Politics
Jeff Brandes: Amendment 3 passed. Now comes Florida’s Big Short-fall
Over the weekend, I rewatched The Big Short. In the movie, the danger was in the documents all along.
Sellers kept selling. Skeptics were treated as the problem. Then the assumptions failed, and everyone wanted to know who was responsible.
Amendment 3 passed Tuesday. Now comes the part where people read the documents.
How many legislators read the full amendment with their District’s budget beside it before putting it on the ballot? How many checked whether their hometown could still afford its deputies and firefighters? Zero. They couldn’t have. The Legislature put it on the ballot before state economists had even estimated the cost.
The campaign certainty is already giving way to budget anxiety. Local 10 reports emergency meetings among city and county leaders. The Governor is discussing another Special Session and grants for core local services. The celebration is sharing the stage with the rescue operation.
Welcome to Florida’s Big Short-fall.
If Florida is working through the stages of grief, we are somewhere between shock, denial and bargaining. Shock arrived on election night, when local officials saw the results and opened their budgets. Denial is the insistence that cutting waste alone will cover it. Bargaining comes next: small towns and counties begging Tallahassee for a permanent recurring bailout.
Acceptance begins with one question: who pays, every year?
State economists project local governments will lose nearly $5 billion in the first year and nearly $12 billion a year once the exemption is fully phased in. A one-time grant cannot fill a recurring hole.
Florida is not all Miami. Hotels, commercial development and waterfront homes give some communities a cushion. Small inland towns have none. The Florida League of Cities found that in 108 of Florida’s 411 cities, at least 90% of homestead value drops off the city tax rolls. In Deltona, more than 40% of the city’s taxable value disappears.
The counties are no better. An analysis of 2026 values finds that in 33 counties, at least seven in ten homesteads fall below $250,000. In Dixie, nearly all do. For those owners, non-school county taxes go to zero. The Sheriff still has to answer the call.
The amendment itself sends no reimbursement to fiscally constrained counties, the poorest and most rural places with the least room to absorb a loss, and nothing in the amendment guarantees that police and fire will be protected.
That is how rural Florida slides into rural dark ages: slower emergency response, crumbling roads, shorter library hours, shuttered recreation programs. Fewer services discourage investment. Less investment thins the tax base. A thinner tax base means fewer services. The dark ages won’t arrive all at once. They’ll arrive one closed fire station at a time.
School taxes are untouched, and many homeowners will see some savings. I support lower taxes. I also support telling taxpayers the full price. A smaller tax bill followed by new assessments and higher fees must be judged by the household’s total bill. Some will be shocked to find it’s higher. Renters get no homestead exemption, but they will pay whatever costs landlords pass along.
Florida should not wait for a small city’s Lehman Brothers moment to learn what holds up essential services once this revenue is gone.
Local governments should consolidate and share services where the numbers work. Where a city can’t stand on its own, merger or disincorporation deserves a funded plan. Don’t let cities linger on life support. But erasing a city’s name from the map doesn’t erase its residents’ need for firefighters, drainage or road repairs.
The voters have spoken. Now Tallahassee must show its work. Name the waste. Count the savings. Explain how each community keeps deputies on patrol, fire stations staffed and roads paved.
That is acceptance: an honest accounting. If the answer is higher fees, say so. If it’s fewer services, name them. If it’s a taxpayer-funded bailout, explain whose taxes will pay for it. You don’t solve this in one rushed Special Session. It will take years.
The Governor and Legislature put their names on this promise. They should expect their names to stay on the consequences.
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Jeff Brandes is a former Republican state Senator from St. Petersburg and president of the Florida Policy Project.
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