- This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St.

Petersburg, Sarasota.

[Music] On Tuesday, Florida voters made a decision that could change what you pay on your property taxes and what your city and county can afford.

Supporters call it relief.

Local leaders warn about billions of dollars in lost revenue and the services that depend on it.

Who decides what happens next and what does it mean for your tax bill?

And in Tallahassee, the balance of power has shifted.

What does that change for Republicans and Democrats?

And what did voters tell us about the state's direction?

On this edition of Florida This Week, our panel looks at what may lie ahead for West Central Florida.

Stay with us.

[Music] Welcome back everybody.

I'm Lissette Campos.

Tuesday's election settled some questions but raised a whole lot of new ones.

Helping us break down what comes next is Michael Van Sickler, political editor of the Tampa Bay Times.

Dr.

Susan McManus, professor emeritus of political science at the University of South Florida, and Alice Herman, an investigative reporter with the Suncoast Searchlight.

Thanks to all of you for being here.

What will the new property tax amendment mean for counties and cities across our region, and who will decide how the changes are carried out?

Republicans won every statewide race on Tuesday's ballot.

Byron Donalds will be the next governor, but the results were not one-sided.

Democrats gained seats in the state legislature.

They also held all four congressional seats that Florida's redrawn congressional map had put at risk.

Dr.

McManus, I'd like for you to take a look at the results overall and tell us, in your view, what you think that Florida voters were telling leaders on election night.

- Absolutely.

If you control the governor's chair and you control both houses of the Florida Legislature, and you can't get anything done that addresses the fears, economic fears and concerns of your voters, there's going to be a backlash.

And what it meant was a huge turnout drop among Republicans who were alienated, and a huge increase in the number of people that are no party affiliation and whatever turned out actually turnout went up this time compared to the previous midterm.

What does that say?

It's, you know, all economic stupid, as the old saying goes.

- That's right.

Alice, tell us about in your report this week, the headline of your story was, "Blue wave misses Suncoast, as Republicans maintain power."

When you were doing that, putting that together, what stood out to you the most?

- So first of all, it shouldn't have been surprising to anybody that there wasn't a blue tsunami in Sarasota County.

Um, there, there were a couple things that stood out.

Um, one in our nonpartisan school board races in Sarasota and Manatee counties, there was a rightward shift.

So whereas during the primaries in August, progressive candidates in Sarasota County swept during the one runoff in Sarasota and in a general election in Manatee County to more conservative candidates, one in Manatee County.

It was actually a conservative right wing, kind of firebrand TPUSA affiliated candidate who won.

So that was interesting.

When you look at the partisan races, there was a little bit of nuance, and I want to look specifically at one race in Sarasota County, which is the only race where a Democrat ran for a county commission seat.

Um, that was a county.

And this sort of speaks to what Susan had talked about.

This was a county where only 25% of registered voters are Democrats, and the Democratic candidate drew about 45% of the vote, meaning she got a lot of non-party-affiliated voters and probably also some Republicans.

This was a seat where, um, concerns about over development were, you know, really central.

And she campaigned on that issue.

And some prominent conservatives had actually crossed party lines to endorse there.

So no, there was no blue wave.

But there are some lessons that I think can be learned from these races.

- Michael, what would you say was the results that will be most consequential in the year ahead?

- Uh, the legislative races, uh, Democrats picked up 16 to 17 seats.

So now they have 50, which is almost in my lifetime.

I don't think Democrats have had that most that many seats since 1996.

Um, so they're still in the minority.

Um, they're not in a super minority where basically Republicans can run roughshod, but, um, you know, with 50, um, you know, that's, that's in the ballpark.

And I think the Republicans will have to deal with Democrats on some level.

- Well, the most consequential decision for homeowners and local governments was Amendment 3, the property tax measure.

Voters approved it with about 62% of the vote.

The homestead exemption is the part of a home's value that is not taxed for taxes.

Outside of the school related taxes, that amount rises from $50,000 to $150,000 in 2027, and then it rises to $250,000 in 2028.

The amendment also lowers the yearly cap on increases in assessed value for non-homestead property from 10% to 5%.

School taxes we want to make sure you know are not affected.

Amendments 1 and 2 on the ballot did not pass this cycle.

So, Michael, I'd like to start with you on this one.

Governor DeSantis wants a special session on amendment three before January.

What do you think has to take place?

What are the chances of that?

And what would the role of Byron Donalds be in that?

- He has a big role.

Donalds has a say in this.

I don't think it's up to governor DeSantis right now to decide, hey, let's have a special session.

I think there will have to be talks between DeSantis camp and Donalds' camp to figure out, do we want a special session before the next governor takes office?

So that'll be something interesting to watch.

- Okay.

The stakes for local government are substantial.

The state's revenue estimating conference projects that local governments across Florida could collect nearly $5 billion less in just the first year and nearly $12 billion less each year.

By 2031, for our 12 county region, Florida Tax Watch, which is an independent research group, estimates that those losses will be more than $11 billion over the next five years.

About three quarters of that is in four counties Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco and Polk.

I do want to point out that these are just projections at this point.

These are not cuts that have already been made.

Dr.

McManus, the amendment cleared the more than 60% threshold, which surprised a lot of folks who.

Where was the demographic that really pushed it over that 60%?

- Only three counties, Leon, the capital, Gadsden, near the capital, and Alachua County.

Counties where jobs are more secure for education, politics.

Not surprising who voted for it.

Homeowners talk about affordability.

No matter what your status.

If you're looking at I can't afford to go groceries, or I can't buy.

Prices and I don't want to lose my.

I can't buy gas.

I don't want to lose my home.

And here you see, okay, if I vote for this, my tax bill is going to go down.

All right?

It's going to go down because I probably have to make up for it over here.

It was simply an affordability thing, which was the number one issue.

And property taxes in every poll we saw, this whole cycle was always in the top one or 2 or 3 issues that people said they were going to vote on.

- The affordability issue is just one that is not going away.

Alice in Sarasota, Manatee, and DeSoto counties, what have you been hearing from homeowners and local officials about the trade offs between the savings to the homestead owner and then public services, and what they might look like?

- Sure.

I want to give a specific example.

In DeSoto County, where there was a company that had been trying to build a hyper scale data center in that would have been powered by gas and was generated a lot of backlash from the community.

I went to, like as many of the county commission meetings that I could to see how the commission was feeling about it versus community members.

And these were like really lively sometimes kind of, uh, almost hostile meetings with the community, really, really opposing commissioners who are so concerned about, um, revenue thinking that maybe this would be an opportunity to bring in more revenues.

And during the last meeting that I, that I went to one of the commissioners who voted to rezone some land to accommodate the data center, said that even though he understood constituents concerns, he was worried about amendment three passing, and that was why he wanted to support this.

Um, and his the reaction to that from the room was incredibly negative because the constituents, the people in the room, the residents were supporting amendment three.

They weren't supporting the data center.

So I think like you see, um, officials, local officials like across the board, really, really, really worried about what this is going to mean for services.

And, um, like Dr.

McManus said, residents just wanting money in their pocket and in whatever way.

- Throughout this process, governor DeSantis has said that he did not, does not believe that this would be a tax shift, but rather that the goal would be the savings for the home homeowners.

Um, you all Michael, the times has reported that lawmakers removed funding to help rural counties from the bill that was removed from, from the bill.

Um, there's also the talk about how people who moved to Florida after this year would have to wait five years for the higher exemption.

So there are different details that we don't hear a lot about.

What should viewers know about property?

- Well, that five year waiting to get that might be unconstitutional.

So that'll probably be taken to court.

So we could maybe throw that one out.

But I think the ramifications are still to be decided.

There's 29 counties in Florida.

We only have 67 that are financially constrained, which means they're running at a deficit, which means they have to go to Tallahassee and get money.

They're going to be probably worse off after this.

They're going to be more dependent on Tallahassee, and then you're going to see another level of counties who are going to become financially constrained.

So the larger counties like Hillsborough and Pinellas and Miami-Dade, they're probably going to be still running at a surplus.

But there's a latent sticker shock that residents are going to see, because even these counties are going to have to start charging for services that they haven't charged before.

So, um, you know, it's charging for parks, charging for fire services, things that will crop up later that they might be surprised by.

And at the end of the day, it might just be a wash, or they might...residents might find that they're actually paying more money.

- And these are some of the things that the Sheriff's Association of Florida was talking about and was warning about.

The fire department chiefs had also warned about the services being affected.

- And I cannot stress how important the sheriffs are in this equation.

There's 62 out of 67 sheriffs endorsed Byron Donalds to be the next governor.

He won, and he.

That's a very important constituency for Byron Donalds.

They didn't like it.

I think if you heard Byron Donalds on the campaign trail, he said he supported it, but he also it sounds like he's open to, you know, having a committee take a look at the implementation of this.

And that's why what DeSantis thinks about this is growing less and less important.

And what Donald thinks about this is growing much more important.

- As we said, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd opposed the amendment before the vote.

After it passed, he did talk about what comes next for his office.

Take a listen.

- Cities and counties are going to have to come together and decide, what do we do to re-engineer and to cut taxes and to deliver a level of service that's acceptable.

I will never, ever, ever put the people of Polk County lives at risk.

The core service is that we can save your life.

We can protect you from bad guys, and we can lock bad guys up.

- Alice, what are local governments in Sarasota and Manatee preparing for now?

- So in Sarasota County, they're going to lose a projected $241 million in the first two years of the implementation of this amendment.

Um, Manatee County Sheriff's Office is projected to lose $50 million by the 2028 budget cycle.

So, um, my colleague Derek Gillum, who's been covering this issue closely, reached out to county officials, and the first thing that they told him was that they were looking at layoffs.

Um, I think there was a lot of like, wait and see about whether or not this would pass, but we'll find out very soon how this will impact.

- I think those stories are the ones that so many of the local reporters will be following for the next few weeks.

The balance of power in Tallahassee has shifted.

Democrats flipped 16 Republican held Florida House seats, including three in our region.

Ashley Herman won District 69 and Luis Salazar won District 64.

Both are in Hillsborough County.

A third was in Polk County's District 51, where Octavio Hernandez won.

Overall, Republicans retained control of the state House but lost their supermajority.

The balance in the state Senate is still being settled, with some races too close to call.

Dr.

McManus, you know, explain to our viewers, what does it mean when a party no longer has a supermajority?

- It means that the party that does have it can block every kind of thing block, debate, block what gets passes from one chamber to another, and when every aspect of politics and the rules and procedures.

It means that they could block it.

And they have used that in the past, as we all well know.

- Michael, tell us about the personalities.

Now, when we look at who will lead in the Senate and in the House.

Jim Boyd will be leading in the Senate.

Sam Garrison in the House.

What's the mood there?

- Both gentlemen Garrison and Boyd are considered to be even tempered.

Um, uh, lawmakers a little older than what we've seen in the past, especially Jim Boyd.

Mhm.

A very mature lawmaker.

Um, so these are very experienced veteran lawmakers that aren't going to be maybe as attention grabbing, but they're going to wield a lot of power.

It'll be interesting to see how they navigate this new landscape.

- Boyd is from the Bradenton area.

Garrison is from the Jacksonville area, and both are very different from the personality we saw in Danny Perez.

- You wont see a Danny Perez.

- Okay, we're going to move on to the governor's office.

Republican Byron Donalds will be Florida's next governor.

He defeated Democrat David Jolly by about one and a half points, and he takes office on January the 5th.

Republicans also kept every seat on the cabinet.

Susan, in August, you you told WLRN that you expected statewide races to be closer than in 2022.

And you were so right.

The governor's race ended up within about a point and a half.

Why do you think that was?

- Well, the biggest reason was, of course, the plummeting of turnout by Republicans.

The thing that saved them the most was the huge differential, the edge that they had in registration.

But when you look at overall, what happened, the share of the of everybody who voted turned out to be 43% Republican, 34% Democrat and 43%, I mean 23% everybody else.

The no party and whatever.

Well, what I noticed in the primary, even there was that Republicans still the edge was what gave them the edge in the primary because they weren't competing against each other.

But the Republicans were sharing at a higher showing up.

But I saw that they were pretty close.

And I also was watching the national handicappers who know Florida very well.

They have Florida connections.

They initially started out with many of them casting Florida as safely Republican.

And right after the primary, you started to see some of them shift to lean Republican.

And the tell-tale of all.

While I wasn't surprised at the outcome, not of one of those three big handicappers ever switched to toss up status for statewide races, whereas they did to toss up status for several of our legislative and congressional seats.

- Michael.

Governor DeSantis leaves office in January, and he wants a special session on the amendment three incoming House Speaker Sam Garrison has said that he would rather it be quick and soon.

Will that be the first test of the transition here?

- There's going to be a few tests.

Um, DeSantis is kind of, uh, he's still popular.

I mean, especially with Republicans.

Um, I would talk to a lot of voters and they were like, we like Donalds, but we would have preferred DeSantis to stay.

So he carries a lot of credibility with the base, but the establishment, they're ready for him to exit stage left.

And, um, you know, it does seem like he's making a lot of noise about something maybe running for president in 2028.

So will he leverage this, this last gasp of power that he has and try to, um, you know, set the debate for his successor?

That's going to be fascinating to watch.

Like I think all the ingredients are there for a very tense transition.

- What happens next?

Yeah.

Alice, you're reporting found that Democrats turned out at a much higher rate than Republicans did in Sarasota, Manatee and DeSoto.

Why do you think that is?

- Mainly in Sarasota County.

They turned out at a higher rate, but turnout overall was pretty high in Sarasota County.

Um, we hit like 67% turnout, which was as far back as the data goes, at least that I was able to find on the Florida elections website since 1998.

There hasn't been turnout that high in a primary, excuse me, in a midterm election in Sarasota.

So that was high.

And yes, Democrats turned out at about nine percentage points higher than Republicans.

So there was that enthusiasm.

- The same election that will cut property tax revenue also chose many of the leaders who will have to balance the local budgets first.

In St.

Pete, Charlie Crist defeated Mayor Ken Welsh with about 62% of the vote to his 38.

Crist has proposed cutting property taxes during his campaigning.

The times reports that St.

Petersburg could lose up to $74 million a year under the amendment three and Tampa of about $129 million.

Michael, how does the mayor elect reconcile those two realities?

- Uh, he could maybe excuse like saying, okay, I did talk about cutting taxes because of amendment three.

That's already taken care of.

And we don't have to worry about that.

And then he can go about the business of finding, uh, revenue streams to replace that.

I think that might work, but we do tend to campaign differently than we govern.

And so he wouldn't be the first politician to say, hey, I, I might have made the promise, but this is the reality.

- And he is a perennial candidate.

Is Dr.

McManus, do you think that this amendment three issue will be a very big factor in the Tampa mayor's race that we have coming up in March.

- No, I don't really.

It will, yes.

But local politics is very different, particularly a big city's politics like Tampa.

- Okay.

Voters in Hillsborough, Polk and Pasco counties also renewed school taxes in Pinellas County.

The last school board seat is headed for a second recount.

Susan voters renewed school taxes while approving amendment three, which does not affect the school property taxes.

What, if anything, can we conclude from that combination?

Some observers would say that they are in stark contrast.

- Well, you had a number of school amendments passed or millage things passed.

Three of them, I think, were on the ballot across the state.

They all passed.

Why?

Because many of them just renewed attacks.

And people see that.

Oh, good.

Secondly, there's a high priority.

People push on or put on education.

And that showed up.

And it wasn't a huge increase.

I think I live in Pasco, it was just a one mill or Hillsborough.

I think it was a one-mill only cap on it.

So the priority of education is big in this state and everywhere, and our local education officials have a good reputation for running schools.

Well, our schools are rated highly.

- So this is the time of the of the of the show.

When we ask for other big stories that you've been following.

And so we'd like to ask all of you the question of between now and the next legislative session.

What's the one thing that we should be really looking out for?

Alice, I'd like to start with you.

- I don't know how this will pan out legislatively, but this story that I'm working on and focused most on in the next several months is the relationship between local law enforcement and federal immigration enforcement, and how this is impacting residents across Southwest Florida.

- Mhm.

Michael.

- Well, I'm the political editor, so I'm thinking purely politics and not so much policy, which I used to write about, but I'm fascinated by.

Is there going to be a lot of hand-wringing and finger pointing with the Democrats?

Are they going to see this as a victory, or are they going to see this as, oh boy, we lost again.

The rest of the country is blue.

Why are we so different?

And then you look at the Republicans.

Was it a bad year for Republicans in Florida?

Because my God, every populous state.

I mean, the rest of the country, three quarters of the population is living now under a incoming or a current Democratic governor.

And, you know, we're the 25% of the rest of the country that still has a red governor after an election like this.

Is that a tribute to just this experienced Republican machine that was able to withstand this blue tsunami?

Or do the Republicans have to do some serious soul searching in Florida and figure out what to do next?

- And DeSantis had such a huge, you know, personality, even on the national stage, a lot of folks are asking what comes next for him.

- And he is making it sound like he's already figured that out.

So DeSantis is not going to leave the center stage.

- Susan.

- My whole theme of this election and what I'm going to be watching going forward, my synopsis of this election is all about new faces in high places.

And among that, you see a massive generational schism.

This was the generational battle in Florida, and the generational divide emerged in this election.

We knew it was coming.

And when you really look at who voted and for how.

You could clearly see clear, a split between the young and the old.

- So many of our younger voters have asked for ratcheting down of the toxic tone, the toxic nature of the political campaigns, did the negative ads really impact the candidates that resorted to using them?

- That's only for the voters to know.

But I think there is a clamor for getting rid of this.

To me, the breakthrough ad of the whole campaign, you've seen this backwards and forwards the whole way through.

The breakthrough ad that made a whole bit of difference was yes, on three, the pro property tax ad was, I think, captured people's attention because it was brightly done.

One, two, three.

Why somebody should vote for it.

At right the time that they're going to vote.

It was a very impactful ad.

- Thank you so much for joining us and for your perspectives.

Legislative leaders are expected to set the dates for a special session on Amendment 3 before the end of the year.

And we will certainly be following it for now.

That's all the time that we have.

We want to thank our panelists, Michael Van Sickler, Susan McManus, and Alice Herman.

We know you've got plenty of choices for your news and information, and we thank you for choosing us.

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