Provided photo.

For years, Tallahassee has asked local governments to show restraint. The Governor, the Cabinet and the Legislature have pointed again and again to local budgets growing faster than inflation and population combined. Local governments, for the most part, kept spending.

That changed when Amendment 3 landed on the November ballot. Suddenly, budget workshops included words like “efficiency” and “priorities.” Some governments trimmed. Others slowed their growth. It took the real possibility of losing revenue to produce the kind of discipline taxpayers had been asking for all along.

Now many local governments are in a holding pattern, waiting to see how the vote goes. Too many have not prepared for the amendment passing. And if it fails, the plan seems to be a quiet return to business as usual.

That would be a mistake, because Amendment 3 is not the only path to reform. Next year, a little-known body called the Florida Taxation and Budget Reform Commission convenes for the first time in two decades.

The Commission is written into the Florida Constitution and meets every 20 years. The Governor appoints 11 members, and the Speaker of the House and the Senate President each appoint seven. Four legislators serve as non-voting members. The last Commission met in 2007 and 2008.

Its charge is broad. The Commission examines the state’s tax structure, its budget process, and government productivity and efficiency. It reviews how state and local governments raise and spend money and looks at constitutional limits on both. Most importantly, it has the power to place constitutional amendments directly on the ballot with a two-thirds vote of its members, bypassing the Legislature. Those proposals must be filed roughly six months before the 2028 general election.

In other words, whatever happens on November 3, property taxes and local spending will be back on the table, and Florida voters could see tax reform on their ballots again in 2028.

State law even anticipates a role for local governments. It encourages cities and counties to examine their own taxation and budget policies and submit recommendations to the Commission. That is an invitation to lead rather than react.

The prudent course is clear. Local governments should begin operating as if their budgets will be reduced, because there is a real chance they will be. That means tightening spending growth now and building up economic uncertainty reserves so that any reduction is a gradual adjustment in services rather than a sudden drop off a cliff. Governments that are already falling short of their own reserve policies are the most exposed and we have governments in Sarasota County that are in that category.

The fiscal restraint we have seen since Amendment 3 reached the ballot proves that local governments can do this. The question is whether that restraint was a temporary response to one election or the beginning of a better way of doing business.

Local budget reform is coming. The only question left is whether it arrives this November or in 2028.

Christine Robinson is the Chief Executive Officer of The Argus Foundation.

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