If the constitutional amendment on property tax relief does not pass it may be because it was a bridge too far.

Overreach, in other words, seems to be the main obstacle to approval. But the overreach is less than it appears.

The intent of the amendment is to prevent local governments from spending Other People’s Money willy-nilly, as liberals are inclined to do.

Limiting revenue is an effective way to limit spending.

The delusion many politicians suffer from is that they know better how to use money than the people who earned the money, and that the uses they choose are more important.

What the amendment would do, if 60 percent of the voters agree, is increase the homestead exemption from $50,000 to $250,000 over a two-year period.

The homestead exemption is a discount people receive on the value of the homes they live in – not including vacation homes. Taxes are computed on the actual value of the home, minus the homestead exemption, times the tax rate set by the taxing authority.

Ergo, someone in a $500,000 home with a $250,000 exemption, would pay $2,500 in taxes at a rate of 10 mills.

The increased exemption would not apply to taxes set by the school district.

Mayor Donna Deegan, Democrat, is raising the alarm that the city government might have to cut vital services if the revenue drops precipitously.

That is a debatable point in Duval County, which receives more than a billion dollars a year in property taxes. But in many smaller counties with much less taxable property, politicians are understandably nervous.

There are 32 counties already designated as “fiscally constrained,” meaning that their elected officials can’t squeeze much out of their residents. All counties get state revenue sharing money but they get even more because of their designation, and presumably they will need more when they can collect less locally.

Deegan’s objection echoes the Florida League of Cities, which did a study concluding that it “could” cause reduced services of some kind in some cities and counties.

But while it makes some good points, the study also contains meaningless weasel words such as: “Local officials expressed concern that broad concepts may compromise fairness and intensify fiscal disparities across communities.”

If you want to talk about fairness, how is the property tax fair if it is to pay for services? Wealthy people pay much more yet require and receive no more services than the poor.

The James Madison Institute recommended using the millage caps to limit what local governments could collect. Various other remedies and approaches were offered in legislative debate, but the homestead exemption was chosen in the end, and the decision was left up to the voters.

An important fact being overlooked by some is that the rollback rate will have more impact under the proposal. Politicians routinely lie to people and claim they are not increasing taxes because they leave the tax rate the same. But that is an increase when the tax base increases, as it always does. Local governments are required to do a calculation that produces the rollback rate, the rate that will produce the same amount of revenue as the previous year without considering new construction.

Under the proposed amendment, the rollback rate will have more clout. It will take a 2/3 vote to increase the rate to 110 percent of the rollback rate and a unanimous vote to go higher.

The politicians who are claiming they will have to make deep cuts in public safety are exposing their own lack of fiscal management skills.

Business people make deep cuts to the LEAST necessary operations or minor cuts to all operations when expenses and revenues do not match.

In 90 years, Florida’s homestead exemption has grown from a flat $5,000 deduction to a layered system worth over $51,000 (and climbing with inflation), plus the Save Our Homes cap that shields long-term owners from runaway assessments during hot real estate markets.

Florida voters first approved a homestead exemption in 1934, on the first $5,000 of a property’s value.

In 1980, Florida voters increased the homestead exemption to $25,000. This was phased in over three years.

The homestead exemption was officially doubled from $25,000 to $50,000 when Florida voters approved a constitutional amendment in January 2008.

This was tweaked In November 2024, when voters passed Amendment 5, which indexes the second $25,000 tier to inflation based on the Consumer Price Index. Because of this, the total baseline exemption ticked up slightly to $50,722 in 2025 and stands at $51,411 for the 2026 tax year.

Opponents also see it as an incursion on home rule.

That indeed may be a better argument than the complaint about too much, too soon.

As noted above, the homestead exemption quintupled after 45 years and was phased in over three years and after another 45 years it was increased by a factor of five again, but in two years. This small difference is what gives opponents room to argue.

However, the obvious point is that almost exactly what is proposed took place 45 years ago and did not result in the calamities today’s doomsayers predict.

Should it fail, the proponents may wish that they had spread it over a longer period, which would have made the fears of local officials less fearsome.

Should it pass, elected officials are on notice that Florida families would rather keep more of the money they earned than spend it on the whims of politicians.