{"id":181249,"date":"2026-03-06T21:08:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T21:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/181249\/"},"modified":"2026-03-06T21:08:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T21:08:08","slug":"house-senate-proposed-budgets-defund-florida-forever-conservation-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/181249\/","title":{"rendered":"House, Senate proposed budgets defund ‘Florida Forever’ conservation program"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Hillsborough
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThe Hillsborough River in Hillsborough River State Park. By Se\u00e1n Kinane \/ WMNF News (Sept. 2008). <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tListen:<\/p>\n

The Florida legislature\u2019s proposed budgets are set to severely restrict, or even defund, Florida Forever, one of the state\u2019s land conservation programs.<\/p>\n

The House\u2019s proposed budget defunds the program entirely, and the Senate advocates allocating $35 million for easements only.<\/p>\n

Instead of Florida Forever, lawmakers are proposing millions to go towards the Rural and Family Lands Protection program.<\/p>\n

In that program, the state pays landowners to permanently preserve their agricultural land from development.<\/p>\n

But Craig Pittman, author and columnist<\/a>, emphasises it\u2019s not the same as Florida Forever.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a worthwhile program to preserve these farms from development, but the public doesn\u2019t really get a benefit from it. They don\u2019t get to go out there and hike and canoe and fish and bird watch and things that you normally do in state parks,\u201d Pittman said.<\/p>\n

Even the conservative group Florida Tax Watch raised concerns<\/a> about the Rural and Family Lands Protection programs, saying an \u201cescape clause\u201d allows landowners to develop protected land.<\/p>\n

Lawmakers passed bills<\/a> that increased transparency for that program.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got about a week, in other words, to call your legislator, call your state House member, your Florida senator and say, don\u2019t you dare do this. Don\u2019t you leave Florida hanging like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

The legislative session is supposed to end on March 13th, but lawmakers say the budget is likely not to be complete by then.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Hillsborough River in Hillsborough River State Park. By Se\u00e1n Kinane \/ WMNF News (Sept. 2008). Listen: The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":181250,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,3290,30,29],"class_list":["post-181249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-forever","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181249","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=181249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}