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Article
Courtesy of The Highland News-Sun
By Marc Valero
Published December 27, 2025
During Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ stop at Sebring
Regional Airport on Thursday he spoke of the state budget and insurance
reform, but said the number one thing is property taxes, which is a local
tax.
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“In 2019, local
governments in Florida combined took in $32 billion in
property tax revenue,” he said. “Today they are taking in
$56 billion so where is that coming from? Some of them are
new homes, some of it is new people moving in that’s true.
“A lot of it is people who have homes that they bought for
$250,000 10 years ago and now they are being told it is
worth $750,000,” DeSantis said. “So they are being assessed
like that. So people are having to pay more and even if they
have the Homestead exemption it still goes up.”
The increase in property taxes has been a gusher of revenue
going in and some counties and cities have done better than
others, but some – it has been already documented by State
Chief Finance Officer Blaise Ingoglia that Miami-Dade was
overspending by over $300 million and overspending in Orange
County and even Manatee County is overspending, he said.
“Obviously, we want to do the basic
things that are important,” DeSantis said, including police,
fire department and education.
“But, do want to keep having to pay tax for spending over
and above that at really record levels?” he asked. “I think
most people would rather have the tax relief from property
tax. |
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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis speaks to a crowd at
the Sebring Regional Airport on Thursday on a variety of issues
including property tax reform and insurance reform.
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“We are working with folks in the Legislature ... on
crafting something that is going to be really transformative. That is going
to be really positive for homeowners. Your personal residence that you have
as your primary [property] I don’t think the government should be able to
take that away from you because you didn’t pay tax one year.”
DeSantis explained that proposed changes to property taxes would not affect
the governments of rural counties.
“I put in my budget, 100% reimbursement for rural counties including
Highlands, so 32 fiscally constrained counties,” for Homestead it’s about
$280 million for all of those counties where they wouldn’t be held harmless,
he said.
You can’t go from $32 billion property tax revenue in 2019 to $56 billion in
2025 and have those types of increases sustainable, DeSantis said.
“The last thing I want to see is somebody not be able to afford a home for
their family because they can’t afford to pay the tax or elderly who have to
sell the home because they can’t afford the tax,” he said. “So we have an
opportunity to do something about it and I think it will be really
positive.”
On property insurance, the Governor spoke of doing a big overhaul a couple
of years ago “to bring some sanity to Florida’s insurance market. On one
hand we have a peninsula in the middle of tropical weather, we have higher
risks than other places. It is just the reality.”
With auto insurance, he said, it is tough due to the mix of demographics
with older people driving and then there are some younger drivers – so it is
tough.
“We had some problems in the market and so the Legislature at the end of
2022 and the beginning of 2023 did a bunch of reforms,” DeSantis said. “Now
we are in a situation where Progressive, one of the biggest auto insurers,
they are sending out a billion dollars in rebates to their policy holders
because the costs have been lower than they had forecast because of our
reforms – largely avoiding frivolous litigation, which is very costly.”
State Farm reduced rates by 10% and these other companies are either going
to reduce or have to do the rebates to consumers, he said. In all these
other states it is still going up pretty sharply. This has been a very tough
issue nationwide.
Homeowner insurance had a big decline largely attributed to the market
reform, DeSantis said. In Florida there will be more companies with
reductions especially since the state didn’t have a storm, he said. Now,
because of the market reforms more companies have come into the state and
there are more options.
DeSantis said the state is eliminating taxes because it has the ability to
do it.
“From the state perspective, we are probably the lowest taxed state per
capita in the country, certainly in the top two or three, right, I mean no
question,” he said, which prompted applause from the local leaders who were
present.
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