Corporate Welfare in Overalls: The Rural Shell Game of Florida Amendment 2
Cue the acoustic guitar and the soft-focus television commercials. You know the pitch: a weathered, fourth-generation Florida farmer standing beside a fence post, just trying to keep the family heritage alive against impossible odds. That is the sentimental portrait Tallahassee is selling with Florida Amendment 2.
It’s a pretty picture, yet it is also a costly example of corporate theater.
Amendment 2 modifies the state constitution to eliminate tangible personal property taxes on equipment, machinery, and tools situated on agricultural land. But there’s the part that the attractive mailers omit: Florida businesses are already entitled to a standard exemption of $25,000 for tangible property. For the true small-scale farmer, that current exemption covers a large portion of the ordinary equipment they use. -The real benefit here isn’t something that goes to the struggling family farm; it goes instead to industrial agribusiness syndicates, huge corporate packing houses, and luxury “agri-tourism” wedding barns which operate fleets of machinery worth six figures.
Above all, Amendment 2 must not be considered on its own. It is the second part of a well-coordinated, three-stage shell game being introduced across this ballot.
In Amendment 1, the Legislature intends to set aside up to 25 percent of general revenue and keep it in a vault in Tallahassee that cannot be touched. With Amendment 2 they give corporate agribusiness a permanent constitutional tax exemption. Add Amendment 3, which takes a sledgehammer to municipal property tax bases, and you have to ask a very basic question: How on earth is anything in Florida meant to be paid for?
No one is excited when it comes time to pay taxes. Yet, do you enjoy driving on paved roads? Do you value the stormwater systems that prevent the streets in your neighborhood from becoming canals following a normal afternoon shower? Do you expect a sheriff’s deputy or a fire truck to come when you press 911? These services aren’t financed by good intentions or political slogans. They run on a stable local tax base.
Even if the state exempts heavy commercial equipment from local property taxes, those multi-ton tractors and transport trucks by no means suddenly cease damaging the asphalt that is maintained by the counties. Instead, Tallahassee passes on the cost. The county commissions and municipal governments are then left with only two equally bad options: cut back on essential public services or increase the property tax liability on ordinary residential homeowners and the smaller businesses on Main Street.
Tallahassee politicians enjoy acting the part of the generous hero by granting corporate tax exemptions, even though it is the local communities who have to pay for them. Before we allow industrial agribusiness to take advantage of the very infrastructure that enables their operations, we should put our own neighborhoods first. Vote against Amendment 2.
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