Joel Engelhardt‘It’s almost like you’re renting your home from the government,’ he says in West Palm Beach remarks.
A day before Florida House members unveiled proposals to sharply reduce property taxes, Gov. Ron DeSantis explained at the Forum Club of the Palm Beaches in West Palm Beach his rationale for initiating the tax-cutting effort.
The high cost of living, including the rising cost of homes, spurred his thinking, DeSantis said in response to a question from the senior class president at Palm Beach Central High School before a sold-out audience of 700 at the Kravis Center’s Cohen Pavilion.
“What can we do to really help people?” he asked. “The one thing we control is tax.
“Is it right that somebody that’s been in their home just constantly has to pay tax every single year? When does it end?” he asked. “It’s almost like you’re renting your home from the government.
“And so, what we said is not that we would eliminate it on every property, but as your personal homesteaded property,” he said, honing in on the taxes on primary homes, not rental units, seasonal homes or commercial property. “We want you to be able to own that free and clear of the government.”
Of eight proposals to emerge Thursday from the House Select Committee on Property Taxes, six take direct aim at the tax on homesteaded property, with the proposal from state Rep. Kevin Steele, R-Dade City, eliminating it outright.
“The vast, vast majority of property tax revenue is not from homesteaded Floridians’ properties,” DeSantis said. “It’s second homes, investment properties, commercial properties, Airbnb, all those other things. That’s about 68% to 70% of property tax revenue statewide.”
More than half the 659,000 properties in Palm Beach County are homesteaded, accounting for 41 percent of the county’s taxable value, property appraiser figures show.
The governor’s approach is sure to meet stiff resistance from city and county government leaders who say they need to keep up with rising costs for personnel, equipment and supplies, even as DeSantis’ Florida DOGE claims to identify vast overspending.
“So people say, ‘Well, where are you going to get the money?’ Well, how come nobody asks, ‘Why can’t government spend less money?’” he said to applause.
The property tax generates an estimated $55 billion in Florida for local governments, a fact not lost on DeSantis, who pointed out that the state, buttressed by sales taxes, could help local governments make up for lost property tax revenue.
“I’ve calculated if you take the 32 most fiscally constrained counties in Florida, we could backfill 100% on Day 1. … Take them off the rolls and it’d be about $260 million a year,” he said. “That’s budget dust in Florida,” the governor said, referring to the state’s $117.9 billion budget.
Wealthier counties like Palm Beach could more easily absorb the impact, although the state may be able to help them, too, he said.
Hot-button topics
Other topics touched on by the second-term governor, who challenged Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 and will be term-limited out of office next year, during his hourlong remarks:
Banning cellphones in the classroom: “I literally had one of these leftist columnists compare me to Hitler for doing that, and I’m just thinking to myself, like, now, everyone is doing it, Republican, Democrat governors. They’re all doing it because the results are what they are. First of all, who would want to teach with everyone just buried on their phones?”
Open carry of guns: “There’s nothing new under the sun here. … You do have the right in Florida to conceal carry, even before this court decision. If I’m there and I’m in a restaurant, I take off my jacket or something is showing, all of a sudden, I’ve committed a felony offense. It just doesn’t seem right to them (gun owners). And I get that. So I don’t think you’re going to see very much difference.”
Universities: DeSantis has overseen the replacement of many state university presidents with political figures, and his administration oversaw the transformation of New College of Florida in Sarasota into a conservative-leaning institution.
“The purpose of a university is not ideological indoctrination. The purpose of a university is pursuing truth, upholding high standards of academic excellence and ultimately preparing our students to be citizens of this republic,” he said.
Antisemitism on college campuses: As protests against Israel rocked Columbia University in New York City and other campuses nationwide, leading to the downfall of some university presidents, DeSantis said it didn’t happen here.
“Some people have told me, ‘Man, you’re really lucky that didn’t happen in Florida.’ And I tell them, ‘Luck don’t have nothing to do with it. Any university president in the state of Florida knows that if they were to allow their campuses to descend into Columbia-style anarchy, they would find themselves no longer being presidents of a university in the state of Florida.’”
Faucian dystopia
COVID-19: After advisers told him he would have a difficult time politically if he refused to mandate masks, “I did not know whether that was true or not, but I also knew my job as a leader was to care more about protecting the jobs of the people I was elected to serve than I was about protecting my own. And if it didn’t work out for me politically, so be it.
“I can tell you, looking back, if you look at Florida’s success, it would not have happened had we allowed this state to descend into a Faucian dystopia.”
Removing prosecutors: He described removing state attorneys who failed to enforce the law and let criminals back on the street. “I was the only governor in America that’s actually removed their elected state attorneys from their post,” he said to applause.
Incentives to recruit police from other states: “I was on the West Coast a couple years ago, and I talked to a police chief in one of the nicer areas of Southern Cal and I said, ‘How you guys doing?’ He’s like, ‘I’m doing great, governor, but all my police officers want to move to Florida.’”
Political gains
Turning purple Florida red: “Our reelection victory was the biggest Republican victory in the entire history of the state of Florida for a governor’s race, 1.5 million vote margin, including being the first Republican to win this county in 40 years.
“We knew about a month out, ‘Yeah, we’re gonna win Miami-Dade. That’s not a problem.’ We ended up winning that by double digits. So then the question is, you know, ‘Can you do Palm Beach?’ And probably about 10 days before the election? Like, ‘Yep, we’ve got Palm Beach.’ We did Osceola, and then Orange with Orlando. ‘Can we get Orange?’ And we’re just like, ‘I don’t know that we can do that. It’s a little too liberal for us.’ We did good, but not good enough to win (Orange County).”
Everglades restoration: Discharges into natural areas are cleaner and construction of projects to save the Everglades are moving faster because the state is taking over some projects from the Army Corps of Engineers. Projects would be completed by the end of the decade, five years ahead of schedule, he said. “And that, quite frankly, was a pipe dream just six or seven years ago.”
Economic growth: The state is not only No. 1 for adding residents from other states, DeSantis said, “but we also have had more adjusted gross income move into the state under my tenure as governor than has ever moved into another state in all of American history over a similar period of time, even adjusted for inflation.”
