State of Florida: It’s time for fiscal clarity

By Jennifer Hunt Murty

Gov. Ron DeSantis and the rest of Florida’s political leadership are floating the idea of eliminating property taxes—a proposal that sounds great for property owners only if you disconnect it entirely from reality.

It’s part of a growing pattern in Tallahassee: bold declarations about what local governments should do, matched with a palpable aversion to admitting what these mandates cost. The result is not efficiency, not innovation, not “small government,” but a widening gap between expectations and the dollars required to meet them.

Take public safety, the most basic services government provides to a community.

Fire services: A good idea with no plan to pay for it

The state has suggested that firefighters should move to a 24/72 schedule, reducing their weekly workload from 56 hours to something healthier and more humane. On its face, it’s an excellent idea. We should want our first responders well-rested, safe, and supported.

But in Marion County, implementing that schedule would require creating an entire third shift. Marion County Fire Rescue Chief James Banta estimates the annual price tag at more than $30 million—money the state has not provided and has not offered a plan to find. The message from Tallahassee seems to be: “Do better—but don’t ask us how to pay for it.”

School safety: A funding gap the community had to fix itself

We see the same disconnect in school safety. This past year, the state allocated a little over $5.3 million to Marion County Public Schools for public-school security. But that figure doesn’t come close to covering the actual cost of security hardening of buildings, let alone contracts for School Resource Officers from the Marion County Sheriff’s Office, Ocala Police Department, and Belleview Police Department for security the state dictates the district provide.

The only reason local schools can afford what the level of protection they are currently offering is because our community voted for a tax referendum that helps cover the $12 million difference between what the state provides for security and what it really costs. That raises uncomfortable questions: Will voters renew that funding again? And if they don’t, whose fault will it be—local leaders’, or state officials who never funded their own mandates in the first place?

911 upgrades: Mandates without money

The story repeats with 911 systems. Florida required all counties to upgrade to next-generation technology—something that is needed, evidenced by two local outages in Marion County this year caused by damaged cables. But the digital services required by the new system cost counties twice as much annually. Who pays for that?

The counties do, of course. Local leaders are forced to use property tax revenue because the state has failed to raise monthly 911 fees in nearly a decade, even as technology costs and public expectations have grown.

Florida law authorizes a monthly 911 fee up to 50 cents per phone line, but the state is only charging 40 cents. Unsurprisingly, these fees shared with counties don’t come close to covering actual costs, leaving counties statewide with an $800 million shortfall. At a recent Florida Division of Emergency Management board meeting, members even discussed how to phrase this shortfall in their annual report, hesitant to sound “critical” of how low the fees are to the governor yet still without explaining what the counties are having to do to meet the mandate.

When Denise Adkins, the director of the state’s Division of Telecommunications, gave a presentation to the state House Administration Budget Subcommittee on Nov. 19, you would think the substantial deficit passed to counties or the counties’ request for the state to increase the fees on monthly phone bills would have even been mentioned. These important issues, however, did not receive any mention.

This is where we are: softening language to avoid offending state leaders while counties struggle to fund responsibilities the state mandated.

Who sets the standards for our community and why is the state controlling how we spend tax dollars?

Recently, Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia held press conferences to aim criticism at local government spending. Most of it has been relatively small “gotcha’s” —like a $75,000 hologram of Jacksonville’s mayor at the airport—while ignoring the much larger structural problems created by the state’s own unfunded directives. And many of these flashy expenses are paid with tightly restricted tourism dollars that can’t be spent on basic needs such as roads or public safety that our tourists also rely on. The same is true locally: $10 million signs on Interstate 75 or last year’s $275,000 for production and social media ads for Marion County Commissioner Carl Zalak’s promotional “Insider” videos. It may look frivolous, but in reality, state rules dictate what those funds can and cannot be used for, leaving counties looking for “creative” ways to spend the dollars that frustrate taxpayers as nonsensical.

Those same restrictions apply to our own penny sales tax. Marion County can use the revenue to buy fire trucks, but not to hire the firefighters needed to operate them. That’s why the county has asked the Legislature to let local leaders spend those funds based on actual community needs—not categories invented in Tallahassee decades ago.

Which brings us to the real heart of the matter: Do we want the state dictating how much we should spend on essential services, doling out just enough sales-tax dollars to meet their idea of what “should” get done? Or do we want true local control—the ability to set our own community standards and fund them honestly?

I know my answer. I bought a home in this community because I value the services, safety, and quality of life that Marion County provides. I trust local leaders and local voters more than a distant state government that issues mandates without money and restrictions without reason.

Local officials are the ones left explaining reality

When the state over-promises and under-delivers, local governments are forced to explain the shortfall. They are blamed for tax increases the state effectively mandated through unfunded requirements. Counties and school districts become the scapegoats for state policy decisions that look good on a campaign flyer but fall apart under a budget workshop’s fluorescent lights.

If the state cannot or will not provide that funding, then it should stop acting as if counties and school districts can magically absorb multimillion-dollar mandates without raising taxes.

The real question isn’t whether property taxes are too high. It’s whether Florida leadership is willing to tell taxpayers the truth:

Quality public services cost money, and someone has to pay for them.

When Tallahassee pretends otherwise, they aren’t cutting taxes—they’re passing the buck.