BILL SUMMARY DETAILS

SB 1628 (Collins) and HB 1547 (McClure) revise exemptions from the application of SB 170, relating to local ordinances and business impact estimates, passed in the 2023 Legislative Session. The bills eliminate exemptions for ordinances adopted pursuant to Section 163, Part II, except for development orders, permits and agreements. Consequently, ordinances adopting land development regulations, comprehensive plan amendments and zoning changes are no longer exempt from the ordinance suspension and business impact requirements in current law. In addition, the bills create new requirements on local government actions that affect a business involved in “identified sectors.” Identified sectors are specified as supply chain security (e.g., ports, rail and roads) and the production, distribution, or storage of food or energy. A “local government action” is defined as the adoption or amendment of an ordinance or charter provision, or the denial of any authorization. The bills require local governments to minimize or eliminate potential negative impacts that a local government action will have on an identified sector. The bills authorize a business engaged in an identified sector to request a review by the Department of Agriculture, the Public Service Commission and the Department of Transportation of any local government action that is “likely to negatively impact” an identified sector. The appropriate agency must issue an “impact review” of the local government action within 45 days of the request to the business and to the local government. The bills require a local government to suspend enforcement of the local government action until the appropriate agency issues the impact review and until the local government holds a public hearing to consider the impact review. The bills specify factors that an agency must consider in developing an impact review and provide that an impact review does not constitute agency action under the Administrative Procedure Act. Specified local government actions are exempt from agency impact review. These exemptions are the same as the exemptions from the local ordinance in SB 170 passed in the 2023 Session, except as amended to further restrict the land use exemptions. The bills authorize agencies to adopt rules of procedure for impact review of local government actions, including through emergency rulemaking. The bills require the Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability to issue a report to the Governor and Legislature by December 2025 on the implementation and effectiveness of the impact review of local government actions. Finally, the bills specify that the new requirements apply to ordinances and charter provisions adopted after October 1, 2024. (O’Hara)

HB 609 (Botana) and SB 1144 (DiCeglie) would repeal local governments' ability to levy a local business tax. (Chapman)

SB 1184 (Ingoglia) and CS/HB 1221 (McClain) are comprehensive bills relating to land use and development regulations. The bills amend various regulations relating to comprehensive plans. The bill would restrict optional elements of a comprehensive plan from containing a policy restricting density and intensity. The bills amend definitions of intensity, density, urban service area and urban sprawl to promote the construction of additional single-family, two-family and fee simple townhomes. The bills require local governments to adopt minimum lot sizes with single-family, two-family and fee simple townhouse zoning districts to accommodate the maximum density authorized in the comprehensive plan. The bills require local governments to adopt infill redevelopment regulations to administratively approve the development of infill single-family, two-family and fee simple townhouses. CS/HB 1221 also contains a provision that would requires the automatic rezoning of agricultural land for single family housing in certain circumstances. This provision is not found in SB 1184. CS/HB 1221 was significantly amended with a delete-all amendment in the House Local Administration, Federal Affairs and Special Districts subcommittee. Relevant to municipal operation, the amendment inserted a provision that preempts local regulation relating to the building of new self-storage facilities and removed provisions related to the rezoning of agricultural enclaves. (Cruz)

CS/HB 7019 (Buchanan) is the implementing bill for HJR 7017 if it is voter-approved and would require an annual adjustment to the value of certain homestead exemptions. The bill would require that the Legislature appropriate funds to offset reductions in ad valorem tax revenue experienced by fiscally constrained counties due to the annual positive inflation adjustment. (Chapman)

HJR 7015 (Buchanan) proposes an amendment to the constitution to authorize the Legislature to increase the maximum amount of the exemption on homestead property from a maximum amount of $25,000 to a maximum amount of $50,000, for homestead property with an assessed value greater than $50,000. 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. (Chapman)

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/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. (Chapman)

HB 479 (Robinson, W.) and 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. (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)

HB 165 (Gossett-Seidman) and 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. Finally, the bill requires the Department to develop an interagency database for reporting fecal indicator bacteria data and specify that fecal indicator bacteria relating to sampled beach waters and public bathing places must be published in the database within five business days after receipt of the data. (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. (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)