City Council Member Rory Diamond is attacking the mayor’s budget with a slate he calls “Big Beautiful Budget Amendments.”
Diamond, who is a Republican, routinely votes against taxes and spending and has amped up his game since Mayor Donna Deegan, Democrat, began her term of office two years ago.
For next year, she proposes net spending of $4 billion on the general government, not including the independent authorities.
Diamond begins with a $100 million tax cut.
General fund revenue has grown rapidly in recent years – too rapidly for Diamond.
Property taxes are expected to bring in more than $1 billion next year — $87 million more than budgeted for the current year. Diamond proposes a one-mill reduction in the tax rate, which would reduce revenue to the general fund by $100 million.
Another of Diamond’s proposed amendments would ban any spending on “DEI,” the poisonous race-based emphasis on identity over merit that has had a growth spurt during the woke movement.
Another target is spending money earned by U.S. citizens on illegal immigrants. Diamond says the city government does it in many ways and he thinks it needs to stop. He succeeded in getting such a ban enacted by City Council at one point, but it was vetoed by Deegan.
Another target is the many affinity boards in the city, which include an LGBQwhatever board. Diamond says the city spends about a million dollars a year on such boards.
Finally, he would ban spending taxpayer money for abortions.
Diamond told Eye on Jacksonville that there might be some pushback on some of his proposals from the city’s lawyers, but he plans to forge ahead, nevertheless,
“I only have two years left,” he said, referring to the fact he cannot run again because of term limits.
Diamond is a member of the powerful Finance Committee and intends to present the Big Beautiful Budget Amendments piecemeal during committee hearings on the budget over the next six weeks.
