The future of mobility is being built today, and Florida is leading the way. Nov. 11-13 in Orlando! The Florida Automated Vehicle Summit @FloridaSummit is Florida’s premier mobility conference, bringing together the brightest minds in transportation, technology, business, and public policy. Big ideas. Breakthrough technology. Conversations that shape the future. @waymo @Tesla @zoox @Uber @ford @USDOT @FDOT_Secretary Join us as we explore what’s next for Florida mobility. xitter.cf/flpolicyproject/status…

One fascinating thing I’ve noticed about Amendment 3: I can’t find a single major independent conservative policy organization that endorsed it in full. -Florida TaxWatch says no. -The Tax Foundation raises serious concerns. - @GroverNorquist’s Americans for Tax Reform warns of fiscal risks. When groups that have spent decades fighting for lower taxes and smaller government won’t fully endorse your tax cut, perhaps the problem isn’t them. It’s the proposal. floridataxwatch.org/florida-…

Amendment 3 isn't a tax cut. It's a $12 billion tax shift. Cutting property taxes for some homeowners doesn't make the cost of roads, deputies and firefighters go away. Someone still has to pay billions a year. Under Amendment 3, it's renters, young families, small businesses and new buyers, who are the people who never got the tax cut. The Tax Foundation's new analysis shows who pays: 🔴 Renters. They get no tax cut. A third of Floridians rent, and nearly half do in Miami-Dade. When landlords' taxes go up, research shows half or more gets passed on in rent. 🔴 Young families and first-time buyers. Picture two identical houses on the same street. One owner gets a $250,000 exemption. The other bought in 2027 and gets $50,000 for five years. That gap can easily mean $2,000 or more a year, for the same house and the same services. 🔴 Police, fire and EMS. They get zero guaranteed funding. Rural counties like Bradford, Dixie, Lafayette and Union are already at the constitutional tax limit, so they can't raise rates. They'll have to cut services or add fees. 🔴 Everyone, eventually. The $12 billion figure doesn't include the Legislature's new power to exempt homesteads entirely. State economists say that cost can't even be estimated. 🔴 Future voters. This goes into the constitution, so fixing the damage will take another statewide campaign. Homeowners, even if you'd save, the money comes back around. You'll see it in new fees and special assessments, higher prices from local businesses, and fewer deputies and firefighters when you need them. Yes, local government spending deserves serious scrutiny. But reducing property taxes doesn't automatically reduce government spending. Without corresponding spending cuts, the costs may simply shift to renters, young families, and small businesses through higher taxes, fees, and assessments. This isn't tax relief. It's a tax shift. Read the research: taxfoundation.org/research/a…

Amendment 3: The War on Starter Homes Nobody Saw Coming I’ve spent a lot of time studying Florida’s housing market, and I see a perfect storm forming. An aging population. A coming wave of older homes entering the market. Builders offering incentives existing homeowners can’t match. Rising insurance and ownership costs. And first-time buyers increasingly priced out. Now add Amendment 3. It could push home prices higher as tax savings get capitalized into property values, without adding a single home to the market. But here’s the unintended consequence nobody is talking about. Florida says it wants more starter homes. Amendment 3 could give local governments a financial incentive to approve fewer of them. The $250,000 non-school homestead exemption will be indexed to inflation, eventually exceeding $300,000. That means many starter homes could generate little or no municipal property tax revenue while still requiring police, fire, roads, and other services. We’re asking communities to build more affordable housing while potentially making those homes less financially attractive to approve. Making homes cheaper to own doesn’t necessarily make them cheaper to buy. And making starter homes a fiscal liability won’t help us build more of them. Read the full thread. This is about much more than property taxes.

Join us for a robust conversation about Amendment 3 and Florida’s property tax shift. Who gets the tax cut? Who picks up the tab? And what happens to your city when the math no longer works?

Florida has 411 cities, towns and villages. Roughly 60% have fewer than 10,000 residents. The median Florida municipality has about 6,500 people. That raises a question Florida has not seriously considered: What is the minimum viable city? As Amendment 3 approaches, local governments are answering it in real time through fire assessments, EMS fees, garbage fees, stormwater fees, park fees, parking charges, fuel taxes and public service taxes. The property tax bill may shrink, but the receipt grows longer. Every city has fixed costs that remain when property-tax revenue falls: police and fire, roads and stormwater, pensions, debt, insurance, buildings, technology and basic administration. Scale matters. A city of 5,000 still needs many basic functions of a city of 100,000, yet has far fewer taxpayers to share the costs. When the math stops working, cities first raise fees, then create assessments, then cut services, then contract them to the county or a neighboring city. Eventually comes the question no one wants to ask: Does this city still make economic sense as an independent government? Florida’s municipalities range from its largest cities to places like Marineland, with only a handful of residents. Yet Amendment 3 applies essentially the same constitutional formula to all of them. Some cities will adapt. Some will raise fees. Some will cut services. Some will increasingly rely on their counties. And some may ultimately consolidate or disincorporate. Florida may need a Minimum Viable City stress test: taxable value per resident, homestead concentration, infrastructure age, debt and pension obligations, fixed costs and projected Amendment 3 losses. When six out of ten Florida municipalities have fewer than 10,000 residents, this is not a fringe issue. It is structural. If we permanently change the economics of local government, we should first understand what makes a municipality financially viable. Florida should not discover the minimum viable city by waiting for the first ones to fail and watching their obligations, services and costs spill across borders to everyone else.

Today, the court drew a line. The ballot box is not a place for political advertising. This case was never about whether property taxes should be lower. It was about whether the government can MARKET a constitutional amendment instead of HONESTLY explaining it to voters. The court said NO. No matter how you feel about Amendment 3, every Floridian should agree on one principle. Ballot language should inform voters, not persuade them. Facts, not slogans. Truth, not marketing. The debate over property taxes will continue, as it should. But from this point forward, that debate should be based on an honest description of what’s actually in the amendment. Today wasn’t just a win for the plaintiffs. It was a win for every Florida voter.

Florida may be walking into a perfect storm. Housing inventories are surging. Price cuts are accelerating. Home values are coming under pressure. Now we’re proposing to permanently shrink the local tax base. Cities and counties are squeezed from both ends. I’m confident the Governor’s office and Legislature modeled this predictable scenario before asking Floridians to amend the Constitution. If they did, they should release it. If they didn’t,…that’s an even bigger story.

Bonus question: Where is the sunset clause? This proposal would fundamentally restructure local government finance in the third-largest state in America. So where is the mandatory five-year review? Measure homeowner savings, renter impacts, debt stress, infrastructure quality, public safety, and unintended consequences. Big reforms need an exit ramp if the theory fails.

10. Does this proposal reduce the cost of government or simply change the collection mechanism? Nothing in the proposal prevents governments from relying more heavily on utility fees, stormwater charges, mobility fees, special assessments, franchise fees, or special districts. If the total cost to taxpayers remains roughly the same, this is not necessarily smaller government. It is simply a different billing system.

🧵Ten questions Florida should answer before detonating the property tax system: 1. If this is real tax reform, what replaces it? Florida built local government around property taxes because Florida has no state income tax. You can dislike the system, but you cannot remove the load-bearing wall without explaining what keeps the roof from collapsing afterward.

New #Florida condo rules drive up costs, force special assessments, and scare off buyers. Listings jumped 43%, and bankruptcies loom. “It is a bitter pill that gets us healthy. But it’s going to cost people their homes, and for some their life savings” tampabay.com/news/real-estat…