Environmental Cost of Property Tax Cuts?

In the wake of a June special session of the state legislature that imposed major property tax cuts on Florida local governments, the drumboat of endangered local government services continues. The Orlando Sentinel documents the potential impact of these cuts on efforts to preserve Florida's delicate ecosystem:

State property-tax changes could put a financial pinch on some of the area's biggest environmental efforts.The Lake County Water Authority has planned for years to start two projects aimed at cleaning up the Harris Chain of Lakes. A $15 million proposal would remove a delta of sand and organic materials from Lake Beauclair -- a massive mound of deposits caused by years of polluted water coming downstream from Lake Apopka.Another project would divert water from Apopka-Beauclair Canal and clean up pollutants before the water reaches Lake Beauclair and the rest of the Harris chain. That could cost more than $7 million to build and up to $1.2 million each year to operate. The Water Authority has saved millions to help pay for some of the work. But the agency still needs future funding for these and other proposals.

Does this mean these projects will be hamstrung, or even cancelled outright, as a result of the pending property tax cuts? It's clearly too soon to tell. But the folks who are making the planning decisions on these important projects are obviously nervous about the impact Florida property tax cuts could have on their ability to fund these services-- and this nervousness is affecting their decision-making process:

The financial uncertainty may impact how the Water Authority moves ahead with its huge projects."With us needing more and fearing a cut in property taxes, we're like most everybody else -- we don't know what will happen," said Water Authority board member Nancy Fullerton.

For Floridians who are desperate to understand whether the property tax proposal they'll vote on in January is going to be affordable or not, it's of the highest importance to know whether the Water Authority boards and their ilk are crying wolf, or whether the pending cuts would eviscerate important local efforts at environmental conservation. Neither the Sentinel's article, nor this blog post, can pretend to answer this question. But this uncertainty is a direct consequence of the way Florida lawmakers decided to cut taxes this year. If they'd cut state taxes, they could have simultaneously identified cuts on the spending side that would make these tax cuts affordable, and brought things into balance. But because they chose to cut local taxes, Florida lawmakers didn't have to worry about enacting these cuts at a level that would be affordable. They could enact big cuts, and let locals figure out how (if at all) they could pay for them.

When the state mandates local tax cuts, but doesn't provide the financial support needed to ensure that these cuts will be affordable, that's a recipe for fiscal uncertainty at the very least-- and, in the worst case, fiscal disaster.