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Five signs of trouble bubble up at local level

By HOWARD TROXLER
Published September 24, 2006

	React: It's Your Times

When angry citizens show up spontaneously at city halls and county courthouses across Florida to demand lower taxes from stunned local elected officials, it's more than a one-time, freak coincidence.

Nope. The series of mini "Boston tea parties" we have seen over recent days in Citrus, Hillsborough, Pinellas and Hernando counties, and in cities from Dunedin to North Redington Beach to Tampa, represent something deeper.

The simple reading is that Floridians are just plain fed up.

But a deeper take is that several pressures on Floridians are building toward a breaking point at the same time. I would argue that there are at least five of these:

(1) First and most obviously, taxpayers have finally gotten wise to the way local taxes work. Enough taxpayers now understand that Florida's soaring property values mean higher property taxes, no matter what their local officials claim.

Local politicians can keep their tax rate the same, or even trim that rate a little, and still rake in more money while pretending they "held the line" on taxes. But more voters understand this than ever before. With a new degree of sophistication, they are demanding tax rates be rolled back.

(2) The heavy-handed division of Floridians into two classes of taxpayers - homeowners vs. nonhomeowners - is really starting to whack the nonhomeowners. They are coming to understand on a large scale just how much they are getting the short end of the stick.

We homeowners, under the Save Our Homes amendment, are protected against our property's tax assessment going up more than 3 percent a year. Let's agree that is fine and dandy - but it leaves the owners of businesses or other property entirely unprotected. When property values go up 20, 30 percent or more, so do their taxes. Their revolt is under way.

(3) Resentment over taxes just can't be divorced from resentment over Florida's insurance crisis, even if local officials don't think that's not their problem. Taxpayers have only one wallet each, with a lot of different hands reaching into it.

Each agency, whether city hall, the school board or the county commission, exists (in its own mind) in a separate universe. But to taxpayers, they are collectively "the government," and what taxpayers see is a government not fixing the insurance problem - then turning around and jacking up their taxes.

(4) Florida's tax and insurance crises are cresting at precisely the same time as a rising voter revolt over local government power over growth. From St. Pete Beach to Ormond Beach and many points in between, Florida voters are fighting their own city halls to take more direct control. Too many big-box stores and condos have been approved over the protests of too many fed-up neighbors.

Looming over all of these local battles is the coming statewide debate over the "Hometown Democracy" movement, which seeks direct voter control of long-term growth. This might become one of the biggest political fights Florida has ever had.

(5) Last, and most ominously, there are signs that the overall economy is slumping, which threatens disaster for Florida government at both the state and local level. Maybe it doesn't feel like it, but we've been living through fat years, especially when it comes to tax collections in Florida. If these have been the fat years, what will the lean ones bring?

Of these five trends, only two can be laid directly at the feet of Florida's local government: their failure to reduce tax rates, and their generally friendly policy toward development. But the taxpayers are not exactly in the mood to say, "You know, City Hall, I am only 40 percent mad at you."

One of three things will happen.

First, Florida's next governor and Legislature could provide leadership and address these problems in a comprehensive way, asking probing questions about what kind of tax structure Florida needs and who pays.

Second, Tallahassee could opt for easy and popular fixes (expanding Save Our Homes, higher homestead exemption) that don't address the underlying problems at all, or even make them worse.

Third, we can just let each crisis fester and break wide open, reacting to each willy-nilly and piecemeal. In that case, for better or worse, Hometown Democracy and drastic local tax caps will be a given for starters. As for what kind of Florida we will have at the end of the decade - well, what the heck.

[Last modified September 24, 2006, 01:18:19]