Amendment 3 Hands Escambia a $38 Million Hole, Cuts Will Be Painful

Accountability

The Commission Couldn’t Agree on $1 Million for FY 2026-27.

Voters approved the property tax cut. Now five commissioners—who spent the summer fighting over interns, office furniture and a $5,000 veterans grant—have to find cuts nearly 40 times larger than anything they could agree on in September.

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Amendment 3 has passed, and Escambia County is about to lose more property tax revenue than its commissioners have ever tried to cut.

• According to the Florida Association of Counties, the amendment will cost Escambia County $38,093,271 in Fiscal Year 2027-28 and $58,836,545 in Fiscal Year 2028-29. Santa Rosa County takes a hit of $23,816,623 the first year and $39,511,460 the second.

Two months ago, it took the Escambia County Commission nearly an hour of shouting, a withdrawn second and a side deal on employee raises to approve a $1 million millage reduction. The first-year Amendment 3 cut is 38 times that.

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What Amendment 3 Does

• Bigger homestead exemption: Rises to $150,000 in 2027 and $250,000 in 2028. A future Legislature is directed to raise it further or phase out the remaining homestead tax on a schedule it sets later.
• Tighter cap on non-homestead property: Annual assessment increases drop from 10 percent to 5 percent.
• Five-year wait for newcomers: Anyone who hadn’t established permanent Florida residency by December 31, 2026, is limited to the existing $50,000 exemption for five years, no matter when they buy. A Navy family transferred to NAS Pensacola or Whiting Field in 2027 waits five years for the benefit.
• No replacement money: The amendment provides no funding mechanism. Counties are still legally required to provide public safety, roads, stormwater and the rest.

The burden shifts. Homesteaded long-time residents win the most. Renters, businesses, second-home owners and new arrivals get little or nothing from the exemption, and the county still has to pay for the same services.

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The September Test Run

The commission got a preview of this fight in September, when it adopted its $890,095,709 budget for Fiscal Year 2026-27. It didn’t go well.

• At the September 8 hearing, the board cut the countywide millage to 6.571 mills, a reduction worth about $1 million. Commissioner Lumon May supplied the fourth vote only after the board paired it with roughly $1 million in additional raises for non-union employees earning under $50,000 and directed staff to find the shortfall through savings rather than reserves.

The tone was set when Commissioner Steve Stroberger turned on Commissioner Mike Kohler, who was pressing colleagues to name specific cuts:

“I just think this mean girl shit that you’re doing, Mike, it’s not working well with me.”

Later in September, Stroberger proposed trimming $2.8 million from the constitutional officers: $2 million from the Sheriff, $400,000 from the Clerk and $200,000 each from the Property Appraiser and Supervisor of Elections. He got no support.

• There were reasons. The board is in the middle of a three-year contract with the Sheriff signed last year. The Property Appraiser and Tax Collector budgets are approved by the Florida Department of Revenue, not the commission.

That is the first lesson for 2027. The biggest pieces of county spending are the hardest for the commission to touch.

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Add Up Every Cut. It Isn’t Close.

Take every specific cut a commissioner floated in July and September, remove the overlaps, and assume all of them pass:

• Stroberger’s constitutional officer cuts: $2.8 million
• Hofberger’s list to the PNJ: $1.644 million
• Kohler’s Clerk cuts beyond Stroberger’s: roughly $700,000

That’s about $5.1 million, roughly 13% of the first-year Amendment 3 hit and less than 9% of the second. Some of it, like the Property Appraiser cut, the board can’t make on its own, and none of it passed.

To close $38 million, the board will have to go well beyond nonprofit grants and youth programs and into core operations, the Sheriff’s budget, capital projects, reserves, or new fees and non-ad valorem assessments.

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How Each Commissioner Might Approach It

Based on what they said and did in the July workshop and September hearings, here’s where each commissioner is likely to start.

Ashlee Hofberger: Cut discretionary spending and outside agencies. The board chair has talked the most about cuts and named the most line items. Her list to the PNJ totaled $1.644 million:

• $300,000 in county grants and aid
• $211,000 in aid to private organizations
• $83,000 for after-school and summer programs
• $450,000 to eliminate the Summer Work Program
• $600,000 from the county’s PEDC/FloridaWest contribution, which she argues duplicates the new $110,000-a-year Economic Development and Planning Manager position

In July, she questioned funding for Pensacola Caring Hearts and a $5,000 grant to the Gulf Coast Veterans Advocacy Council. But Hofberger never made a motion to cut any of it. In September, she said:

“I think the best way to get to the rollback rate is to have an actual discussion about what needs to be cut, not just putting less money in reserves.”

She never called for that discussion. Her items also added up to less than 5 percent of the first-year hole.

Steve Stroberger: Go after the big budgets. Stroberger is the only commissioner who has proposed cutting the constitutional officers, where the real money is. In July, he also wanted to eliminate the commissioner-sponsored community support fund, arguing the mechanism creates “public perception of influence or unequal access to public funds.” He was the board’s most consistent advocate for a millage cut in September and will likely see Amendment 3 as a mandate.

Lumon May: Protect the lowest-paid and the poorest kids; spread the pain. May fought any millage cut for most of September, warning that locking in a lower rate was reckless with Amendment 3 on the ballot. He prefers an across-the-board cut of 2% to 3% over eliminating programs, and he has drawn hard lines around the Summer Work Program, after-school programs and pay for workers making under $50,000.

“We’re going to figure out how we can find some savings to the most affluent people in Escambia County at the next budget. We spend more money picking up paper on the beach than we spend on interns.”

• An across-the-board 2% to 3% cut won’t come close to $38 million, but expect May to insist that any cuts land evenly, not on the programs Hofberger has targeted.

Mike Kohler: The Clerk, perks and “butcher shop” politics. Kohler moved in September to cut $1 million from Clerk Pam Childers’ budget and $100,000 from what he called her “legal slush fund.” Those motions passed but didn’t appear in the final budget resolution. He has also pointed to fireworks shows and Mardi Gras funding, and in July he warned colleagues that if they started cutting, he’d go after their own offices:

“If you want to play butcher shop, we’re going to play butcher shop. It’s going to go to Pam’s Cantina. It’s going to go to travel. It’s going to go to Steve’s aide. It’s going to go to your furniture. So be careful what you ask for.”

• Kohler also defended the veterans funding and is likely to resist cuts he sees as taking money out of the community. With $38 million on the line, commissioners’ travel, aides and furniture become fair game.

Steven Barry: The dealmaker who wants time. Barry spent September counting votes and brokering the final compromise. In July, he cautioned against cutting the PEDC contribution before the new economic development manager has had a year or two to produce results. Expect him to push for a phased approach and to be the one trying to get to three or four votes.

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Escambia commissioners spent 2026 fighting over $211,000, $450,000 and $1 million. Next year, the number is $38 million, and $58.8 million the year after.

• Note: Commissioner Ashlee Hofberger may not be on the board for the 2027-28 budget hearings. She trails NPA challenger Joe Vinson by 14 votes. The final results will not be known until Friday, Nov. 13, when the overseas ballots are counted.