Last year, the state legislature passed Senate Bill (SB) 180, a bill that was aimed primarily at emergency response and hurricane recovery.
However, there were some included provisions (sections 18 and 28) that largely slipped under the radar. Both provisions introduced a chokehold on local government’s broader ability to implement any changes that could be considered “more restrictive or burdensome” to their comprehensive plans and land development codes, even in cases unrelated to building hurricane resilience or rebuilding post-storm. You can read more about that here.
There are multiple bills that have been introduced during the current, ongoing legislative session, aimed at fixing some of the problems introduced by SB 180, including the aforementioned damaging sections. However, the most promising is Senate Bill (SB) 840.
While not perfect, SB 840 introduces some positive changes to SB 180’s provisions. These include:
- Narrowing the scope of SB 180’s language to be more specific to hurricane recovery applications
- Removing the especially damaging and undefined “more restrictive or burdensome” phrasing from SB 180
- Redefining an “impacted local government” as listed within the federal register and within 50, rather than the original 100 miles, of a declared storm track
- Restoring home rule and the ability of local governments to forge ahead with the comprehensive planning and adoption process more generally, including building resilience, even if there are some restrictions on enforcement directly following storms
Please join us in urging the Senate to support SB 840 as the best vehicle to fix the problems caused by SB 180 and consider additional language improvements to:
- Amend SB 840 so it gives the multiple local governments whose comprehensive planning amendments have been nullified or rejected due to SB 180, a pathway for reconsideration at the state level
We also need your help in reaching out to your Representative, because there is no true House companion to SB 840. This means that even if this bill passes in the Senate, without both broad House support and a House companion bill, SB 840 might not make it over the finish line. The best solution on the House side is to ask your representative to support amending House Bill (HB) 217 so it mirrors the positive inclusions contained within SB 840 and also addresses the improvement specified above. We need your help in convincing the House to take up additional important work of addressing SB 180’s most significant shortcomings.