BILL SUMMARY DETAILS

SB 198 (Rodriguez) authorizes the Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvement Trust Fund to establish seagrass mitigation banks under certain conditions. (O'Hara)

HB 303 (Truenow) and SB 608 (Brodeur) authorize counties and municipalities to access sanitary sewer laterals within their jurisdiction to investigate, repair or replace the lateral. A sanitary sewer lateral is a privately-owned pipeline connecting a property to the main sewer line. The bills require municipalities and counties to notify private property owners within a specified timeframe if the government intends to access the owner's sanitary sewer lateral and an anticipated timeframe for the work. The bills specify that local governments who establish sanitary sewer lateral programs are legally and financially responsible for all work that is performed and authorize such programs to use specified state or local funds to evaluate and rehabilitate impaired laterals. (O'Hara)

SB 1238 (Polsky) requires coastal counties to conduct vulnerability assessments that analyze the effects of saltwater intrusion on their water supplies. The assessments must be conducted by September 2022. The bill requires each coastal county to provide copies of its assessment to the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the respective water management districts. The bill requires water management districts, in collaboration with coastal counties, to submit annually to DEP a list of proposed projects based on the assessments. (O'Hara)

HB 101 (Fine) and SB 228 (Rodriguez) amend current law relating to Property Assessed Clean Energy programs, whereby local governments, alone or in partnership with a program administrator, may finance qualifying improvements on residential property relating to energy conservation and efficiency or renewable energy. The program is renamed the "Resiliency Energy Environment Florida Program." The bills expand the program to include nonresidential real property, including government leased property. The bills impose various requirements on a program administrator to reasonably determine a property owner has the ability to pay the estimated annual assessment. The bills impose obligations on a program administrator before it may enter a contract for a residential property, such as providing a financing estimate and specified disclosures to the owner. The bills require additional obligations on administrators relating to contractors, such as confirming the contractor has performed the applicable work or service before disbursing funds to the contractor. The bills also impose specified marketing and communications guidelines on PACE administrators and contractors and impose additional monitoring and reporting requirements on administrators. (Hughes)

SB 518 (Brodeur) amends current law provisions that prohibit local governments from requiring permits for the removal of "dangerous" trees on residential property. The bill clarifies what constitutes residential property and clarifies the level of assessment and type of documentation that must be provided by an arborist or landscape architect under the law. (O'Hara)

SB 182 (Brandes) allows the owner of a business or a contracted third party to install, maintain and operate a renewable energy source device on or about the structure in which the business operates or on any property the business leases. The bill provides that the business owner or the third party may sell the electricity that is generated from the device to another business immediately adjacent to or within the same parcel as the business, and such sales shall not be considered or regulated as retail sales of electricity. The bill provides that if the energy-producing business or its customers require additional related services from a utility, such as backup generation capacity or transmission services, the utility may recover the full cost of providing those services. The bill authorizes a utility to enter a contract with a business to install, maintain or operate any type of renewable energy source device on or about the structure from which the business operates and to sell the electricity to an adjacent business and the bill provides that such electricity sales shall not be considered or regulated as retail sales of electricity. The bill specifies that if the Public Service Commission determines the level of reduction in electricity purchases by customers using renewable energy source devices is significant enough to adversely impact the rates that other customers pay in the rate territory, the Commission may approve a utility's requests to recover its costs of providing the electricity needed by all customers, including customers using a renewable energy source device. The bill provides for methodology of such cost recovery, a process for customers to challenge the cost recovery and authorized rulemaking by the Commission. The bill may have a negative fiscal impact on municipal revenues, including potential impacts to municipal electric franchise revenues and municipal public service utility taxes. (O'Hara)

HB 393 (Hinson) and SB 604 (Berman) require the Department of Health to adopt and enforce certain rules and issue health advisories for public bathing places if the results of bacteriological water sampling at the site fail to meet health standards. The bills require the Department to notify a municipality or county if a health advisory is issued against swimming in public bathing places and require the county or municipality to place signage around public bathing places warning of the bacterial contamination until such time the bacterial contamination is resolved. (O'Hara)

HB 6025 (Eskamani) and SB 316 (Stewart) repeal current law preempting specified local government regulations relating to tree pruning, trimming and removal on residential property. (O'Hara)

SB 320 (Stewart) and HB 6063 (Grieco) remove the current statutory preemption of local laws regarding the regulation of auxiliary containers, wrappings or disposable plastic bags. In addition, the bills remove the statutory preemption of local laws regarding the use or sale of polystyrene products to the Department of Agriculture. (O'Hara)

HB 6019 (Eskamani) repeals current law provisions preempting the regulation of over-the-counter proprietary drugs and cosmetics to the state. (O'Hara)

SB 7012 (Environment and Natural Resources Committee) creates a 15-member task force within the Department of Environmental Protection and specifies its members, which includes a representative from the Florida League of Cities. The bill directs the task force to develop recommendations for enforceable regulatory standards, a mechanism for identification and cleanup of contaminated areas, methods to address liability for contamination and responsibility for cleanup, appropriate methods and technologies for cleanup, funding sources for cleanup and remediation, methods to manage PFAS waste, appropriate testing for PFAS and methods to eliminate workforce exposure. It directs the task force to issue an annual report to the Governor and Legislature, beginning October 2023. (O'Hara)

SB 1024 (Bradley) and HB 741 (McClure) revise current law relating to net metering to avoid the consequence of ratepayers that do not use renewable energy sources from subsidizing electric service costs of other ratepayers who use net metering and renewable energy sources. The bills require the Public Service Commission to propose new net metering rules that will ensure that utility customers using renewable energy generation pay the full cost of electric service and are not subsidized by the utility's general body of ratepayers. The bills authorize certain customers who own or lease renewable generation before a specified date to remain under existing net metering rules for a 10-year period. (O'Hara)

SB 886 (Jones) and HB 515 (Robinson, F.) require a municipal water or sewer utility that serves customers in another recipient municipality using infrastructure located in the recipient municipality to charge consumers in the recipient municipality the same rates, fees and charges as it does the consumers inside its own municipal boundaries. (Branch)

HB 6003 (Eskamani) repeals provisions of current law prohibiting local governments from recognizing or granting certain legal rights to the natural environment or granting such rights relating to the natural environment to a person or political subdivision. (O'Hara)

SB 882 (Brodeur) and HB 761 (Truenow) require each water management district governing board, in cooperation with local governments, to develop a list of critical wetlands for acquisition using funds from the Land Acquisition Trust Fund. The bill specifies criteria the water management districts should consider in designating a wetland for inclusion on the list. (O'Hara)

HB 621 (Fine) and SB 1162 (Broxson) prohibit specified state agencies and water management districts from disbursing state funds (including grants) for local government infrastructure, water and resiliency projects if the local government transfers its utility revenues (other than the costs of administrative and support services under a cost allocation plan) for use in providing general government functions and services. (Branch)

SB 832 (Stewart) and HB 561 (Goff-Marcil) require onsite sewage treatment and disposal systems to be inspected once every five years and require the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to administer the inspection program and requirements. The bills also require DEP to assess the efficacy of projects listed within a basin management action plan having a total cost exceeding $1 million. (O'Hara)

SB 380 (Rodriguez) and HB 463 (Melo) prohibit state and regional agencies from adopting or enforcing state and regional programs to regulate greenhouse gas emissions without specific legislative authorization. (O'Hara)

SB 932 (Rodriguez, A.) and HB 729 (Aloupis) require comprehensive plans and plan amendments that apply to any land within, or within 2 miles of, the Everglades Protection Area to follow the state coordinated review process for state agency compliance review under Part II, Chapter 163, Florida Statutes. The bill also requires the Department of Environmental Protection to coordinate with the affected local governments on mitigation measures for plans or plan amendments that would impact Everglades restoration. (O'Hara)

SB 548 (Polsky) and HB 491 (Skidmore) address a variety of energy and renewable energy issues. It establishes a tax credit for electricity produced from a renewable energy source located on a farm operation and authorizes the state to lease manmade stormwater systems for floating solar energy systems. The bill requires the state to adopt rules for a renewable and energy efficiency portfolio standard. (O'Hara)