1000 Friends of Florida reports on successes and failures during legislative session

1000 Friends of Florida
A letter by Paul Owens, president
March 16, 2022

1000 Friends’ legislative team – Paul Owens, Jane West, Haley Busch, and Vivian Young – tracked more than 100 bills this session, testifying before the Legislature, working with key legislators and the media, sending email alerts, and more. Your calls and emails helped make a difference!

We encourage you to visit our 2022 Legislative Session webpage and sign up for our free 2022 Legislative Wrap Up Webinar for more information on what passed and failed. Legislation and budget items that passed must still go to Gov. DeSantis for his consideration.

In the meantime, here are some highlights:

Spending and bills we supported that passed the House & Senate

With help from federal stimulus dollars, and thanks to your calls and emails, legislators made significant investments in priority initiatives, with some caveats:

Land Conservation – More than $450 million was allocated, including $100 million for Florida Forever and $300 million for the Rural and Family Lands Protection Program, but none for Florida Communities Trust, which is used to acquire land for parks.
Affordable Housing – Thanks to calls from supporters, legislators increased affordable housing funding to $362 million, which exceeded initial spending proposals from the Governor and both chambers. However, a new $100 million program to provide homeownership assistance for first responders, nurses, teachers and other hometown heroes was created at the expense of traditional funding for rental assistance to low- and very-low-income Floridians.
Community Resilience – The Legislature budgeted almost $500 million for community resilience programs and passed legislation to make permanent a state resilience office, authorize local land authorities to administer grants for residential flood and sea-level rise mitigation projects, and require annual reports on the impact of sea-level rise on flood control infrastructure in Central and South Florida. While we supported each of these measures to help Florida’s communities address existing challenges, they are only part of the answer. More is needed to also address the causes of climate change.

Bills we opposed that died

We helped lead the opposition to several damaging bills that ultimately failed. Your advocacy played a key role:

Seagrass Mitigation — Once considered a cinch to pass, SB 198/HB 349 would have permitted more options to destroy already declining seagrass.
Business Impact Statements – SB 280/HB 403 would have mandated that local governments draft business impact statements on many local ordinances before they could be passed.
Impact Fees – SB 1030/HB 681 would have weakened impact fees by allowing them to be expanded from a development area to an entire municipality or county.
Public Transportation – SB 398/HB 157 would have placed an arbitrary cap on state spending on public transportation projects.

Objectionable measures that were improved before passage

A bill making local governments liable for businesses’ lost profits (SB 620) passed, but was narrowed in its scope amid our outspoken opposition, delivered in testimony, a Tampa Bay Times op-ed, and many calls and emails from you. Despite the improvements, 1000 Friends will be sending a veto request to Gov. DeSantis.

We also helped secure improvements to the following legislation:

School Concurrency – SB 706/HB 851 would have required local governments that adopt school concurrency to apply such concurrency to development on a districtwide basis. The bills were amended to drop the districtwide approach to school concurrency. Provisions related to the timing of payment by the developer did pass.
Mixed-Use Residential Developments with Affordable Housing – SB 962/HB 981 would allow mixed-use developments to be approved by local governments on any parcel zoned for commercial or industrial use if a portion of the project includes affordable housing. Both bills were amended to require the residential components of developments to include at least 10 percent affordable housing to qualify.
Nutrient Application Rates – SB 1000/HB 1291 would amend agricultural fertilizer regulations to define “certified professionals” and “rate tailoring” to allow producers to pick and choose different nutrient application rates. Both the House and Senate versions were amended to narrow the scope of the site-specific nutrient management through rate tailoring to citrus farmers.

Looking forward

While some funding and legislation helped address issues facing our communities today, Florida needs much bolder and visionary solutions that tackle the causes of problems facing our state, not just the symptoms.

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Donna Cay Tharpe
Donna Cay Tharpe (@guest_64263)
2 years ago

I “love” the way 1000 Friends and other pro-environment groups congratulate themselves on being on the correct side if legislative and other issues. However, engaging in greater, more intense direct action/activism on behalf of the environment might be time better spent. Figure out a way to involve Florida citizens in this effort–we want to HELP, not just nod our heads in agreement.