There’s an important message among the tax moans, groans
Times-Union editorial staff
The heat rolling toward state lawmakers these days isn’t just from the 90-degree temperatures.
It’s blowback from St. Johns County officials and others with city and county government across Florida over the Legislature’s revamp of the property tax system that will reduce revenues to local governments — and could do so even more if voters approve other tax reductions in January as part of a constitutional amendment.
Local government officials have an important point to make.
State lawmakers properly identified a broken property tax system filled with inequities and problems.
But local government officials say lawmakers are being disingenuous to point to local governments as the free-spending culprits when state lawmakers heap one unfunded mandate after another on their budgets.
“It’s just like they took us out and made us the local whipping boy — or girl — for something they have direct impact on,” said County Commissioner Cyndi Stevenson said at this week’s county commission meeting. “Their fingerprints are all over our budgets.”
Stevenson said she wasn’t trying to whitewash mistakes the county has made in spending money, but she said local governments are increasingly saddled with costs from state and federal governments without consideration of costs or impacts of implementation.
At the county level, those have included juvenile justice and court costs over the years.
“We don’t the choice on whether we want to fund these things,” County Commission Chairman Ben Rich said of unfunded mandates in general from the Legislature. “We have to by law.”
County commissioner Tom Manuel noted that school systems across Florida will have to deal with more than $500 million in new mandated education programs without corresponding money attached.
“If you are going to talk about education, you need to fund it,” Manuel said of the Legislature.
County Sheriff David Shoar, in presenting his budget to the commission this week, said unfunded mandates creep in to his operations from various directions.
For instance, he said the state is expanding DNA testing requirements to cover almost 10 times the criminal cases than they do now. That sounds good, he said, but local law enforcement will bear the burden of the materials and personnel costs.
Shoar said officials should look to Washington, D.C., and Tallahassee first if they really wanted to attack waste in government. But he also acknowledged that the property tax changes will likely force local government to look more at best practices and better measures for success.
Much to their credit, St. Johns County commissioners anticipated action by the Legislature and starting working on cutting costs in November. As a result, county residents shouldn’t feel the pinch from the $21.7 million in expected lost revenue from the Legislature’s initial changes to the system.
But severe cuts to basic services would likely have to be made if voters approve the referendum in January, and officials say they must start preparing now for that possibility.
“We’ve got some real tough decisions to make. We’re going to make them, we’re going to stand by them,” said County Commission Chairman Ben Rich. “St. Johns County is going to surface from this as a better place for what’s happening, I’m convinced of that, in spite of what Tallahassee does.”
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