Miami | The Navarro Report | September 3, 2026
Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava has taken on what may be the hardest political sales job of this election cycle: persuading Florida voters to reject a ballot measure that would cut their own property taxes. Flanked by officials from Broward and Miami-Dade counties at a downtown Miami press conference this week, Levine Cava launched a formal campaign against Amendment 3, the sweeping homestead exemption expansion that Florida lawmakers, at Governor Ron DeSantis’s urging, have placed before voters on the November 3 ballot.
The mechanics of the measure are straightforward enough to explain its popularity. Amendment 3 would raise the homestead exemption for primary residences from the current $50,000 to $150,000 starting in 2027, and to $250,000 in 2028, with future increases indexed to inflation. It also lowers the cap on annual assessment increases for non-homestead properties from 10 percent to 5 percent. Supporters, including DeSantis, argue roughly 92 percent of the state’s homeowners would see a meaningful tax cut, and the measure needs a 60 percent supermajority to pass — a bar its backers are confident voters, faced with a straightforward tax reduction, will clear.
Local officials argue the simplicity is precisely the problem. “Amendment 3 is deceiving, deceptive,” Levine Cava said at the press conference. “It’s being presented as a simple tax cut, but it doesn’t eliminate the cost of providing the services that our communities depend upon, it just changes who pays for them.” Miami Commissioner Damian Pardo went further, comparing the measure to predatory lending: “It strikes me like a payday loan. You have no idea what the interest is, what the charges are.”
The dollar figures officials cite are substantial. A legislative fiscal analysis cited by opponents estimates local government revenues statewide could fall by $4.6 billion in the amendment’s first year and by $8.4 billion in its second, with no funding mechanism specified to replace the loss. For Miami-Dade specifically, Levine Cava has said eliminating property tax revenue entirely would cost the county roughly $3.27 billion — about 19 percent of all county revenue — while Broward County commissioner Alexandra Davis put her county’s first-year loss at close to $200 million, rising to roughly $340 million in year two. In neighboring Pinecrest, Mayor-elect Shannon del Prado said the village stands to lose $15 million over five years with no plan to replace it.
The practical consequences local leaders describe are not abstract line items. Levine Cava has warned that absent a guaranteed, locally controlled replacement revenue stream, counties and cities would face choices no resident should have to confront: closing fire stations, reducing police patrols, shuttering park facilities, and cutting school programs that serve hundreds of thousands of children. She has separately cautioned that renters and small business owners — who receive no direct benefit from a homestead exemption — could nonetheless end up paying more as landlords and municipalities pass along higher costs through rent increases and new fees.
DeSantis has dismissed the warnings as political theater. “I think what people are saying, if this passes, ‘Oh my gosh, you are not going to have law enforcement or any services or anything like that,’ and that is just not true,” he said, arguing that local governments are collecting substantially more property tax revenue today than they were seven or eight years ago and have ample room to absorb the change.
The fight has scrambled conventional political alignments. The Florida Democratic Party has come out against the amendment even as polling suggests a majority of the state’s voters, across party lines, are inclined to support what reads on the surface as a straightforward tax cut. Some Florida Democrats have simultaneously touted their own records of cutting local property tax rates — Levine Cava’s own administration has delivered two rate cuts during her tenure, bringing Miami-Dade’s countywide rate to its lowest level since 1982 — a record opponents of Amendment 3 argue proves fiscal discipline is possible without a blunt, one-size-fits-all constitutional mandate.
Levine Cava has now formed a political committee, No on 3: Protect Our Homes, to raise money for the opposition campaign, joining the broader Save Our Services coalition and other groups mobilizing against the measure. She has been candid that Miami-Dade cannot defeat the amendment alone; the county, along with Broward, is expected to become a central battleground given how much local revenue is at stake and how heavily both counties’ budgets rely on property taxes to fund day-to-day services residents interact with constantly — police, fire rescue, libraries, parks, water and sewer systems, and public transit.
With the vote seven weeks away, the outcome will hinge on whether Levine Cava and her allies can convince voters accustomed to viewing any tax cut as an unambiguous win that Amendment 3’s benefits carry hidden costs — costs that, opponents argue, will not disappear but simply shift onto renters, small businesses, and the services every resident, homeowner or not, depends on. Whether that argument lands amid genuine frustration over Florida’s cost of living remains, by local officials’ own admission, very much an open question.
Human-Directed AI Journalism — This article was researched and structured under direct human editorial direction, with AI assistance in drafting. All facts, sourcing, and conclusions were reviewed by the author prior to publication.