"Duplicitous" Tax Reformers in Florida House?

As any Floridian who hasn't been living under a rock knows, the property tax debate this spring has devolved into a contest to see who can cut taxes the most-- and the fastest. For those of us who think that state governments should be the primary source of funding for elementary and secondary education, it's bad enough to see state lawmakers talk of forcing local property taxes downward without providing replacement state funding. But now, as the St. Petersburg Times editorial board notes, the legislature is taking one step further-- forcing a more-than-$500-million increase in some local property taxes to pay for public education.

At a time when House and Senate leaders are speaking boldly about their big plans to cut local property taxes, it's a bit counterintuitive to require locals to increase them at the same time:

Under both the House and Senate spending bills, the "required local effort" property taxes for schools next year would jump by 7.4 percent, or $545-million. By comparison, the Senate's new "Savings Now" tax reform would force cities and counties to reduce property taxes by $1-billion. In other words, for every $2 local governments cut property taxes, the state would raise them by $1.

You've got to admire the genius of this. State lawmakers get to make grandstanding statements about how they're going to force locals to curtail their out-of-control spending habits by cutting property taxes, but then go behind the scenes to make locals do what state officials don't have the backbone to do themselves: provide sufficient funding for schools. It is, indeed, a "duplicitous" approach to tax reform, as the Times suggest.