Gov. DeSantis renews criticism of House property tax bills

Less than a week after he bashed a package of proposed ballot questions House Republicans filed to lower or eliminate property taxes, Gov. Ron DeSantis unleashed a longer, more detailed criticism of the measures.

House Speaker Daniel Perez this month unveiled eight potential constitutional amendments that, if OK’d in the Legislature in the coming Session, would go directly to voters for possible approval in the 2026 election.

None of them are any good, DeSantis said, and they have no chance of passing unless the House can distill the best parts of each into a single, clearly written, broadly appealing proposal.

“They put out a bunch of proposals. They’re all milquetoast. There’s not one proposal that people would get excited about. Not one. They’re total half-measures, which is not what people are asking for. People want to be bold,” he said, adding that going forward with multiple property tax proposals will cause “confusion on the ballot.”

“That is a way you kill any type of getting property tax reform, because different voters are going to read different things, and none of them are going to end up getting 60%. You have to have one amendment.”

The House’s package of joint resolutions, announced Oct. 16, includes measures of varying impact and scope. All would still allow taxes to be collected for schools and police.

One would eliminate property taxes on homesteads immediately and outright, while another would do the same but in phases over a decade. Another proposal by Miami Rep. Juan Porras, who in January called DeSantis a “lame-duck governor grasping for political relevancy,” would spare seniors over 65 from having to pay taxes on their primary residences.

Beyond being insufficient, DeSantis said Wednesday, the proposals are an insult to voters’ intelligence.

“They think you’re stupid enough for them to tell you, ‘Oh no, we’re supportive of you. We put it up. We put stuff on the ballot. We tried.’ They can’t think you’re that stupid, right?” he said.

“It offends me that they think somehow they can get away with this by doing it. So, you do one proposal, right? One proposal. And we’ve been working very hard on this for months. There’s a lot of different things, and you’ve got to structure it right and everything like that. But I can tell you, we need to do one, and we need to do something bolder than what these proposals were.”

To date, however, DeSantis and his administration have not offered an alternative option — a fact Perez highlighted when responding to the Governor’s initial criticism of the House’s proposals last week.

“The Governor has not produced a plan on property taxes. Period. It’s unclear what he wants to do. I’ve personally reached out to share with him the House’s proposals and he has, so far, not wanted to engage in a conversation,” Perez said in a statement to Florida Politics.

“So, when the Governor says he wants to ‘abolish’ property taxes. How? We don’t have any details.”

While DeSantis didn’t delve into the issue’s minutiae Wednesday, he provided a general concept. He also cautioned against advancing anything that would attract blue-state transplants who could change the composition of Florida’s electorate, which now skews Republican by nearly 1.4 million voters.

“Florida residents, you have a home. You’re a homesteader. You should own it. You shouldn’t be taxed. That shouldn’t be an ATM for the local government,” he said.

“But, you know, there’s an issue with that because people way, ‘Yeah, I love it, but then are you going to have half of New York City move to Florida?’ Because …no, we don’t really want that, right? I mean, we want to benefit our current residents.”