Property Tax Cuts: 'Fatal" to Local Governments?

Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio thinks that local governments have a spending problem. And while he's expressed interest in a number of approaches to resolving the state's property tax dilemma, a common theme throughout has been requiring local governments to slash their property tax collections-- and not giving them a way of paying for the cuts.

But as Charles Rabin and Breanne Gilpatrick document in today's Miami Herald, a growing number of local governments are sounding the alarm.

''What the Legislature is proposing would kill us,'' said El Portal Village Manager Jason Walker. "We're not going to afford a police department anymore. No manager. No staff. It's going to go back to a single clerk.''

The solution that's scaring Walker and other local leaders? What Rabin calls a "super-sized homestead exemption." Details are fuzzy, but the general idea is that the existing $25,000 homestead exemption would be replaced by a percentage-of-value homestead exemption that would give larger exemptions to more expensive houses.

As Rabin and Gilpatrick correctly note, not every local government is paralyzed with fear at Rubin's latest brainstorm. In particular, towns that have a big non-residential tax base-- hotels or other businesses, for example-- have less to fear from a state-mandated tax break that goes only to residential homes.

Are these local officials crying wolf, as Rubio appears to think, or do the threatened state property tax cuts truly threaten Florida locals' ability to fund important services? The truth almost certainly varies from city to city. But one thing is for sure-- for taxing districts that are truly cash-strapped, the "super-sized" homestead exemption will push these districts unnecessarily closer to fiscal insolvency. A less costly approach, such as a "circuit breaker" tax credit, could help target tax relief to the fixed-income families who truly need it at a much lower cost. So the real question isn't whether Jason Walker and his ilk would truly be "killed" by the emerging legislative proposal-- the question is why Florida lawmakers would take such an unnecessary risk with better options available.