In my last post, I discussed general fund revenues. I noticed there were two significant revenue sources missing: proceeds from state revenue sharing and local option taxes. In this post, I’ll discuss shared revenue proceeds. There’s a county shared revenue program and a municipal shared revenue program. Monroe county received about $2.0 million from this source in FY2013. Another $1.7 million was split between the municipalities. It certainly is odd that this source was excluded from the county’s report while minor sources, such as the mobile home license tax were discussed. Hmmmm.
Anyhow, here’s a bit from the Florida statutes about how shared revenues are distributed to the counties.
218.245 Revenue sharing; apportionment.—
(1) The apportionment factor for all eligible counties shall be composed of three equally weighted portions as follows:
(a) Each eligible county’s percentage of the total population of all eligible counties in the state.
(b) Each eligible county’s percentage of the total population of the state residing in unincorporated areas of all eligible counties.
(c) Each eligible county’s percentage of total sales tax collections in all eligible counties during the preceding year.
What would happen if Key Largo chooses to incorporate? The calculation is below. Except for Key Largo’s population, I took the population numbers from Appendix A of the
Local Government Handbook for FY2013. Key Largo’s population was estimated based on the
American Factfinder tool at
http://www.census.gov. The estimated amount of tax to be shared also came from the Local Government Handbook for FY2013 (page 37). About $381.9 million of the sales tax was used in the estimate and $8.253 million of the cigarette tax for a total of $390 million to be distributed to the counties. I computed Monroe County’s sales tax collection factor using data I found in a spreadsheet on the Florida Department of Revenue (DOR) website.
County population factor = Monroe County population/Florida Population = 72,828/18,949,364 = 0.00384
Unincorporated county population factor = 32,714/9,362,892 = 0.00349 [Key Largo unincorporated]
Unincorporated county population factor = 19,465/9,343,427 = 0.00208 [Key Largo incorporated]
Sales Tax Collection Factor = Sales Tax Collected in Monroe County/Sales Tax Collected in all counties = 170,953,742/19,657,996,927 = 0.00870
Amount distributed [unincorporated Key Largo] = ((0.00384+0.00349+0.00870)/3)*390 million = $2.1 million
Amount distributed [incorporated Key Largo] = ((0.00384 + 0.00208 + 0.00870)/3)*390 million = $1.9 million
So by my estimate, county revenues would decline by about $200,000 if Key Largo incorporated.
It turns out that there is also a municipal revenue sharing program. The incorporated entities of the Keys received $1.7 million from this source in 2013. Key West received $1.14 million. The next largest share, $268,000, went to Islamorada. An incorporated Key Largo would fall somewhere in between. My guess-timate is somewhere around $700,000. I won’t be able to come up with a more definitive number until I get more data. I’ve submitted a data request to the Florida Department of Revenue and I should hear back in a week or two. Until then, here’s an interim table of general revenues.
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