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Notes -
My Florida Ballot
Early voting starts in my state. Mid-terms have arrived. Here is what I'm voting for, and why:
Governor - Byron Donalds: I largely agree with most positions more than I disagree. I support police, and cracking down on criminality, I oppose most gun control. To keep a long story short, im about 60/40 as far as agreeing with Republicans/Democrats respectively. And will vote R if I must choose. This will be the same for the other smaller representees.
-Edit- Senate - Ashley Moody: Same reasons as Byron
Supreme Court - Carlos G. Muñiz: Keeping him.
CFO - Blaise Ingoglia: I did a little digging, he seems more effective at managing spending for the state. So I'm going with him.
Commissioner of Agriculture - Wilton Simpson: Unfortunately, I dont know the first thing about argiculture. But just looking at the perspective candidates websites. Wilton claims to have done some nice things, like providing for those in need via a Farming Feed initiative, and preventing medicine from getting water systems. Assuming this is true. He has my vote. I also went and checked what stuff he has voted for on Ballotpedia, most of it seems pretty good. He voted for things related to childrens welfare and having standards for education systems. I trust him. His oppononent, Joey, doesnt even have anything he has done on his website.
Attorney General - James Uthmeier: He was under DeSantis, and as an Attorney General he basically will over see the state legal system and such. I trust him to enforce the laws we have on the book and help police crack down on bad behavior.
Amendment 1 : I'm largely for increasing funding for emergencies, Florida tends to have a lot of natural disasters, so I dont see the argument against this just off intuition. So I'll vote yes.
Amendment 2 : Again, I unfortunately don't know much about agriculture, but it basically says that certain equipment wont get taxed. Im going to go with yes for this as well. But if anyone know a lot about agriculture, I'd like an argument as to why. Farming tends to be an expensive endeavor from just doing brief research, so I'm gonna vote to save the farmers a few dollars.
Amendment 3: I don't know how to feel about this. On the one hand, I kinda understand the fundamental argument for Taxes: someone needs to pay for government services. And from what I can tell, this bill will tax people the more expensive their houses become. It essentially reads as a progressive tax but for property. I tend to sympathize with progressive tax systems in general, so I don't have a problem with this. But it does seem unfair to those who bought their house for $100,000, but now pay more tax because that house is worth $300,000 they didn't exactly choose that, on the other hand for many this might have been a desired outcome. There are also those who would plan on just living in the house forever without selling so for those accruing a higher price on the house isn't very relevant. There is also the problem of landlords passing the tax on the current renters. I dunno, I'm still thinking on this, opinions are welcome.
Honestly I have no idea why anyone would vote Dem at the city/state level other than being part of the local machine. I can understand being Dem/Gop at the national level but at the local level GOP seems to have much higher performance last decade.
If property prices go up uniformly in a taxing district then your property taxes do not go up. This is true basically everywhere.
Your property tax is calculated by
Government Decides Budget = your property value/total taxing districts property value * mileage rate. The last one is just a fudge factor and is the variable solved for.
Except California, which is where a lot of the discourse centers. And it seems a lot of people -- even non-CA property owners -- don't realize that California is weird in that respect, and was before proposition 13 (among other things there's a constitutionally provided 1% property tax). And you'll note the people who insist that prop 13 must be repealed NEVER talk about going to a conventional property tax system at the same time.
Florida has a Prop 13-like system, though somewhat less crazy. Homestead assessment increases are capped at the lower of inflation or 3%, and the instant ballot proposition would lower the cap on non-homestead assessment increases from 10% to 5%. Given that land values tend to rise roughly in line with nominal GDP and improvement values tend to rise roughly in line with replacement costs, and construction inflation is somewhat faster than general inflation (because Baumol), the homestead cap is going to bind and the 5% general cap is likely to bind.
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