Floridians are under siege. Property insurance rates have skyrocketed. Property taxes are rising. And meanwhile, out-of-state investors, hedge funds and part-time residents are profiting while the very people who call Florida home 365 days a year are being left behind.

The rental market has spiraled out of control as full-time residents of Florida are having a difficult time purchasing a home due to insanely high insurance rates and property taxes.

Since 2020, mortgage rates, homeowners insurance premiums and housing costs have surged, placing unprecedented pressure on Florida homeowners. Then, President Donald Trump got elected and interest rates are coming down. Thank you, President Trump!

It’s time to put Florida homeowners first!

That’s why we are proposing the Florida Property Tax Offset Act — a bold, commonsense solution that delivers real relief to full-time Florida residents while strengthening our housing market, holding government and the insurance companies accountable and making Florida more affordable.

How it works

If you are a full-time Florida resident and you insure your primary home in Florida, you should be rewarded — not punished — for doing the right thing.

Under our proposal, for every $1 you pay in qualified homeowners insurance premiums, you will receive a $1 reduction in your annual property tax bill, up to a cap based on your home’s value.

Example: If your insurance premium is $4,200 and your property tax bill is $5,000, you would receive a $4,200 offset and owe just $800 — plus a required minimum contribution.

Eligibility requirements

To protect against abuse and keep the focus on true residents, the following criteria apply:

— You must have established Florida residency for at least 10 years.

— You must live in the home for 12 months per year, eliminating the six month plus one day permanent residency program.

— It must be a non-revenue generating property.

— No rental, business, or short-term income use allowed (Airbnb, VRBO, etc.).

— The home may be a primary residence, retirement home or vacation home only if used exclusively for personal purposes.

— It would cap the taxed value of the home at the purchase price and there will never be an increase in the taxable value of the home.

— Vacant land is not eligible.

Why now?

Florida is at a tipping point. Homeownership is becoming unaffordable. Rising insurance premiums and rising property taxes are pricing people out of the market. Investors are buying homes to flip or rent, driving up prices and depleting inventory.

Without bold action, we risk becoming a state of short-term rentals and seasonal visitors — not thriving communities.

The Florida Property Tax Offset Act encourages homeownership, takes pressure off the rental market, and rewards long-term stability. It also keeps more spending power in the hands of Floridians, stimulates local economies, takes pressure off of the rental communities by making home ownership more affordable and can even contribute to more stable mortgage rates through consistent demand.

Florida first — not tourist first

This is about more than just taxes, it’s about our identity and our future. Do we want to be a state of revolving-door investors and short-term guests? Or do we want to protect the families, veterans, retirees and workers who live here year-round, invest in their neighborhoods, rebuild after every storm and, most importantly, contribute to the Florida economy 12 months a year?

This is a win-win for Florida residents and insurance companies. It also creates the checks and balances between the state, the consumer and the insurance companies.

The Florida Property Tax Offset Act is a smart, conservative and fiscally sound step to preserve the Florida Dream — not just for the wealthy, but for the working class, the middle class and the next generation.

Let’s reward those who live in Florida full time, spend money in Florida, and serve the great state of Florida full time — and keep Florida. This plan will ensure that our state becomes more affordable for all Floridians.

Florida can lead the nation by proving that affordability, fiscal responsibility, and homeowner protection are not mutually exclusive. The Florida Property Tax Offset Act restores balance — and puts Floridians first!

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Julio Gonzalez is the founder of the Gonzalez Family Office and CEO of Engineered Tax Services, the nation’s largest specialty tax engineering firm. Rep. Meg Weinberger is a Representative for House District 94, a wife, mother, a small-business owner and an advocate for animal welfare and affordable homeownership.

Florida is having a loud debate about AI data centers. Power prices. Water use. Land. Transmission lines. Who pays. Who benefits?

It is a familiar fight. And like many familiar fights, it may already be aimed at the wrong target.

In Tallahassee, the question is where to put AI data centers. In Jacksonville, Tampa, Orlando, and Miami, the question is whether the grid can handle them. Florida Power & Light and Duke Energy are part of the conversation. So are ratepayers.

Those are fair concerns. But they are not the biggest question Florida should be asking.

The bigger question is beyond whether the future of AI data centers needs to be built on Florida soil at all. Perhaps Florida has something better to offer the data center discussion, and it’s beyond our soil. That sounds like science fiction. It is not.

The real limit on AI today is not talent or software. It is physics.

Every AI model runs on chips that turn electricity into computation. Physics tells us something unavoidable. Almost all of that electricity eventually becomes heat. The more powerful the model, the more heat it produces. On Earth, heat is the enemy.

It must be removed continuously; otherwise, systems fail. That means massive cooling equipment, significant water demand, and substantial electricity consumption to remove heat from machines. It also means more power plants, more transmission lines, and more stress on already crowded grids.

In Florida, that stress shows up directly in conversations about FPL and Duke. New generation takes years to build. Grid upgrades are expensive. And those costs ultimately flow back to customers.   There is also another physical reality layered on top of all of this.

Hurricanes.

Every large data center built in Florida must assume power interruptions, grid instability, flooding risk, wind hardening, backup generation, and fuel logistics during storms. Cooling systems depend on electricity that may not be available when hurricanes make landfall. Even short interruptions can damage sensitive equipment.

Storm hardening adds cost. Backup systems add complexity. And every hurricane season reminds us that Florida’s grid, no matter how well run by FPL or Duke, is exposed to forces no zoning decision can eliminate.

So every new data center raises the same worry. Will regular customers subsidize big tech? Will neighborhoods bear the risks? Will the grid hold up during the next major storm?

Florida is not alone in facing these limits.

But Florida has something most states do not.

A launchpad.

In space, the physics change. Solar energy is available almost all the time. More importantly, heat behaves differently. Instead of fighting to move heat through air and water, systems can radiate heat directly into the cold vacuum of space. Cooling becomes simpler, cheaper, and far more efficient.

And there are no hurricanes.

No flooding.

No wind damage.

No storm-related outages.

No long recovery cycles.

Picture what that future looks like.

Small, modular data centers orbit the Earth as satellites. Solar panels collect sunlight while Florida sleeps. AI systems running overhead while communities below board up windows and prepare for storms.

New computing power arrives by rocket, not by bulldozer.

This is why orbital data centers are no longer a fringe idea. As AI demand grows every few years, grid upgrades take a decade, and climate risk increases, physics starts to favor space over land.

Recently, an AI model was trained in orbit using advanced computer chips. The model itself was not the point. The location was. It showed that high-powered computing does not have to live where power politics, weather risk, and local permitting collide.

Once you see that, Florida’s current debate starts to feel incomplete.

We are arguing about where to site AI data centers, assuming they must be placed here in the first place. Florida’s real advantage has never been cheap land or cheap power. If that were the case, Texas or the Midwest would already own this space.

Florida’s advantage is access to orbit.

The Space Coast, from Cape Canaveral to Merritt Island, is the busiest launch corridor in the world. Rockets launch so often that they barely make the news. Space infrastructure already supports daily life, from GPS to communications to weather forecasting.

This infrastructure was not built for AI.

AI is simply discovering it.

In a future where data centers can be launched rather than built, Florida does not compete with other states on land use or electricity prices.

It competes on physics, resilience, and access to space.

That is a very different game.

The most important places in Florida’s AI story may not be office parks in Orlando or industrial sites outside Tampa. There may be communities along the Space Coast that help launch, service, and manage the next generation of digital infrastructure.

Orbital data centers will not replace land-based ones overnight. But they will shape investment decisions this decade. They reduce exposure to grid failures, water shortages, and hurricane risk while easing pressure on utilities like FPL and Duke.

History shows how this works. When systems hit hard limits, technology does not argue. It finds another path. Shipping containers reshaped trade. Satellites changed navigation.

The internet rewrote the media. AI infrastructure is next.

Elon Musk often says, “The future should look like the future.”

Right now, Florida is still arguing about plugging into the past.

The future of AI data centers will not be decided only in zoning meetings, rate hearings, or hurricane preparedness plans.

It will be decided on the Space Coast.

Because the future should look like the future.

And in Florida, that future is launched, not plugged in.

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Jeff Brandes is a former Florida State Senator known for his leadership in transportation innovation, criminal justice reform, property insurance modernization, and technology-forward public policy. He is the founder and president of the Florida Policy Project and a national voice on autonomous mobility, infrastructure modernization, and the future of transportation in Florida.

A funny thing happened in the Legislature last week. While the House was holding an “AI Week” to talk about all sorts of futuristic possibilities straight out of “The Jetsons,” the Senate Appropriations Committee passed a school choice “glitch bill” that seems better suited for the Stone Age of “The Flintstones.”

To its credit, the Senate wants to address a problem that has arisen in Florida’s highly popular school choice programs — namely, tracking students as they move from one mode of education to another during the school year.

Thankfully, such mid-year movements don’t occur very often. But when they do, they can throw a wrench in things because Florida’s public school computers don’t talk with our state’s scholarship program computers.

Thus, when a mid-year schooling change takes place — due to a family emergency, a bullying situation or some other reason — there’s a chance a student could end up being counted twice (once by each system).

Now, the seemingly obvious solution to this “double counting” problem would be to fix the computers and create a single point of entry for every Florida K-12 student to be registered in the state. Then, as students move from one mode of schooling to another, it would be easy to track them (and to ensure that the dollars for their education follow them wherever they go).

The Senate “glitch bill” sponsor acknowledges this. But instead of getting the techies involved, he wants Florida parents to start filing paperwork — every month! — confirming that their child is still in the scholarship program and wishes to remain there. And get this — if parents slip up and miss a deadline, their child would not receive any education funding for that month.

Bedrock, we have a problem.

Now, maybe someone in the Stone Age would find it reasonable to require parents to submit monthly attestations that they are still doing what they did last month. And maybe in the town of Bedrock it would seem fair to tell taxpayers that they can’t have any of the dollars they’ve paid into the K-12 system unless they jump through monthly hoops and barrels.

But here in the Digital Age, the Senate sponsor’s proposed remedy seems very draconian.

Which is a great shame. Because no one denies that “double counting” is a problem. And no one denies that the Senate sponsor is well meaning.

The only question is whether we need a “solution” that seems straight out of Bedrock. Or a true remedy that shows greater respect for Digital Age parents living in a world with AI.

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William Mattox is the senior director of the Marshall Center for Education Freedom at The James Madison Institute.