The Florida House has passed a proposed constitutional amendment that would exempt homestead properties from all non-school property taxes, a measure that now awaits Senate action. The bill, CS/CS/HJR 203, would strip cities and counties of one of their most reliable revenue streams, and municipalities like Miramar in Broward County are already calculating what the loss could mean for basic services. If voters eventually approve the amendment, the financial architecture of local government in Florida would shift in ways that no stopgap measure can easily replace.
What the House-Passed Amendment Would Do
CS/CS/HJR 203, formally titled “Elimination of Non-school Property for Homesteads,” proposes amending the Florida Constitution to make homestead property exempt from all ad valorem taxation other than school district levies. The engrossed text on the Senate bill page includes explicit language prohibiting local governments from replacing the lost revenue through alternative property tax mechanisms, effectively closing the door on workarounds that cities might otherwise pursue. Because the measure is a joint resolution rather than a standard bill, it does not require the governor’s signature but instead must clear both chambers with a three-fifths vote and then win approval from voters in a statewide referendum.
The legislative history for CS/CS/HJR 203 shows the resolution moving through committee referrals and House floor actions before the chamber recorded its passage and sent the measure to the Senate. A related proposal, HJR 201, takes an even broader approach to homestead tax relief. In the filed language, lawmakers also exempt homestead property from non-school ad valorem taxes but add a concept aimed at preserving law-enforcement funding, signaling that some legislators recognize the public safety risks embedded in wholesale property tax elimination. The existence of overlapping resolutions underscores an internal debate over how aggressively to cut local revenue while shielding essential services such as policing and fire protection.
Why Miramar Faces Outsized Pressure
Miramar, a large and fast-growing city in southern Broward County, funds police, fire rescue, parks, and infrastructure maintenance primarily through its ad valorem tax base. The city’s management and budget office publishes the current millage rate and explains that one mill equals one dollar of tax for every thousand dollars of taxable value. That rate applies to all taxable property, but homesteads make up a substantial share of Miramar’s tax roll, meaning the proposed exemption would not merely trim revenue at the margins. It would hollow out the core of the city’s general fund, where recurring operating expenses for personnel, utilities, and maintenance are concentrated.
The prohibition on replacement levies written into CS/CS/HJR 203 compounds the problem for Miramar and similar municipalities. Without the ability to shift the burden to other property-based instruments, local officials would face a stark choice: cut services or lean more heavily on non-tax revenue such as user fees, fines, special assessments, and franchise charges. Those alternatives tend to be less predictable and more regressive, falling disproportionately on lower-income residents and renters who do not benefit from the homestead exemption. While Miramar has not yet published a contingency analysis tied specifically to HJR 203, the lack of public modeling does not imply complacency, budget staff across Florida are likely running scenarios that depend on whether the Senate alters the proposal, whether a companion measure like HJR 201 advances, and how quickly any adopted amendment would take effect.
The Urban-Rural Revenue Divide
Most public discussion around homestead tax changes frames the issue as relief for homeowners versus pain for local governments, but the geographic distribution of that pain is uneven. Dense, full-service cities like Miramar rely on property taxes to fund police departments, fire rescue operations, transit connections, stormwater systems, and recreation facilities that suburban and rural areas either do not provide or fund at lower levels. A uniform statewide exemption would therefore cut deepest in jurisdictions where homestead properties represent a high concentration of taxable value and where per-capita service costs are already elevated by population density and infrastructure complexity…