Saying Floridians need property tax relief now, former Florida House Speaker and 2026 Republican gubernatorial candidate Paul Renner is calling for the Legislature to reduce the ad valorem taxes levied by local governments immediately by rolling them back to the previous year’s levels, plus a reduction based on how much the county’s spending had increased since 2020.
The Legislature should cap future taxes to ensure local government cannot grow faster than Floridians’ incomes, he added, and require a 2/3 supermajority vote of local government for any new or increased tax or fee subject to a subsequent referendum, for voters to approve or reject.
“We don’t have to wait two years for an amendment to go on the ballot in November 2026,” he said while addressing reporters in Tampa on Thursday. “We can give people relief right this minute and that’s what I’m calling for today in the form of a rollback.”
Renner said his proposal isn’t complicated and that it’s simply reproducing what happened during a 2007 special legislative session. That’s when then Gov. Charlie Crist and House Speaker Marco Rubio agreed to reduce ad valorem taxes collected by local governments in FY 2007-08 to a specified percentage of the rolled back rate for 2006‐07.
Renner’s comments came while a select House committee in Tallahassee debated several proposed constitutional amendments to substantially reduce or outright eliminate property taxes for homestead properties that would potentially go on the November 2026 ballot. The idea has been aggressively pursued by Gov. Ron DeSantis as he heads into his final year leading Florida.
Renner said that the percentage of what would be returned to taxpayers in his proposal would depend on how much that local government has spent.
“If your county has been fiscally conservative and they’ve given some of that money back to taxpayers — as they should — then they have a smaller rollback,” he said. “If your county is one that has taken every single penny — and this has happened in many counties — you have a larger rollback. That’s up to the Legislature to look at the numbers and make a decision on what that rollback amount would look like.”
Gov. DeSantis has dismissed the multiple proposed measures that members of the Florida House debated Thursday, saying only a single constitutional amendment should go on the ballot. Renner said he mostly agreed with that idea.
“I think you need one plan that’s straightforward,” he said. “That people can look at and say, ‘Does this make my life better?’”
The 58-year-old Renner, a military veteran and former state prosecutor, concluded a nine-year stint in the House in 2024, spending the last two years as speaker. He entered the GOP contest for governor in early September, joining southwest U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds in the contest to succeed a term-limited DeSantis next year.
Although there have been rumors of other candidates entering the race, Donalds and Renner remain the top contenders going into next August’s GOP primary. “I think I am the viable alternative,” he said when asked if he considered himself the top challenger to Donalds, who has the imprimatur of Donald Trump as well as $30 million raised in his campaign coffers.
“We’re the undisputed leader as well on having a plan,” Renner added, referring to the affordability plan he released last week that includes specific proposals to reduce insurance costs, ensure that tuition isn’t increased in Florida universities, and boost healthcare (he is calling on Congress to repeal the Affordable Care Act and return control to the states as well as promoting “high-quality healthcare options that put patients in control”). He also wants to end H-IB visa hires for state employees.
Renner spoke about what he deemed the legislative successes that he worked on with DeSantis and the Legislature during his term as speaker, which included his sponsorship of an expansive and controversial voucher law to provide public money for children to attend parochial, secular, and other private schools across the state, regardless of family income. That program has now expanded to 500,000 students statewide.
A recently released audit for the 2024-2025 school year found a “myriad of accountability challenges” with the school choice program, with millions of dollars in overspending as well as lack of oversight and delays in scholarship payments.
“I think you don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater,” Renner responded. “This is a great program, but if out of that half-a-million there are 50 or 500 that are not complying in the right way, kick them off the program. That’s enforcement. Don’t use any problems along the way to eliminate the program or redo the program.”
Despite the fact that he considers himself the main challenger to Donalds in the Republican primary, Renner says his campaign is centered on the needs of the electorate.
“I’m not running a campaign against him, I’m running a campaign for the people of Florida,” he said. “I’m putting Florida first. I have leadership that the other candidates frankly don’t have. I’ve delivered results. And again, I’m focused on people’s needs. It’s a ‘we’ campaign, it’s not a ‘me’ campaign.”
–Mitch Perry, Florida Phoenix
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