As the end of this year’s legislative session quickly approaches, local leaders and growth planning advocates are urging state lawmakers to make good on their promise to fix a new law causing major challenges for counties and cities across Florida.
Since taking effect back in June, Senate Bill 180 has blocked local governments from enacting a wide range of policies to enhance flooding protection, affordable housing, wildlife habitat and more.
The law began as an emergency management bill, aimed at ensuring communities can rebuild quickly after a natural disaster. But towards the end of last year’s legislative session, more language was added to the bill, effectively restricting local governments’ home rule power or their ability to self-govern.
The law bars local governments from making any “more restrictive or burdensome” changes to their comprehensive plans and development codes — without defining what that clause means. The result is an open door for anyone, Florida resident or not, to sue to nullify changes they perceive as “more restrictive or burdensome,” land use attorney Richard Grosso said at a virtual press conference Wednesday.
“We have left local governments pretty powerless to protect their citizens when it comes to flooding, pollution, hurricane impacts, affordable housing,” Grosso said. “And that's the huge problem with this bill. It needs to be fixed.”
The law blocks local governments from adopting “more restrictive or burdensome” planning measures until at least 2027. It also applies retroactively, affecting planning measures adopted as of Aug. 1, 2024.
In Orange County, SB 180 has blocked the county from implementing Vision 2050, its brand-new comprehensive plan aimed at promoting more sustainable growth. In Volusia County, the law complicates efforts to enhance flooding protection for communities in desperate need of it, like Deltona and Edgewater. And in Manatee County, the law is preventing wetland buffers from being replaced after they were flooded out by Hurricane Debby.
RELATED: State says Orange County’s Vision 2050 is ‘null and void’
Manatee County Commissioner George Kruse said elected, local officials are best-equipped to manage their communities’ “inevitable growth” in a thoughtful, sensible way. “This bill is preventing us from doing that,” he said.
“All we can do is give the density; we can't take away the sprawl. And that's not sensible growth,” Kruse said. “That's not the intent of how the constitution's written, in terms of growth management at the local level.”
Manatee and Orange counties are both part of a consortium of local governments that is, together with 1000 Friends of Florida, waging a legal challenge against the state law.
“Other counties were asked to hold back (on joining the lawsuit), because it (SB 180) was going to be fixed this session. And now we're kind of having the rug pulled out from under us,” Kruse said.
Lawmakers have said for months that, during this legislative session, they’d resolve some of the key issues with SB 180. But now, with just over two weeks still left in the session, the future of that promise remains unclear.
One proposal has cleared the Senate, but no companion bill for Senate Bill 840 has advanced yet in the House. Local leaders and advocates with 1000 Friends are sounding the alarm.
“Unfortunately, the House has failed to take any action on the bills that were introduced in that chamber, so there's no companion to Senate Bill 840 at this time,” said Policy and Planning Director Kim Dinkins. “However, they could take that bill up, now that it's been sent over from the Senate … by assigning it to at least one committee there, and making sure that it's heard.”
“Most committees will be done this week, though, so time is of the essence for the House to refer the bill,” Dinkins said. “And we would ask for Floridians to contact their representatives to demand that they take up the bill.”
While not a perfect solution, SB 840 provides “some relief” from SB 180’s most restrictive elements, Dinkins said.
For example, the proposal narrows the definition of affected local governments, from within 100 miles of a storm’s track to 50 miles. It also shortens SB 180’s retroactive prohibitions. Currently, the law affects plans adopted from August 2024 to October 2027; SB 840 shortens that timeframe to end in June of this year.
“While we would prefer to completely eliminate the retroactive portion of Senate Bill 180, which is impacting these local governments now, we appreciate that the focus on Senate Bill 180 is on storm damage in the prospective portion, which is what supporters of the law last year said it was intended to do,” Dinkins said.
Grosso described retroactive laws affecting land use and planning decisions as “pretty uncommon.”
“Generally, laws apply prospectively, for obvious reasons. People have based their decisions on the existing state of things; have expended millions of dollars and years worth of effort based on what was legal at the time,” Grosso said. “It's pretty extraordinary that a law comes and just undoes that, retroactively.”
For small local governments that can’t afford to defend themselves in court, SB 180 is creating a chilling effect. Deltona is one example, having recently settled in a lawsuit from a condo developer.
“That settlement cost our residents over $3 million,” said Commissioner Dori Howington.
Now, when it comes to addressing residents’ flooding concerns, the city’s hands are largely tied, Howington said.
“They're wanting us to continue with community resilience. They want us to update our land development codes. We have problems with flooding here in Deltona,” Howington said. “And we can't do that, because that bill took our rights away.”
RELATED: Deltona backs out of lawsuit challenging Senate Bill 180
Orange County Commissioner Kelly Martinez Semrad said, while she supports passing SB 840 — what she and others called “the glitch bill” — it’s no silver bullet for solving Florida’s larger growth issues.
“Does the glitch bill fix most of it? Yeah, it fixes most of it, but that glitch bill is only as good as politicians are going to honor the fix,” Martinez Semrad said.
Martinez Semrad urged voters to “be attentive.”
“The state of Florida is under attack by irresponsible growth management that is being facilitated by developers, and politicians who have sold out to those developers,” she said.
Grosso echoed Martinez Semrad’s concern, saying SB 180 gives far too much power to developers.
“People are fed up with overdevelopment in this state. This law only makes that worse, by allowing developers to pick and choose the things they'd like to see changed in local government comprehensive plans,” Grosso said.
Any fix for SB 180 would likely need to be advanced by the House Committee on State Affairs, Kruse said Wednesday. That committee is slated to meet at 8 a.m. on Thursday. But as of 3 p.m. Wednesday, SB 840 didn’t appear on the committee’s Thursday schedule.
The legislative session ends March 13.
