Worried about 'socialism' in Florida? It's already here

You might have heard that there’s a “socialist” on the loose in Florida and he’s running for governor.

Andrew Gillum has been called a “failed socialist mayor” by President Donald Trump. And Ron DeSantis, Gillum’s opponent in the upcoming gubernatorial election, warns that if Gillum were elected, he would bring a “socialist agenda” to Florida.

But it’s too late. Florida already has a socialist agenda.

And the Floridians who are most likely to vote against Gillum for being a “socialist” are the primary beneficiaries of the state-sponsored socialism enshrined in state law.

Let me explain. There are 67 counties in Florida, and theoretically, they all raise money through property taxes to fund their basic services, like police, fire, libraries, trash collection and schools.

But some counties are better off than others. And some can’t pay their own way, which means they collect less in taxes than they need to support local government services.

There’s a name for these counties in Florida. They’re called the “fiscally constrained counties.” And this year, there are 29 of them.

In the last governor’s race in 2014, 27 of those 29 mostly rural counties in Central and North Florida voted for the Republican Rick Scott over the Democrat Charlie Crist.

Crist lost the statewide vote to Scott by a single percentage point — 48.1 to 47.1 percent.

But in the “fiscally constrained counties”, Scott trounced Crist by landslide votes in most cases. In 18 of the 29 counties, Crist got less than 35 percent of the vote. In one of those counties, Holmes County, Scott got 74 percent of the vote.

Which might seem counter-intuitive, considering Scott’s message of government being more of an obstacle than a solution to people’s problems.

“Government has no resources of its own,” Scott has said. "Government can only give to us what it has previously taken from us.”

So you’d think that the people in Florida who rely on as much government help as they can get, would be the ones that would be least receptive to cries of “socialism” as a scare tactic.

Unless it’s only socialism when somebody else is being given a helping hand.

The “fiscally constrained counties” may be in for another helping hand of socialism this year at the hands of the allegedly anti-socialist Republican-led state Legislature.

Lawmakers engineered an amendment on the November ballot that will ask voters whether homeowners should get a bigger homestead exemption tax break.

Amendment 1 would lower the assessed value an additional $25,000 on primary residences assessed for more than $125,000.

This is good news for those homeowners, but really good news for the homeowners in these “fiscally constrained counties.”

Because not only will they get the break on their individual taxes, but their counties won’t have to cut their services to them due to the lost revenue created by the tax break.

That’s because the Legislature passed a law that calls for the fiscally sound counties in Florida to pay for the services the poorer counties would have otherwise lost due to the tax cut.

Yes, if the amendment passes, the rest of Florida, including Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties, will be paying to plug the $10 million hole in tax collections created in these poor counties by the amendment.

And at the same time, those very same recipients of this government redistribution of wealth will vote in droves to keep a “socialist” from being governor.

Go figure.