Ken's Take

Few people are as well versed as Kenneth Wilkinson is on the politics of property taxes in Florida.

The Lee County Property Appraiser was the driving force behind Save Our Homes, the constitutional amendment that caps residential homesteaded property to 3% or the rate of inflation, whichever is less. When voters approved it in 1992, the cap was designed to protect homeowners from spiraling property values and control government spending.

Of course, while the real estate boom protected homesteaded property owners, owners of second homes and commercial property weren't afforded the same protection. To fix that, in 2008 voters approved a constitutional amendment putting a 10% cap on the annual assessment increases on non-homesteaded properties. And homesteaded property owners could carry over $500,000 of their homestead assessment to a new home, an idea Wilkinson termed “portability.”