How does our county earn, spend money?

Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.

Want to know how Jefferson County stacks up with the rest of the state and other counties in terms of its revenues and expenditures?
Florida TaxWatch (FTW) recently released its 2019 edition of “How Florida Counties Compare”, a report that provides the revenue and expenditure profiles for each of the state's 67 counties.
The purpose of the report, per the FTW, is to give taxpayers an idea of how their local government compares with the state and with other counties in terms of taxing and revenue generation. Never mind that it also underscores how local governments' spendings impact on the lives of citizens.
“The spending and taxing decisions of county governments have major impacts on the daily lives of every family across our state and it's important for all Floridians to understand where their hard-earned dollars are being spent,” FTW President and CEO Dominic M. Calabro said upon the document's release.
According to the FTW, more than half of all Florida government revenue (53.1 percent) is raised at the local level – one of the highest shares in the nation.
“Florida’s 66 county governments, plus Jacksonville’s consolidated government, and its more than 400 municipal governments and approximately 1,000 independent special districts spend nearly $80 billion annually,” the FTW report shows.
The report classifies local government revenues into five categories. These are property taxes; other taxes; charges for services, permits, fees and special assessments; intergovernmental revenues; and other revenues.
And it classifies the expenditures as general government, public safety, courts, utility and environment, transportation, economic development, human services and culture and recreation.
The report does not purport to compare or evaluate levels of service. It further adds the caveat that the data used is the most recent, but that data's limitations must be considered. Too, the report notes, the data are self-reported by local governments, which makes for possible errors and omissions, never mind the existence of differences in how governments account for similar functions.
That said, the report shows that Jefferson County generally ranks in the higher numbers when compared with the state, which makes its per-capita taxes and spending typically lower than the statewide average, given the inverse relationship between the numbers.
Thus, for example, Miami-Dade, whose taxes and revenues tend to be higher than the state average, typically ranks in the lower digits in many of the categories, whereas Jefferson County tends to rank in the 40s, 50s and 60s in most categories, with 67 the highest possible ranking.
Some examples of the taxes and ranking for Jefferson County, versus the state average: $664 for per-capita total property taxes (54th rank), compared with $1,597 for the state; $323.03 for per-capita county government property tax levies (55th rank), compared with $614.64 for the state; $44.35 for per-capita municipal government property tax levies (42th rank), compared with $294.09 for the state; and $290.21 for per-capita school district property tax levies (53th rank), compared with $630.37 for the state.
Some others of the noteworthy numbers for Jefferson County, compared with the state: 15.6403 for the average total property tax millage rates (51st rank), compared with 17.2718 for the state; 0.3 percent growth in the total property tax levies from Fiscal Year (FY) 2012-13 to FY2018-19 (59th rank), compared with 37.7 percent for the state; -4.1 percent growth in total property tax levies from FY2007-08 to FYU2018-19 (44th rank), compared with 7.3 percent for the state; and 43.3 percent for the percent of just value that is taxes (60th rank), compared with 67.0 percent for the state.
The few areas where Jefferson County or the City of Monticello ranked in the lower digits were the per-capita local option motor fuel tax revenue, $68.94 (6th rank), compared with $44.70 for the state; the percent of available local option motor fuel being levied, 100 percent (12th rank), compared with 83 percent for the state; the per-capita county and municipal intergovernmental revenue, $568.25 (12th rank), compared with $349.59 for the state; and the per-capita municipal and county revenue from Florida State Government, $558.30 (8th rank), compared with the state average of $225.44.
The report puts the county's expenditure on culture and recreation at $42.09 (57th rank), compared with $182.87 for the state on the same.
The report shows the county's population to be 14,733, compared with the state's population of 20,840,568. It puts the percentage of the county's population living in unincorporated areas at 83.6 percent (18th rank), compared with 49.3 percent for the state.
It puts the county's population density at 24.6 percent, compared with 392.7 percent for the state; it reports the per-capita personal income is $40,762, versus $47,684 for the state; and it puts the county's unemployment rate at 2.9 percent, versus 3.0 percent for the state.
For the full report, visit floridataxwatch.org/research/how-florida-counties-compare.