Florida’s Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia is predicting the state legislature will not follow Gov. Ron DeSantis’ call to abolish homestead property taxes.
In an interview with WINK News, Ingoglia acknowledged that DeSantis has yet to propose a plan on how he would replace the loss of revenue that would arise if his tax plan was enacted.
“I think he’s working behind the scenes with House and Senate leadership developing concepts for the plans,” Ingoglia said. “I don’t think we’re going to wind up with the place where we get rid of property taxes altogether on homestead or properties.”
The recently concluded legislative session failed to pass any property tax relief proposals, which would need to be approved by voters as a constitutional amendment ballot measure. A special legislative session is planned for later this month and the issue is expected to be raised again.
Ingoglia rejected the argument that local governments will find themselves with a new financial burden if property taxes are eliminated. He questioned whether localities need to replace the level of revenue now being harvested through these taxes.
“So, ‘replace’ kind of connotates that they actually needed the money in the first place,” he said. “I think what we’re showing with our audits is that they didn’t need all that money in the first place. I’ve talked to some leaders in Lee County, and they say, we’ve already been very cutthroat on our budget. We’ve cut our excessive spending the past few years. They say that they’re very conservative.”
Ingoglia added, “I’m not saying that this is specific to these Lee or Collier counties or Charlotte counties. What I would say is that the egregious spending has sort of become normal, where they don’t even recognize what is, what is egregious spending anymore.”
Ingoglia stressed he is opposed to raising other taxes to offset a cut in property tax, declaring that he supported the introduction of spending caps to prevent local governments from bloating their bureaucracies.
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