular Session to address the property tax issue. Senate President Ben Albritton has also said his chamber is not currently working on the issue as lawmakers await further guidance from the Governor.

But Perez is full steam ahead.

“The House has said from the beginning, we agree with the Governor when he stated almost a year ago that we needed to abolish or diminish property taxes,” Perez told Florida Politics. But Perez lamented that the Governor himself has still not offered details of his own plan.

While DeSantis has said he wants property taxes eliminated entirely and has said his proposed budget will include funds to cover lost revenue for local governments in cash-strapped rural communities, he has offered few other details.

Perez and the House, meanwhile, initially proposed eight possible amendments to appear on the 2026 General Election ballot. Four of those cleared the State Affairs Committee earlier this month. All would protect the portion of property taxes used to fund public schools.

One would eliminate all other property taxes, while another would allow homeowners to transfer their accumulated Save Our Homes benefit to a new primary residence with no portability caps or restrictions on home value. A third measure would exempt seniors from paying non-school-related property taxes on their homesteaded properties, while the fourth would provide an additional $200,000 to the homestead exemption for those maintaining multiperil property insurance.

The Legislature could approve all, some or none of the proposals. If approved in the House and Senate, voters would then weigh in at the ballot box in November.

“Maybe our proposals could be tweaked. Maybe some are great. Maybe some are not that great. But we at least got the process started,” Perez said.

While there has been much speculation about Perez’s legislative agenda on property taxes being a slight to the Governor, he reiterated his stance that the House is not the sole source for good ideas. If the Governor announces his own proposal and both chambers approve, he is happy to see that move.

“The Governor deserves a lot of credit for starting this conversation,” Perez said. “We’re happy to consider that and move as soon as possible.”

The 2025 Legislative Session doesn’t seem all that far in the past, likely because it went weeks into overtime. No one, Perez said, is particularly keen on seeing that happen again. But that doesn’t mean he’ll slack off.

“I want Session to end on time just as much as anyone else. However, I’m not going to rush Session,” he said.

The budget will boil down to simple conservative principles, Perez explained. Perez aims to stop what he describes as wasteful spending and ensure future legislative leadership doesn’t face budget shortfalls.

“The three-year outlook isn’t as joyous as people believe,” he said, adding that he wants “to leave the state better than we found it.”

Perez is hoping DeSantis agrees.

“I’d love to see the Governor’s recommendation be a little more conservative than it was last year,” he said.

To be sure, it is not.

Perez spoke to Florida Politics just hours before DeSantis released his recommended budget for the next fiscal year. It clocks in at $117 billion, more than $1 billion higher than his recommended budget was for the current fiscal year. The Legislature’s approved budget came in at $115 billion, about a half-billion less than DeSantis had pitched and $1.5 billion less than the prior year’s budget.

Perez had proposed a much smaller budget for the current fiscal year, at just shy of $113 billion, offering a hint at what may come ahead of the 2026 Session. There was plenty of daylight between Perez and his Senate counterpart, Senate President Ben Albritton, who had pitched a more than $117 billion budget.

Perez doesn’t anticipate there being as big of a gap between the two leaders’ this year, however. And budget chiefs for both chambers agree.

Sen. Ed Hooper, who will lead the upper chamber’s budget process again this year, told Florida Politics he has been in regular communication with Rep. Lawrence McClure, the House budget chief. Hoope said both are acutely aware of a three-year budget outlook Hooper described as being more like around 2018, in pre-COVID days, when the budget only barely approached triple-digit billions.

He added that he expects to adjust the budget downward anywhere from $1 billion to $4 billion compared to the current fiscal year.

Perez, meanwhile, also said to watch for talks to reignite regarding a budget stabilization fund. DeSantis vetoed a plan to invest $750 million into a rainy day fund.

“We believe that that’s our responsibility and we’re going to look at that again,” Perez said, adding that he doesn’t want to “leave future legislative bodies between a rock and a hard place” if budget outlooks become constrained.

That’s already happened to some degree. The expected cuts to the next fiscal year budget are in large part due to federal funds drying up from the COVID years.