Bill Meets Miami-Dade’s Budget Math
Ron DeSantis has five months left as Florida’s governor. Term-limited after two consecutive terms,
he will leave office in January 2027 regardless of what happens in November’s election for his
successor. But before he goes, DeSantis is championing the single largest change to Florida’s
property tax structure in a generation — one that Miami-Dade’s own budget office says could blow
a $385.8 million hole in the county’s General Fund in its first year alone, with no accountability to
the governor who pushed it once the bill comes due.
The Amendment and Its Author
Amendment 3, titled “Save Our Homes from Excessive Property Taxes,” would raise Florida’s
homestead exemption for non-school property taxes from $50,000 to $150,000 in 2027 and
$250,000 in 2028, index it to inflation afterward, and cut the assessment-growth cap on
non-homestead residential and commercial property from 10% to 5%. It also directs the
Legislature to eventually pursue eliminating non-school homestead property taxes entirely.
DeSantis has championed the measure directly, and it needs 60% voter approval on the
November 3 ballot to take effect. The measure has already drawn legal challenges: a Leon County
circuit judge ruled its ballot title and summary “clearly and conclusively defective,” ordering a
rewrite by Attorney General James Uthmeier — DeSantis’s former chief of staff — while allowing
the amendment to remain on the ballot.
What It Would Actually Cost Miami-Dade
The fiscal exposure is not abstract or contested by county officials — it comes from Miami-Dade’s
own July budget presentation. County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava’s FY2026-27 proposed budget
was explicitly built to prepare for “potential statewide property tax reform, which could cost the
County an estimated $385.8 million in General Fund revenue in the first year alone” — more than
10% of the county’s General Fund. Outside analysis projects the annual loss reaching $445 million
by fiscal year 2028-29, on top of a statewide reduction to local government revenue estimated at
$11.86 billion once fully implemented. Statewide fiscal analysts project a $4.6 billion first-year hit
and $8.4 billion by year two — with the amendment itself containing no replacement funding
mechanism.
The Local Government Response
Levine Cava has called the measure “deceptive,” arguing it “doesn’t eliminate the cost of providing
services that our communities depend on, it just changes who pays for them.” She has joined a
coalition of Miami-Dade and Broward officials publicly campaigning against the measure — an
unusual position for local elected officials to take against a sitting governor’s signature initiative,
and one that underscores how directly the fiscal consequences will land on county and municipal
budgets rather than the state government proposing the cut. Some critics have gone further: a
statewide “Save Our Services” coalition has likened the measure’s marketing to a payday loan,
warning that the upfront relief homeowners see will be repaid many times over through service
cuts, new fees, or cost-shifting onto renters, who receive none of the expanded exemption’s
benefit but could see rents rise if landlords’ non-homestead assessment costs are passed through.
Palmetto Bay’s outgoing mayor pointed out that in her village, 60% of revenue comes from
property taxes and 51% of that funds law enforcement — a direct line from the amendment’s
passage to public-safety staffing that state-level supporters rarely address in campaign
messaging. Amendment 3 does require local governments to direct remaining property tax
revenue toward public safety and education first, but that requirement doesn’t create new revenue
— it only dictates the order in which a shrinking pool gets spent.
A Legacy Item With No Successor to Answer For It
The politics compound the fiscal stakes. DeSantis is finishing his term amid an unsettled
succession fight: Trump’s endorsement of Rep. Byron Donalds for governor reportedly upended
DeSantis’s own preference to see his wife, Casey DeSantis, carry his political program forward,
and DeSantis has since installed his own appointees — Uthmeier at Attorney General, Jay Collins
as Lieutenant Governor — in what allies describe as an effort to preserve his policy legacy after he
leaves office. Amendment 3 fits that pattern precisely: a structural, multi-year fiscal commitment
initiated by a term-limited governor, placed on the same ballot that will elect his successor, whose
consequences will be managed by county commissioners, school boards, and whichever governor
takes office in January 2027 — not by DeSantis himself. Whether Donalds, Casey DeSantis, or
another candidate ultimately wins that race, none of them authored the policy they will inherit the
fiscal fallout from implementing.
The Accountability Gap
That sequencing is the real story for a fiscal accountability outlet: a governor with no further
election to face is asking voters to lock in a tax-revenue reduction that local governments — who
do face voters every cycle, and who have already built contingency planning into their current
budgets — say they cannot fully absorb without service cuts. Miami-Dade’s own numbers make
the trade-off explicit rather than theoretical. If Amendment 3 passes in November, the $385.8
million question won’t land on DeSantis’s desk. It will land on the commissioners who take the vote
in Miami-Dade’s Stephen P. Clark Center, county by county, for years after the governor who
proposed it has left Tallahassee.
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