TALLAHASSEE \u2014 State legislators are discussing revisions to a new law that has drawn controversy and legal challenges because it blocks cities and counties from making changes to their growth plans.<\/p>\n
SB 180, approved in this year\u2019s session, was pitched as helping property owners rebuild after hurricanes, but land-use attorneys and the DeSantis administration have interpreted it much more broadly. In Orange County, it is the basis of challenges to the county\u2019s master development plan, Vision 2050, and its voter-approved regulations limiting growth on rural lands.<\/p>\n
In response, legislators \u2014 many of whom have expressed surprise at the more sweeping interpretation \u2014 have introduced bills to exempt certain regions of the state from the new rules.\u00a0 And on Monday, Senate Majority Leader Jim Boyd, R-Bradenton, said during a Manatee County legislative delegation meeting that he has talked with sponsors of the 2025 legislation and that \u201ctweaks\u201d are being discussed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know I could speak for them because I talked to them individually,\u201d Boyd, who is slated to become Senate president after the 2026 elections, said during the delegation meeting in Bradenton. \u201cWe said all along, if there\u2019s things we can tweak and we need to fix, we certainly will.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sen. Tom Leek, R-Ormond Beach, made similar comments Monday during a St. Johns County delegation meeting in St. Augustine.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t tell you what those changes are going to look like, finally, because, like I said, it\u2019s a collaborative process negotiated between the two chambers (the House and Senate),\u201d Leek said. \u201cBut there will be some changes to that bill, I fully expect. At least that\u2019s what I\u2019m pushing for.\u201d<\/p>\n
The limit on changes to growth plans was included in the wide-ranging bill that Gov. Ron DeSantis signed on June 26. Numerous cities and counties, including Orange County, and the growth-management group 1000 Friends of Florida have filed two lawsuits in Leon County circuit court challenging the constitutionality of the part of the law dealing with growth plans.<\/p>\n
The city of Ocoee has also filed a case at the state Division of Administrative Hearings after the Florida Department of Commerce rejected the city\u2019s revised comprehensive plan because of the law.<\/p>\n
During delegation meetings across the state in advance of the 2026 legislative session, residents and local officials have criticized the part of the law that has essentially frozen local land-development regulations and comprehensive plans through Oct. 1, 2027. That part of the law was made retroactive to Aug. 1, 2024.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, in Manatee County, our board of county commissioners cannot do what we the people elected them to do. Why? Because of the vague language contained in SB 180. It\u2019s an easy fix,\u201d Kevin Wright, representing the Manatee County Republican Liberty Caucus, told the Manatee County delegation.<\/p>\n
The overall bill included a series of measures aimed at helping the state recover from three hurricanes that made landfall in 2025. For example, it required local governments each year to set in advance at least one debris-management site; to develop plans for businesses and homeowners about post-storm permitting processes; to establish what are known as mutual-aid agreements to bring in help from elsewhere; and to set plans for staffing after storms.<\/p>\n
But broad language in the bill has been read to limit land-use regulations far beyond those that actually apply to hurricane recovery. All 67 of Florida\u2019s counties were listed in at least one of the three hurricane disaster declarations.<\/p>\n
DeSantis has defended signing the bill, saying the \u201cthe core issue\u201d for him was to ensure people whose homes were damaged by hurricanes could rebuild without government interference.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you have damage to your home and you go to rebuild it and to restore it to what it looked like the day before that storm hit, you should be permitted to do it,\u201d DeSantis said Sept. 3 during an appearance in Valrico. \u201cThe government cannot prevent you from doing that. And these local governments were not allowing that. They were being difficult. So we got a lot of complaints about that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Manatee County Commission Chairman George Kruse, whose county is part of one of the lawsuits filed in Leon County, expressed support for amending the law.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do not want to see Senate Bill 180 go away. It\u2019s a great bill,\u201d Kruse told lawmakers Monday. \u201cWe just want it tweaked so that the intent is actually implemented by the agencies. We have three branches of government, and your branch of government, I believe, passed a good, albeit unclear bill. We just need to make sure it\u2019s clarified so that other branches of the government are acting upon it to allow municipalities to have the home rule necessary for proper growth management.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, and Rep. Shane Abbott, R-DeFuniak Springs, have filed identical bills (SB 218 and HB 217) for the 2026 session that would carve out certain counties from the freeze on changing growth plans.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis (new) bill ensures that counties not affected by Hurricanes Debby, Helene, and Milton regain full local control overgrowth and development decisions,\u201d Abbott posted last week on Facebook. \u201cIt protects communities that were not impacted by Hurricanes Debby, Helene, or Milton from unnecessary restrictions so they can keep moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
The proposal would exempt from SB 180 most of the Panhandle west of Tallahassee, excluding the coastal Gulf and Franklin counties; Nassau County in the northeast corner of the state; and Monroe and Miami-Dade counties in South Florida.<\/p>\n
The 2026 session will begin Jan. 13.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TALLAHASSEE \u2014 State legislators are discussing revisions to a new law that has drawn controversy and legal challenges…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23970,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[28,29,114,266,115,139,141,140,99],"class_list":["post-23969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-florida","tag-florida-news","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23969","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=23969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}