DeSantis Parallels Doeden in Offering Sketchy Property Tax Cuts

Republican loudmouth Toby Doeden has cited Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in his call to eliminate property tax. Like Doeden, Governor DeSantis is proposing a poorly thought-out plan that will decimate local public services:

DeSantis said he was calling the Legislature back to Tallahassee on Monday to add an amendment to the ballot that would eventually eliminate property taxes for 92% of those Floridians by raising the homestead exemption to $500,000.

…Local governments are likely to lose tens of billions of dollars in revenue, and local officials have warned that residents could face cuts to schools, fire and other services — even possibly charges to use public parks.

…An independent study modeling a $250,000 homestead exemption found that 85 cities would see their tax base so hollowed out that essential services such as police, road maintenance and flood infrastructure would be at risk, Florida League of Cities spokesperson Kelli Roerk said. Those cities included New Port Richey, Largo, Gulfport, Coral Springs, Davie and Key West.

Cragin Mosteller, a spokesperson for the Florida Association of Counties, also said the organization didn’t yet have a formal position on it, but leaders are concerned.

The costs counties shoulder to provide solid infrastructure, public safety, quality water, health services and more don’t go away just because property taxes do, she said.

“Those costs don’t disappear, it just means they shift somewhere else,” Mosteller said.

The proposal would impact counties differently depending on their sizes. Some small counties don’t have any homes valued more than $250,000, she said. And while DeSantis has floated requiring counties to maintain core services, it’s not clear what would fall under that umbrella.

“I think one of the things that is easy to overlook sometimes is that we move to a community not only because it’s safe but because it’s wonderful, because it has a great quality of life,” Mosteller said.

DeSantis’ proposal is “more of a plan to have a plan than it is a policy proposal,” said Jeff Brandes, a former Republican state senator who now leads the Florida Policy Project think tank [Lawrence Mower and Romy Ellenbogen, “Could Florida Really Eliminate Property Taxes?” Tampa Bay Times via Governing, 2026.05.28].

DeSantis himself admits that a lot of his support will come from people who don’t care about making the numbers add up:

“A lot of my friends, you know, they’re going to say, ‘Who cares? Just eliminate, they’ll figure it out, all this other stuff,’” DeSantis said. “But I think … that argument will get 50%” [Mower and Ellenbogen, 2026.05.28].

And DeSantis’s numbers do not add up:

In a research note published Wednesday, UBS flagged a notable discrepancy between the numbers DeSantis cited and those from the Florida Office of Economic and Demographic Research, the state’s own fiscal analysis arm. According to the governor, lifting the homestead exemption to $250,000 would wipe out property taxes for roughly 60% of Florida homeowners. But the state’s own data tells a more modest story: only about 47% of homesteaded properties in Florida are valued at $250,000 or less, UBS noted. At the $500,000 threshold—again, where DeSantis promised 92% coverage—Florida’s own data pegs the share at just 75% to 80%.

That’s a gap of more than 12 percentage points between the governor’s headline promise and what independent state analysis supports [Nick Lichtenberg, “UBS Says Ron DeSantis Has a Problem with His Plan to Help 92% of Homeowners Save on Property Taxes: His Own State’s Data,” Fortune via Yahoo Finance, 2026.05.28].

Doeden and DeSantis represent the Republican Party’s preference for noise over numbers. Dear Republicans, will you ever return to offering us competent leaders, like Bush Senior, Eisenhower, and Lincoln?