Senate Bill 180 - the 11th hour curve ball in the Florida Legislature
We need your help!
Just as Florida’s smart growth and land conservation communities were set to celebrate some wins this legislative session (passage of the State Park Preservation Act and defeat of efforts to abolish Regional Planning Councils and Community Redevelopment Agencies), our lawmakers threw us a curveball. In the 11th hour, they passed an emergency management bill that guts any efforts to strengthen local planning regulations for three years.
Here’s what the bill does:
Prohibits counties that were listed in the Federal Disaster Declarations for the three hurricanes that hit Florida last year -- Debby, Milton or Helene – and their municipalities from enacting construction moratoriums on redeveloping storm-damaged properties or more “restrictive or burdensome” comprehensive plan amendments, land development regulations or procedures related to development approvals from August 1, 2024 through October 1, 2027. Since every county in Florida was included in at least one of these designations in 2024, the prohibition applies statewide. (Section 28)
Moving forward, this law makes permanent a prior law applicable to previous hurricanes that applied to any local governments located entirely or partially within 100 miles of a storm’s track. It would automatically ban any more restrictive or burdensome local planning in those communities for at least a year afterward. (Section 18)
These provisions would undermine the bill’s purpose of promoting disaster recovery, because they would prevent local communities from adopting policies that protect life and property through increased resiliency to future storms that are stronger than those already mandated by state or federal law. For example, stricter regulations that improve a community’s rating for flood insurance premiums are not mandated by federal or state law and therefore could be subject to this regulatory ban.
SB 180 is this year’s broad emergency management bill, and admittedly, it includes some policies that will help Floridians plan for emergencies and recover in the face of damaging storms. But with its sweeping and retroactive prohibition of any "more restrictive or burdensome” amendments to comprehensive plans, land development regulations and procedures, it stops local community planning in its tracks from August 2024 through October 2027 in every single community in the state, regardless of whether it was actually impacted by these storms. The leaders you elected to represent you in your community lose their authority to plan for sustainable growth in your hometown unless affected developers agree to and sponsor the change. This will have negative impacts on your environment and quality of life, and could lead to higher taxes and insurance costs.
Most changes in comprehensive plans, land development regulations and procedures that make a difference could be characterized by a developer as more “restrictive or burdensome”, a phrase that is not defined in statute. And SB 180 creates grounds for developers to sue on that basis. Communities at that point are given two choices under the bill: either withdraw their amendment to a plan or regulation, or go to court, and risk paying the legal costs of the developer who sued them.
This would be a radical retreat from Florida’s decades-old system of community planning. With the Legislature still in session, lawmakers have an opportunity to fix this fatal flaw in SB 180 before it is sent to the Governor. We urge them to do so, and save community planning in Florida.
Let's all call our legislators and demand they protect our community planning in Monroe County!
Representative Mooney (850) 717-5120 or (305) 453-1202
Senator Ana Maria Rodriguez (850) 487-5040 or (305) 470-2552
Thank you!
Holly Hummell-Gorman/Chair
KeysDems
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