State-imposed school tax rate is up, not down

Rick Scott told voters in 2010 that he could cut school property taxes and still find money to fund the K-12 system and balance the state budget.

Words, it turns out, are easier to offer than actions.

Scott promised during the campaign to cut the state-imposed school property tax 19 percent in his first year in office. He then said he would phase in additional cuts to the tax, called the Required Local Effort, over future years.

The first promise we found to be Promise Broken.

Scott never even proposed the full tax cut in his first-year budget. What he did propose, a more modest cut, was rejected by the Legislature.

Scott promised to lower the millage rate -- which is a multiplier used to calculate your tax bill based on the value of your property -- from 5.29 to 4.29 in his first year. But the rate went up, not down, to 5.446.

To keep the second leg of the promise, Scott said he would cut the millage rate again from 4.29 to 3.29 over seven years.

The budget request from the Florida Department of Education for 2012-13 anticipates keeping the tax rate at the same level from 2011-12, 5.446. The final rate will not be known until after the Legislature passes the state budget.

(A note for the budget wonks in the crowd: The tax rate is set by the Florida Department of Education; the Legislature and governor settle on a dollar figure that needs to be generated by the Required Local Effort. And since a person"s tax bill is dependent on the rate and property values, the rate can increase but your tax bill can still decrease.)

Scott"s office noted that the 2011-12 budget did include a cap on the amount of property taxes that can be collected by state water management districts. But that"s outside the scope of this promise, which is about school property taxes.

We"ll wait one more year to see if Scott has made progress in cutting school taxes. For now, however, this promise is Stalled.