Taxing districts suddenly in Capitol’s crosshairs | Editorial
It might just be the Lobbyist Relief Act of 2024 in the Florida Legislature.
Every session has at least one unexpected idea that’s highly disruptive to many people at once. Caught off guard with their livelihoods threatened, they must “lobby up” and defend themselves against more Tallahassee overreach. In the end, the radical idea may quietly disappear, but the dangling threat does its job. A lot of lobbyists make a lot more money, and lawmakers attract more attention — which may mean more campaign contributions.
Republicans in the state House are floating a far-reaching plan that threatens dozens of independent taxing districts all over the state with extinction. These mini-governments collect limited property taxes in defined geographic areas to pay for flood and mosquito control, fire-rescue protection and primary health care, and include six deep-water seaports.
The bill (HB 7013) is certain to change. But in first-draft form, it has the potential to put the Port of Palm Beach’s governing board out of business, as well as the Fort Lauderdale Downtown Development Authority, and the North Broward Hospital District, which the Legislature created in 1951. Exempt from the bill’s impact are Florida’s five regional water management districts, community development districts and regional inland navigation districts that manage the Intracoastal Waterway and other large water bodies.
Threats of extinction
Even the remote possibility of dissolution has taxing districts scrambling, because the bill would require them to ask voters every 10 years to stay alive. Given the chance to erase a line off their property tax bills, some voters will jump at the chance. If enough of them do that, a district would disappear and its powers, assets and liabilities would shift to another layer of government.
The “dissolution” provision is an old, familiar tactic in Tallahassee, a political two-by-four to get people’s attention. Under a separate law, the Legislature has barred local governments from spending tax money to educate voters on ballot measures, which makes fighting for self-preservation more difficult.
Something so radical should responsibly follow a comprehensive study that reveals a pattern of abuses. That study has not happened, although a review by the Legislature’s research arm revealed serious shortcomings in a few cases, such as at the Immokalee Fire Control District, near Naples. A consultant who reviewed 15 mosquito districts found that most lack “goals, objectives, or performance measures and standards.”
Abuses in Broward
Some special districts have problems, no question.
Their very obscurity invites abuses, because nobody is usually watching. Among the worst current known abuses are at the North Springs Improvement District in Coral Springs and Parkland, where a preliminary report by the auditor general found that the utility broke state bidding and contracting laws. The audit was spurred by reports by the Florida Center for Governmental Accountability, an independent watchdog that documented insider dealing and cronyism at the district.
Related: Something smells bad in Broward, and it’s not the water | Steve Bousquet
But the Legislature has not yet remotely made a convincing case to put more than 100 special taxing districts on the chopping block statewide, supposedly in the name of “oversight, transparency and accountability,” in the buzzwords of Rep. Jenna Persons-Mulicka.
A lawyer from Fort Myers, she managed the bill at a mid-December hearing on a subcommittee she chairs, where she said: “It’s important to me that we get this right.”
The bill passed on an 11-to-4 party-line vote. Republicans voted yes and Democrats, all four from Broward, voted no. “I’m concerned about the local financial impacts,” said Rep. Mike Gottlieb, D-Davie, an opponent.
Five fire chiefs from Persons-Mulicka’s home county of Lee showed up with dire warnings that fire protection could suffer because Lee lacks a replacement countywide fire service.
The chiefs said skilled public safety workers could lose their jobs and that firefighters’ pensions would be threatened. “Big concern there,” said Chief David Cambareri of the South Trail Fire and Rescue District.
Other district officials said the constant uncertainty of political extinction would make it harder for districts to fill jobs or borrow money — issues not mentioned in a 16-page staff report on the legislation.
In a revolving-door, term-limited House, hardly any of today’s lawmakers were around a decade ago when then-Gov. Rick Scott also put all special taxing districts under a microscope.
Troubled that so many unelected appointees had the power to tax, he issued a lengthy executive order in 2012 requiring their performances to be reviewed. Many bigger taxing districts are governed by well-connected political appointees, and despite Scott’s concerns, those taxing districts are all still there.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, opinion writer Martin Dyckman and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.