Britain voted for a simple promise and got a decade of slow decline. Florida just did the same thing, after 30 years of cancelled trains, frozen paychecks and vetoed water projects. I'm tired of being told it's fine.

OPINION | By Joseph J. Jackson | ST. PETERSBURG (Nov. 12, 2026)

The short version

Brexit didn't crash Britain. It drained it: 6% to 8% lower GDP by one major estimate. Amendment 3 works the same way, one budget cut at a time.
Florida skipped a decade of raises for state workers, refused $2.4 billion for a Tampa–Orlando train, and vetoed water projects in Tampa Bay, all under Republican governors.
The cities doing the most to build for rising water are paying for it themselves. Amendment 3 just cut their budgets, while the state sits on nearly $18 billion.

This is an opinion. It reflects the views of the author.

I'm tired.

I'm tired of being told Florida is booming while my insurance bill, my rent and the line at the county office all go the wrong direction. I'm tired of officials telling me the roads are fine while I sit on the same roads I sat on twenty years ago. And I'm tired of being gaslit by people who keep getting richer while the rest of us pay more just to exist here.

Last week, 62% of Florida voters passed Amendment 3. It was sold as a property-tax cut. What it really does is pull an estimated $11.86 billion a year out of local budgets, with no replacement plan written into it. Hillsborough alone loses $366.9 million a year by 2029. PSTA says up to 25 of its 40 bus routes are at risk. [1][2]

I've seen this movie before. It played in Britain.

The slow leak

In 2016, British voters chose to leave the European Union. The promise fit on the side of a bus. The plan came later.

Ten years on, Britain didn't crash. It leaked. Researchers at the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research found Brexit cut the U.K.'s GDP by 6% to 8% and investment by 12% to 18% compared with staying in. Britain's own budget watchdog uses a smaller number, 4%, but it points the same way. Analysts there describe it the same way I'd describe Florida: not a sudden shock, but a persistent drag. [3][4][5]

That's Amendment 3. Nothing closes on Jan. 1. The cuts come one budget at a time. A library loses its Sunday hours. A bus route disappears. A stormwater project gets "deferred." By the time you notice, it's been years.

Florida already knows what "deferred" costs. In 2018, an engineer warned the condo board at Champlain Towers South in Surfside of "major structural damage" under its pool deck. Three years later, the repairs were only just getting started when the building came down on June 24, 2021, and killed 98 people. Federal investigators found the tower had too little margin for safety from the day it was built, and corrosion ate at what was left. That was a private building, not a state road. But the lesson is the same one Tallahassee keeps refusing to learn: a repair you put off doesn't go away. It waits. [6][7][8]

Want to see what building for the future costs? Look at Miami Beach. The city raised its roads, built 49 pump stations and jacked up its own stormwater fees 84% to pay for it. Where the pumps are in, they work. And it's still not enough. This September, king tides flooded condo lobbies and garages, and crews were still pumping them out days later. The city's own master plan puts the price of its remaining neighborhood projects at $3.7 billion. Across South Florida, staying dry for just the next ten years will cost billions more. That's the bill coming due, and local governments are the ones paying it. Amendment 3 just took away their wallet. [9][10][11][12][13]

I've lived the delays

I didn't learn this from a study. I've lived it.

The train. In 2000, Florida voters put high-speed rail in the state constitution. In 2003, Gov. Jeb Bush vetoed the money lawmakers set aside for it. In 2004, he led the campaign to repeal it. [14][15]

Then in 2011, Washington offered to pay about $2.4 billion of a $2.6 billion Tampa–Orlando line. Florida's share was about $280 million. Gov. Rick Scott sent the money back. He told us the train would have cost Florida taxpayers $1 billion. PolitiFact checked that claim and rated it False. [16][17]

So which was it? Did Rick Scott lie to us, or was he just that incompetent? Either he knew Florida's share was a fraction of what he said and said it anyway, or the governor of the fourth-largest state in the country couldn't read the deal on his own desk. Neither answer is good. Fifteen years later, I'm still sitting on I-4.

The paychecks. Florida's last across-the-board raise for state workers came on Oct. 1, 2006. The next raises weren't percentage raises at all. In 2013 and 2017, workers got a flat $1,000, or $1,400 if they made under $40,000. In that same stretch, the state started making them pay 3% of their salary into their own retirement. That isn't a freeze. That's a pay cut, for the people who inspect our water and plow our roads. [18][19][20]

The water. Gov. Ron DeSantis has taken his veto pen to Tampa Bay's water over and over. In 2023, he cut $1.5 million for Tampa Bay Watch water-quality work. In 2024, he cut about $205 million in stormwater, wastewater and sewer projects statewide, including water main replacements, shoreline work and a beach wastewater project in our region. This year, his veto list included $1.5 million for South Howard flood relief in Tampa and $750,000 more for Tampa Bay Watch. [21][22][23][24][25]

Every one of those was a repair someone already knew we needed.

Thirty years of denial

Republicans have run Tallahassee for nearly 30 years. Here's the pattern, on the record: a train the voters approved, killed. Free federal money for a train, refused. A decade of frozen paychecks. Water and flood projects vetoed. And now, a tax cut that lands on the local budgets that pay for roads, sewers and storm drains.

The engineers who grade our infrastructure gave Florida a C+ last year. That's an improvement, and the state likes to say so. But look at what's still failing: dams, D-. Levees, D+. Schools, D+. Stormwater, a C. Those are the systems that keep water out of our homes, in the state most exposed to it. [26]

We aren't building for the next 50 years. We're still patching the last 20.

They got richer. We didn't.

Here's what makes me angry.

Rick Scott's own disclosures show his net worth climbing from about $84 million at the end of 2012 to $232.6 million by the end of 2017, while he was governor. Ron DeSantis was worth about $319,000 in 2021. After his book deal, he reported nearly $2.1 million. Jeb Bush's net worth dipped while he was governor, then he made $29 million in the years after he left, on consulting deals, speeches and Wall Street contracts. [27][28][29][30]

Not one of them came out of that job poorer for long.

Meanwhile, Florida homeowners pay an average of $8,471 a year for home insurance, about three times the national average. Renters pay for it too, baked into the rent. [31]

The money is there

This is the part they don't want you to think about. Florida isn't broke. The state reports nearly $18 billion in reserves. Lawmakers keep passing tax cuts and holidays, while the counties, the ones that actually fix your street and run your bus, get told to tighten up. [32]

And the state's own long-range forecast shows surpluses for two years, then a deficit in the third. So the "surplus" story has an expiration date, and the bill for Amendment 3 lands right around then. [33]

Britain voted to leave after a decade of austerity had already hollowed out its public services. Brexit's drag fell on a country with no slack left. Florida is doing the same thing in its own way. We skipped a decade of maintenance and raises. Now we're cutting the money that pays for catching up, while the state sits on $18 billion.

Their side

The governor says the water projects he vetoed could compete for money through state grant programs instead, and Florida TaxWatch called many of them unvetted "water turkeys." Just last month, DeSantis announced $100 million for 45 water projects, including $10 million for Tampa Bay Water. Scott said the train would have left taxpayers on the hook for cost overruns, and some analysts doubted its ridership. Supporters of Amendment 3 say local governments grew fat on rising home values and kept the money instead of giving it back. And the state points to a transportation budget near $16 billion and roads it says it has sped up years ahead of schedule. [34][35][36]

I've heard all of it. I've also lived here long enough to watch the projects get promised, studied, shelved and promised again.

What I want

I want the state to use its reserves to backfill the counties before the first bus route gets cut. I want lawmakers to fund the water and flood projects in Tampa Bay through a real, published, competitive program, so "go apply for a grant" means something. And I want every one of them asked, on the record, before the 2027 session: what are you building for the next 50 years?

Britain got a decade of decline from a promise that fit on a bus. We got ours on a ballot. We don't have to sit and watch it play out.

Call your state representative and senator. Find them at myfloridahouse.gov and flsenate.gov. Ask them one question: where's the money to fix what we already knew was broken?

Photo: A kayaker on a flooded Miami Beach street, June 2009. maxstrz via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.

Opinion | Florida Just Voted for Its Own Brexit

The short version

The slow leak

I've lived the delays

Thirty years of denial

They got richer. We didn't.

The money is there

Their side

What I want

Sources

Florida Man News Network

Opinion | Florida Just Voted for Its Own Brexit

The short version

The slow leak

I've lived the delays

Thirty years of denial

They got richer. We didn't.

The money is there

Their side

What I want

Sources

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Florida Man News Network