If we’re honest, most of us have zip understanding of how government works and less about how it’s funded, what it funds and who gets what, when, how or why. We’re satisfied with a cursory, “We pay taxes, and too much taxes for that matter.” We usually add something like, “THEY spend my taxes on corrupt, wasteful stuff.” “They” being “the government.” “Wasteful” being anything I don’t care about.
Monroe County and Key West face looming budget deficits this month as both prepare their 2025-2026 fiscal year spending and revenue plans. State law mandates that counties and municipalities balance their budgets, a simple enough rule that says same dollars out as in. More expenses than income? Two choices: find more revenue (taxes come to mind) or reduce expenses.
Since there’s hardly a person on the planet who campaigns on raising taxes, expense cuts are coming. Vacant positions will be eliminated. Longtime staff will be let go. Departments, already understaffed, will be combined or scaled back. Grants and direct funding for programs we’ve assumed will be there because we count on them are headed for extinction.
Monroe County and Key West, as well as other Keys municipalities, are headed straight into a perfect Cat 5 fiscal storm that will upend our tourist-based economy, erase nonprofits and non-governmental agencies that deliver services from food and shelter to medical care, undermine local business stability and sound a death knell for cultural and entertainment venues.
Our property taxes fund about 45 percent, give or take a few percentage points, of our local governments. That covers such things as personnel, sheriff’s department, fire/rescue, courts, and some children, senior citizen and veterans services.
The remaining revenue for everything else — including hurricane recovery, ecosystem protection, infrastructure (think roads and bridges, water and sewer), nonprofit support, medical care and flood management — comes from state and federal funds and grants, sales taxes, license and permit fees, fines, forfeitures and service charges.
Cuts to the 2025-2026 budgets are a proverbial drop in the bucket. Far worse will come in the subsequent three years when the major cuts from President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” come roaring through.
Budget deficits | The next 3 years will make today look flush
For instance, the whopping federal cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, the food assistance program, won’t take effect until 2028. Once they do, millions of dollars in federal funding for state and local programs in the Keys disappear. Either local and state governments will have to fill the gap or programs die. People, too, I wager.
Florida state economists have already forecast a $2.8 billion deficit in the SNAP program for Florida in FY 2026-27, which they project will increase to $6.9 billion in FY 2027-28.
Florida stands to lose $4 billion annually in Medicaid funding by 2028. (Only California, New York and Texas will lose more.) Florida Medicaid covers those who are blind, disabled, elderly, parents and caregivers, pregnant, former foster care youth or children through age 18. Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for Medicaid.
When Medicaid reimbursement disappears for emergency rooms, nursing homes and in-home care, we can kiss goodbye to Lower Keys Medical Center and the “whatever its name is today” rehab and long-term nursing home on Stock Island.
But it’s not just federal and state funding cuts that are driving this countywide Hobson’s choice. Tourism is down, shockingly so, even if no one wants to talk about it. Real estate prices tumble in a buyer’s market, though there are no buyers. Trump’s secret police, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has reduced the local workforce by thousands. They are either hiding at home, leaving the Keys or languishing in the Everglades concentration camp.
The chaos that is FEMA these days has already turned over disaster recovery to the states and local emergency management. In no way is Florida, Monroe County or Key West prepared — financially or organizationally — to manage, much less fund, hurricane recovery without at least the FEMA levels of the past — and that’s not going to happen. That’s tens of millions of dollars in the Keys, billions throughout the state.
The first public meeting on Monroe County’s 2025-2026 budget was Tuesday afternoon. The City of Key West gears up on July 22.
County Administrator Christine Hurley and the staff have balanced next year’s budget with deep cuts to local organizations, staff reductions and reorganizations. To fund an increase in emergency reserves, the Board of County Commissioners will have to decide what else to cut — or raise taxes. Those scenarios range from not-so-bad to shockingly upsetting.
It’s no wonder folks are frantic when they see proposed drastic funding cuts to ingrained, highly effective and deeply needed organizations like MARC, AHMonroe and AHEC. They’ll lose upwards of 50 percent of their county funding and more from additional federal and state cuts. The BOCC could eliminate that funding entirely. There are almost 50 other nonprofits and NGOs on the cut list. Those are highly visible organizations with exceptionally strong advocates — and there aren’t enough charitable donors on the island to save them for long.
State and federal cuts over the next three years will be devastating to the Keys and its people. We won’t be able to tax ourselves enough — though we should try — to offset the destruction, and I can’t dig up enough optimism to weave a tale in which we can make this right.
Learn more
Read the entire 419-page Monroe County budget
State funding cuts deep into local government budgets
How federal cuts are affecting local government funding
Federal cuts to SNAP food assistance loom for Florida
How about reducing spending? Why hire 13 more government workers? We overspent the last 4 years and just like all Americans the city should cut back hard. By the way, did anyone notice more rentals available for workers?
Tax EV’s why should they use the roads with their destructive extra weight and not pay?
Well written Linda! Focusing on the KW budget, a couple of pertinent facts that residents lose sight of: Property tax revenues for KW are an insignificant part of the KW budget representing a little over $20 million of a budget for all funds of over $250 million, barely 10%. In the big scheme of things and despite what the media and politicians focus on, property taxes in KW are not that important to the overall financial picture. For example, the total proposed budget for the public safety departments, KWPD and Fire/EMS is over $40 million. Property taxes rates in KW are the lowest in the state of Florida and barely fund 50% of public safety departments.
Yep, folks tend to think property taxes are what fuel local government. But it’s the sales taxes (down), the bed taxes (down) and the pass-through state and federal funding (down and going lower) and grants (way, way down) that pay for most of what supports the quality of life.