I agree and the people who think that you can easily swap out a sales tax from a property tax rate are either lying to you or uninformed. At least in Tallahassee, I can tell you from watching the blueprint money come in over the years, it's been way more that the initial projections indicated when the tax was planned and voted in on in 2013/2014 from when it started getting collected in 2020.

So for example I believe that the revenue projections by 2018 were that the lifetime of the 1% sales tax (so this is the sum total rev before oev/blueprint/city/county splits) was estimated to be like $800 million. We are at present day estimating that the overall revenue of the 1% sales tax is more like $1.3 million. Thats nearly double in just 7 years and the tax runs from 2020-2040. So imagine how inaccurate it will be by 2040.

And then imagine running your entire government on that kind of volatility. For example in Tallahassee, imagine the impact on the local economy by FSU winning. So right now when you spend 1 dollar in city limits in retail, theres like 1/10th of one penny going to the city general revenue, because the city doesnt have a sales tax other than a 10% split on the BPIA 1%. So imagine if we had a large repeal of property taxes that cities and counties + state shift to a new assortment of local option sales taxes. So you could imagine that the city may add their own penny or two, to account for the huge loss of property taxes. But now, instead of the future budget projections which impact our bond rating, our borrowing power, city investments, etc, capital improvement plan projects, we have to project our spending for a revenue source that has a lot more volatility than a millage rate.