‘This is a total dog and pony show. This is not anything that’s credible,’ DeSantis said.
House Speaker Danny Perez delivers a stunning rebuke to DeSantis
The Florida Legislature nixed the governor’s special session and created their own, solely focused on immigration.
- Florida Governor Ron DeSantis criticized the House’s late-session push for property tax cuts as ineffective.
- House Speaker Daniel Perez prefers sales tax cuts and formed a 37-member committee to explore property tax cut options, a move DeSantis called a “dog and pony show.”
The House’s push for property tax cuts will be ineffective, Gov. Ron DeSantis said, slamming the chamber’s move late in the legislative session towards passing one of his top priorities.
DeSantis has clashed repeatedly with House Speaker Daniel Perez, R-Miami, on a number of issues, including tax cuts. Perez prefers a large, permanent reduction in the state sales tax; DeSantis has grown frustrated with lawmakers for not pressing forward with property tax cut plans.
“I want a Florida-first tax policy. I don’t want a Canadian-first tax policy,” DeSantis said at an event in Miami on May 6.
Cutting the sales tax benefits “the tourists, the Canadians, the snowbirds,” DeSantis said, arguing it would help Floridians more to cut property taxes because that is “the one thing that is pinching people.”
Perez has made cutting the sales tax central to his budget plan. He initially wanted to slash it from 6% to 5.25%, saving consumers about $5 billion per year.
That wasn’t accepted by the Senate, however, leading the chambers to deadlock over the budget, requiring an extended session to complete the budget. A tentative “framework” to cut the sales tax by $1.6 billion was agreed to by the chambers, and lawmakers are poised to return May 12 to finish budget negotiations.
After feuding with DeSantis for most of the session, Perez on April 29 created a special, or “select,” committee to review ways to cut taxes for property owners. In doing so, Perez chided DeSantis for floating the idea of eliminating property taxes completely without releasing a formal plan.
“Unfortunately, as the weeks have gone by, the Governor has not yet come forward with any specific answers to those questions or with a specific plan or with actual bill language,” Perez said.
The panel’s first meeting was May 2, the scheduled last day of the regular session, and it featured 37 members – a number DeSantis derided.
“If you have a legislative body that is creating a 37-member committee, they’re not doing that because they want to give you property tax relief. They’re doing that to try to kill property tax relief. So this is a total dog and pony show. This is not anything that’s credible,” DeSantis said.
“When I want something done I do it, I don’t put a committee of 37 people together where they’re not going to be able to agree on anything.”
Perez directed the committee to study five specific ideas dealing with property taxes, and return with a plan that can be voted out of the House the first week of the 2026 regular session. Those ideas are:
- Requiring all local governments to hold referendums on eliminating homestead property taxes.
- Raising the homestead property tax exemption from $50,000 to $500,000 for non-school taxes, with a $1 million exemption for homestead owners over 65 who have had a homestead in Florida for 30 years.
- Allowing the Legislature to raise the homestead exemption by law instead of needing a constitutional amendment.
- Hardening existing caps on annual increases in assessments by making the 3% cap for homestead properties apply every three years and by raising the 10% cap for non-homestead properties to 15% per year.
- Banning the government from foreclosing on a homestead property for unpaid taxes.
Gray Rohrer is a reporter with the USA TODAY Network-Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at grohrer@gannett.com. Follow him on X: @GrayRohrer.