Rural Renaissance<\/a> plan creates opportunities to expand education, increase health care services and modernize commerce.<\/p>\n\u201cFlorida Agriculture matters and that\u2019s a fact,\u201d Albritton said.<\/p>\n
The comprehensive package is designed to create a modern-day renaissance in rural communities across Florida.<\/p>\n
The bill also invests in farm-to-market roads to support Florida\u2019s agricultural supply chain. Albritton said the legislation would link Florida farmers in rural areas with urban food bank distribution channels and expand food bank and pantry infrastructure statewide to enhance rural economies.<\/p>\n
The bill was killed in the House last year after budget negotiations between the chambers broke down in a record-long legislative session. Albritton is hoping the House will pass it this year.<\/p>\n
Sen. Corey Simon, who represents 12 rural counties across Florida\u2019s Panhandle and Big Bend, said quality of life in rural areas can be impacted by access to job opportunities, education and health care.<\/p>\n
\u201cRural Renaissance combines enhancements to the traditional infrastructure for schools and hospitals with innovations that drastically expand opportunities for education, commerce, and health care in rural Florida,\u201d Simon said. \u201cWe know commerce and capital are attracted to strong transportation infrastructure and robust public services, which will provide the chance for rural communities to prosper and grow while maintaining a time-honored way of life that has been highly sought after generation after generation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Florida Politics<\/p>\n
Terry Burroughs, Okeechobee County commissioner, said the bill would create opportunities for businesses that allow residents to work locally.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we create these opportunities like this bill has the ability to do, we start bringing in businesses that will allow the folks to stay at home, work in their own area, reduce travel time,\u201d Burroughs said. \u201cAnd I think it\u2019s a better benefit for the family.\u201d<\/p>\n
The $217.9 million package includes several major components:<\/p>\n
The bill modernizes support for fiscally-constrained counties by increasing the threshold from $5 million to $10 million in property tax revenue per mil. It also increases total distribution to these counties to at least $50 million per fiscal year.<\/p>\n
The legislation creates the Office of Rural Prosperity at the Department of Commerce to provide technical assistance to rural communities. It establishes Renaissance Grants, providing $1 million block grants for each of seven counties with declining populations.<\/p>\n
For transportation, the bill creates the Florida Arterial Road Modernization Program, redirecting $30 million from documentary stamp revenues to fund farm-to-market roads. It also doubles funding for the Small County Road Assistance Program.<\/p>\n
In education, the bill increases regional consortium funding per eligible member from $50,000 to $150,000 and creates a student loan repayment program for rural educators, providing up to $15,000 over five years.<\/p>\n
For health care, the bill creates grant programs to help establish primary care practices in rural areas and adds $25 million for rural hospital improvements, including mobile units and telemedicine kiosks.<\/p>\n
Gov. Ron DeSantis said last week he would sign the bill if it reached his desk.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s important for our state, it\u2019s important to the economy, it\u2019s important to the culture, it\u2019s important to a lot of different things,\u201d DeSantis said.<\/p>\n
Albritton said USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins plans to make the legislation a national model for creating a rural renaissance across the United States. Several provisions of Rural Renaissance are included in Florida\u2019s application for federal health care funding for rural communities made available through President Trump\u2019s One Big Beautiful Bill.<\/p>\n
The House has a similar bill, but it has not had a hearing yet.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 WCTV. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV\/Gray Florida Capital Bureau) – The Florida Senate passed sweeping reforms Wednesday afternoon aimed at providing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":118825,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[34055,59772,4218,1442,47944,740,1713,48011,12891,28,2161,6584,3741,6322,99,41235,34276,232,234,233,1798,15365],"class_list":["post-118824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-ag","tag-agricutulure","tag-ben-albritton","tag-cody-butler","tag-commerce","tag-economy","tag-farm","tag-farming","tag-fdacs","tag-florida","tag-government","tag-health-care","tag-infrastructure","tag-legislative-session","tag-politics","tag-rural","tag-rural-renaissance","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news","tag-transportation","tag-usda"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118824\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}