BILL SUMMARY DETAILS

CS/HJR 7017 (Buchanan) proposes an amendment to the constitution to authorize the Legislature to require an annual adjustment to the value of certain homestead exemptions. The constitutional amendment must be approved by at least 60% of electors at the November 2024 general election and will take effect on January 1, 2025. CS/HB HJR 7017 was amended to clarify that the annual inflation adjustment to the $25,000 exemption on assessed value for all levies, other than school district levies, and any future similar exemptions added to the constitution must be adjusted only when the inflation growth is positive. CS/HJR 7017 passed the House (86-29) and the Senate (25-15) and is headed to the Secretary of State’s Office to be prepared for the November ballot. (Chapman)

CS/HB 479 (Robinson, W.) and CS/SB 688 (Martin) revise and provide additional guidance concerning the use of mobility plans and the collection of mobility fees. The bills provide definitions for “mobility fee” and “mobility plan” to be used within the Community Planning Act. The bills prohibit local governments from charging for transportation impacts if they are not the local government that is issuing a building permit, require that local governments collect for extra-jurisdictional impacts if they are issuing building permits and prohibit local governments from assessing multiple charges for the same transportation impact. Concerning impact fees, the bills provide that local governments adopting and collecting impact fees by ordinance or resolution must use localized data available within the previous 12 months of adoption for the local government’s calculation of impact fees. Both bills were amended to clarify the provisions of the bill only apply to scenarios where both a county and a municipality charge an overlapping transportation-related impact fee or mobility fee. Only these cities and counties would be required to execute an interlocal agreement to address the extra-jurisdictional impacts of new development by October 2025, or face a reduction in fees and additional administrative requirements. The amendment clarified the study required to increase an impact fee use only recent data generated within the last four years. The bills also clarify that developers must meet all local regulations before being permitted to proceed with development. CS/HB 479 passed the House (115-0) and the Senate (39-1) and is awaiting action by the Governor. (Cruz)

SB 192 (Garcia, I.) – Anchoring of Vessels in Anchoring Limitation Areas (Biscayne Bay)

SB 452 (Burton) and HB 451 (Bell) – Land Acquisition Trust Fund (Heartland Headwaters)

HB 437 (Porras) – Anchoring Limitation Areas (Biscayne Bay)

SB 484 (Bradley) and HB 1049 (Hunchofsky) – Flood Disclosure in the Sale of Real Property

SB 566 (Rodriguez) – Land Acquisition Trust Fund (Florida Keys)

HB 815 (Smith) and SB 998 (Collins) – Liquified Petroleum Gas

HB 1075 (Truenow) and SB 1772 (Collins)  – Soil and Water Conservation Districts

SB 1136 (Trumbull) and HB 1163 (McClain) – Regulation of Water Resources/Water Well Contractors

SB 1210 (Martin) – Estero Bay Aquatic Preserve

HB 1119 (Antone) and SB 38 (Stewart) – Flood Zone Disclosures for Dwelling Units

HB 1311 (LaMarca) and SB 1754 (Pizzo) – Office of the Blue Economy

SB 1756 (Pizzo) – Blue Economy Evaluation

HB 1565 (Grant) and SB 1360 (Gruters) – Florida Red Tide Mitigation and Technology Development Initiative

HB 1411 (Cross) – Shore Protection

HB 1493 (Altman) and SB 1718 (Collins) prohibit the construction, operation or expansion of wind energy facilities and offshore wind energy facilities in the state. (O’Hara)

SB 1538 (Torres) requires state parks to have a certified lifeguard at designated swimming areas within state parks. In addition, the bill requires “police vehicles” to be equipped with a rescue buoy for a water safety incident and requires the staffing for each shift at a fire department to include at least one firefighter who is certified in rescue diving and who is not a captain or battalion chief. (O’Hara)

SB 708 (Burton) and HB 825 (Koster) revise the timeframe within which an excavator is required to provide information through the free-access notification system established by Sunshine State One-Call Florida, Inc., before beginning certain excavation or demolition activities. In addition, the bills revise the timeframes during which member operators who receive such notifications are required to mark the horizontal route of an underground facility and provide a positive response to the system. (O’Hara)

SB 122 (Stewart) repeals a state law preemption of local government regulation of tree pruning, trimming or removal on residential property. (O’Hara)

SB 1620 (Collins) requires the state Acquisition and Restoration Council to determine whether any lands surplused by a local government are within a Florida Wildlife Corridor opportunity area. It prohibits further development rights from being attached to such lands that are determined to be within the Corridor opportunity area. The bill authorizes the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to surplus state-owned conservation lands without development rights within the Corridor and provides a disposition process for such lands. The bill requires water management districts to determine whether surplus district lands are within the Corridor opportunity area. (O’Hara)

SB 406 (Rodriguez) requires that stormwater management systems be designed with side slope horizontal-to-vertical ratio of 4:1 or an equivalent substitute. The bill supersedes all other side slope rules adopted by the Department of Environmental Protection, water management districts or delegated local programs. (O’Hara)

SB 1546 (Stewart) and HB 1533 (Plakon) require the Department of Environmental Protection to adopt rules for a statewide maximum contaminant level for 1,4-dioxane. The rules must require a public water system, by January 2025, to test all of the system’s groundwater wells for dioxane. If dioxane is detected at levels greater than the statewide standard, the public water system must develop and submit to the Department a mitigation plan to bring the dioxane levels to state standards and comply with such standards within five years after the rules are adopted. The system must retest for dioxane at frequencies determined by the Department and make the mitigation plan and testing results available to the public. If testing does not detect levels of dioxane exceeding the state standard, a public water system must make the testing results available to the public and must retest for dioxane within five years. In addition, the bills require the Department to provide financial assistance under the drinking water state revolving loan fund to public water systems necessary to help reduce the system’s costs to update system infrastructure to meet the new standards. (O’Hara)

SB 144 (Berman) and HB 193 (Eskamani) amend multiple provisions of law relating to renewable energy. The bills prohibit the drilling, exploration for or the production of oil, gas or other petroleum products on the lands and waters of the state. The bills provide that by 2050, 100% of the electricity used in the state will be generated from 100% renewable energy and that by 2051, the state will have net zero carbon emissions. The bills direct the Office of Energy within the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services to coordinate with state, regional and local entities to develop a unified statewide renewable energy plan. (O’Hara)

CS/SB 298 (Polsky) authorizes the Department of Environmental Protection to provide grants to coastal counties for saltwater intrusion vulnerability assessments that analyze the effects of saltwater intrusion on a county's water supply, water utility infrastructure, wellfield protection and freshwater supply management. The bill requires the Department to update its comprehensive statewide flood vulnerability and sea level rise data set to include information received from the county saltwater intrusion vulnerability assessments. The bill directs the Department to provide 50% cost-share funding to counties, up to $250,000, for each grant, and exempt counties with a population of 50,000 or less from the cost-share requirement. In addition, the bill includes provisions relating to the Department of Environmental Protection’s approval of a coastal county or municipality’s establishment of coastal construction zoning and building codes in lieu of the Department’s requirements. The bill authorizes a city or county to establish its own requirements if the local government’s coastal zones and codes were approved in writing by the Department on or before December 1, 2023. (O'Hara)

CS/HB 165 (Gossett-Seidman) and CS/SB 338 (Berman) requires the Department of Health to adopt and enforce certain rules and issue health advisories for beach waters and public bathing places if the results of bacteriological water sampling at the site fail to meet health standards. The bill also expands the current law preemption of the issuance of health advisories related to bacteriological sampling of beach waters to include public bathing places. The bill specifies that beach waters and public bathing places must close if closure is necessary to protect health and safety and must remain closed until the water quality is restored in accordance with the Department's standards. The bill requires the Department to adopt by rule specifications for signage that must be used when it issues a health advisory against swimming in affected beach waters or public bathing places due to elevated levels of specified bacteria and requires such signage to be placed at beach access points and access points to public bathing places until the health advisory is removed. The bill specifies that municipalities and counties are responsible for posting and maintaining the signage around beaches and public bathing places they own. (O'Hara)

SB 480 (DiCeglie) and HB 683 (Yeager) authorize an investor-owned utility to recover, through an appropriate cost-recovery mechanism administered by the Public Service Commission, prudently incurred renewable natural gas infrastructure project costs. The bill revises the required contents of a basin management action plan for an Outstanding Florida Spring to include identification of water quality improvement projects that can also produce and capture renewable natural gas through anaerobic digestion or other similar technologies at wastewater treatment plants, livestock farms, food production facilities and organic waste management operations. It encourages municipalities and counties to develop regional solutions to the processing, capture and reuse or sale of renewable natural gas from landfills and wastewater treatment facilities. Finally, it authorizes the Department of Agriculture to expand any “farm-to-fuel” initiative to address the production and capture of renewable natural gas. SB 480 passed the Senate (35-2) and is awaiting action by the House. (O’Hara)

SB 1330 (Calatayud) creates a process for establishing resilience districts in Florida to support local governments’ efforts to mitigate the risk of sea-level rise and increased flooding. The bill defines several relevant terms to support the formation of these citizen-initiated financing districts that are intended to address infrastructure and resilience problems. The bill sets boundaries for resilience districts, defines their acceptable uses, and includes provisions for project management fees. If a local government acts as project manager for a resilience district, the bill authorizes the local government to receive a project management fee of up to 5% of the total cost of design and construction. The bill establishes conditions for local government review and approval of a resilience district and imposes additional obligations on local governments that “inappropriately” deny a petition to establish a district. Additional obligations include but are not limited to a requirement that the local government fund and implement a proposed resiliency project instead of the district. If a proposed district is identical to or shares more than 90% of the geography of any existing special taxing district that serves a similar function, the bill requires dissolution of the special taxing district and reconstitution as a resilience district, with all existing funds serving the special taxing district transferred to the resilience district. Additionally, the bill prescribes the composition and responsibilities of district boards and establishes financial transparency measures. (O’Hara)

SB 602 (DiCeglie) and HB 321 (Chaney) revise the current law prohibiting the release of certain balloons. SB 602 deletes the specified timeframe and number of balloons subject to the prohibition, making the intentional release of any number of balloons over any timeframe a violation of state law. SB 602 also deletes the current law exemption from the prohibition for certain biodegradable or photodegradable balloons. Both bills provide that a person who violates the statutory prohibition commits the noncriminal infraction of littering, punishable as provided in Section 403.413(6)(a), Florida Statutes. HB 321 passed the House (114-1) and is awaiting action by the Senate. (O’Hara)

SB 698 (Rodriguez) requires the Department of Environmental Protection to review and periodically update its 2010 report and recommendations relating to the use of plastic bags and auxiliary containers. The bill establishes a pilot program for coastal municipalities to establish a pilot program to regulate single-use plastic products upon meeting specified conditions. (O’Hara).

SB 1126 (Martin) and HB 1641 (Yeager) preempt the regulation of auxiliary containers (reusable or single-use bags, cups, bottles or other packaging) and deletes a current law provision that requires the Department of Environmental Protection to review and update its 2010 report on retail bags and auxiliary containers. (O’Hara)

CS/SB 7040 (Environment and Natural Resources Committee) and CS/HB 7053 (Water Quality, Supply and Treatment Subcommittee) ratify the Department of Environmental Protection’s revisions to the stormwater rules within Chapter 62-330, Florida Administrative Code, with additional changes, including: (1) clarifying provisions relating to grandfathered projects; (2) providing that entities implementing stormwater best management practices also regulated under different provisions of law are not subject to duplicate inspections for the same practices; and (3) allowing alternative treatment standards for redevelopment projects in areas with impaired waters. CS/SB 7040 was amended to include additional grandfathering for projects for which a rezoning application was submitted before January 1, 2024, and development of regional impact projects was approved before January 1, 2024. CS/HB 7053 was amended to include additional grandfathering for stormwater management plans and designs included with a project associated with an application for site plan or subdivision plat approval submitted before January 1, 2024, as well as grandfathering for valid development of regional impact (DRI) projects with a development order approved prior to January 1, 2024, and grandfathering for planned unit development (PUD) projects with an approved final development plan prior to January 1, 2024. The DRI development order grandfathering provision terminates in 2044, and the PUD grandfathering provision terminates in 2034. CS/SB 7040 passed the Senate (37-0) and is awaiting action by the House. (O’Hara)

SB 7006 (Regulated Industries) and HB 7047 (Ethics, Elections and Open Government Subcommittee) extend the repeal date for the public records and public meetings exemptions relating to information technology security of local government utilities to October 2, 2027, which coincides with the repeal date for cybersecurity public records exemptions for all public agencies. In addition, the bills save from repeal the public record exemption related to customer meter-derived data and billing information. SB 7006 passed the Senate (39-0) and is awaiting action by the House. (O’Hara)