Day 2 begins for special session

Legislators started the heavy lifting Wednesday on the details of a $31.6 billion property tax cut for Floridians, battling over changes that could be critical to the final vote.
House and Senate finance committees began debating the three-part plan that would offer property taxpayers a tax rollback, a future tax cut, and a constitutional amendment to greatly expand the state’s homestead exemption.
At the Senate Finance & Tax Committee meeting, a group of at least 100 blue- and white-shirted firefighters lined the room’s walls in silent protest of the proposed cuts. Local governments have complained the plan would devastate local services.
However, Republican Majority Leader Dan Webster of Winter Garden flatly refused to consider any amendments, however, answering simply “no” when asked if he would consider changes.
Senate Democratic Leader Steve Geller of Cooper City, for example, tried to persuade Republicans to lower the plan’s requirement that local governments have a unanimous vote to override some of the tax cut or caps. Geller said such a threshold is impractical and unreasonable for governing bodies such as Jacksonville’s 19-member council that may face emergency circumstances.
“The chances of getting all members on the same page is very slim,” Geller said. “It’s not serving the people well, and it goes against every basic rule we’ve ever learned about government and representative democracy.”
That and other amendments were withdrawn, however. Webster said he did not want the amendments to come to a committee vote so they could be preserved and introduced on the Senate floor instead, probably Thursday.
— J. Taylor Rushing/The Times-Union