Burdensomely Vague Intentions

A few weeks ago, as you all know, Governor DeSantis signed Senate Bill 180 into law. It is a great bill with one destructive section inserted to attack thoughtful growth management and home rule for all 67 counties and every individual city. I won’t go back into the specifics here as I’ve discussed it previously.

After posting my last Substack, I promised I’d be proactively working on reviewing SB180. So I did just that over our recess. These past few weeks, I’ve spoken with numerous counties, lobbyists, associations, and various elected representatives in Tallahassee. I’ve also went back and watched every single committee stop and floor session where SB180 or its companion, House Bill 1535, was discussed.

I’ve read articles and heard comments from counties and cities all over the State of Florida. This is out of control. The primary issue everyone is having is in making the determination of exactly what this bill even means. Is the destructive language pertaining to “burdensome” changes associated with storm-related damage or is it much, much more broadly associated with any and all changes?

This is a critically important determination considering all the threatened comprehensive plan changes that I’ve seen (rural boundaries, moratoriums, wetland buffers, impact fees, etc.) are exclusively pertaining to future development and growth rule changes and not past, existing storm-damage rules.

We need to determine what the legislature meant with this bill. I tried, but I honestly couldn’t get a clear answer from those who voted for it. I was told they may look to “fix” it next session, but no one could tell me how, and none of us are waiting until mid-2026 to see what, if anything, that fix looks like.

So, I dug in over recess to find their intent myself, straight from their own language and actions.

On March 18, in the House Natural Resources & Disasters Subcommittee, it was stated that this burdensome language was introduced to “avoid emotional lawmaking” by local elected officials. So that didn’t answer our question.

On April 9, the Florida Senate completely removed the entire burdensome section from their version of the bill due to its vagueness. They instead proposed that the Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability (OPAGGA) look into best practices for post-storm development and provide a report for the 2026 session. Seems like a reasonable way to handle something as serious as potentially stripping constitutional growth management authority and home rule from your constituents.

The following day, on April 10, in the House Transportation & Economic Development Budget Subcommittee, a member asked if defining this section as prohibiting any changes that “make anything harder on citizens to REBUILD” was a fair characterization. The sponsor agreed that it was a fair description of the intent.

On April 17, in the House State Affairs Committee, two Republican and one Democrat representative commented about the vagueness of the burdensome language and were told it would be worked on. It was not.

On April 29, after receiving the clean, approved SB180 from the Senate, the House made an amendment reinserting the “burdensome” section into the Senate bill. When asked to explain the amendment on the floor for the members who would be voting, it was solely described as “compromising to insert measures important to the House to reach a beautiful final point for the bill to be passed”. Period. Not a single mention of the actual language. Odd. Considering absolutely no House member would have voted No on the solid Senate version without this terrible amendment, I wonder what compromise was reached.

On May 2, the Senate ultimately passed the version of SB180 with the House language reinserted. In that session, numerous questions were raised about the burdensome language. Every answer given specifically referred to existing, damaged properties.

Prior to these votes, members in both chambers got professional analyses that laid out the facts of each bill. It would be reasonable to assume that these staff-generated analyses are (or should be) carefully crafted and verified by the sponsors to avoid any risk of giving false information and affecting a vote outcome with factually incorrect summaries misinterpreting their intent.

The Final Bill Analysis for HB1535 (and all prior summaries for the House), put the entire language regarding “burdensome” within a section titled “Rebuild and Repair”.

The House Analysis by “The Professional Staff of the Committee on Community Affairs” on April 29, the day of the House vote, only made one reference to the burdensome language. They defined it as: Prohibits moratoriums or burdensome regulations on REDEVELOPMENT by local governments within 100 miles of a hurricane storm track and by local governments affected by Hurricanes Debby, Helene, or Milton.

Additionally, as I mentioned previously on a radio show, this entire Senate Bill 180 was titled “An act related to Emergencies”. Section 6 of Article III of the Florida Constitution specifically states that: Every law shall embrace but one subject and matter properly connected herewith, and the subject shall be briefly expressed in the title.

Therefore, it could be reasonably argued that rules related to properties damaged during an Emergency fall under that title…but random preemptions of broad comprehensive plan changes clearly would not fit the constitutional requirements. I’m positive those elected in Tallahassee would know this constitutional rule and wouldn’t knowingly violate it.

So, after all that review, I can confidently surmise that the legislature clearly intends for the “burdensome” section to pertain exclusively to the redevelopment and repair of existing properties damaged during a storm. Therefore, comprehensive plan changes related to future growth and development would not be bound by the “more burdensome and restrictive” threshold.

But, as hard as I tried in my conversations, the State isn’t going to just rely on my opinion.

So, who is going to determine what local governments can and cannot do to protect our citizens and our growth management plans? Who is going to clarify this vague language (which itself brings up voidable concerns through the 14th Amendment regarding due process and arbitrary enforcement)?

Manatee County has already transmitted two heavily publicly-supported comprehensive plan changes to the State. We received not one, but FOUR, letters back from executive state agencies telling us we would violate SB180 (or SB250 - same language) if we finalized them.

Just so we’re clear and all on the same page:  four unelected bureaucrats from executive branch agencies took it upon themselves to render judicial opinions on legislative laws.

Florida Commerce said our proposal for replacement of our environmentally sensitive wetland buffers was “null and void” (their quotation marks, not mine). They literally stated that their comments “could form a basis for a challenge”. Southwest Florida Water Management District said they had no comments on the amendment, but also said their counsel determined it violated the statute. As did FDOT and the Department of Environmental Protection, who determined that the protection of the environment was secondary to the protection of SB180.

However, none of these agencies has any authority to opine on this. They are tasked with providing comments regarding adverse effects in areas under their purview. Even then, their comments are merely suggestions, not law.

Is there legal precedent for their lack of authority? Yes. In June 2024, the Supreme Court overturned Chevron Deference, which was a legal doctrine that required courts to defer to an agency's interpretation of a vague statute. Essentially, if a law was unclear on a specific point, and an agency made an interpretation, courts would typically defer to that interpretation.

Now, after Chevron was overturned, the courts exercise independent judgment in interpreting vague statutes rather than deferring to these agencies. This decision was made 6-3 by conservative judges and praised by the Republican Party and by anyone against over-regulation.

It was also praised by Harvard Law School graduate, Governor Ron DeSantis. He pointed out that if the bureaucracy acts against you, you have the right to challenge it in court. He didn’t want unelected experts, who cannot be held accountable at the ballot box, and are “quite frankly wrong about a lot of things”, to set the rules.

Don’t take my word for it, here’s a brief three-minute video laying out the Governor’s views of agencies setting the laws post-Chevron Deference.

Thank you, Governor DeSantis. I couldn’t have said it better myself!

We have three branches of government for a reason. The legislative branch makes the laws, the executive branch carries them out, but the judicial branch interprets them.

Too many counties and cities are being held hostage by poorly written, vague language in the destructive section of this legislative bill. The citizens of the State of Florida are tired of the preemptions and tired of losing control. The only way to get around Senate Bill 180 is to go through Senate Bill 180 and force the courts to set the case law and the precedent for our county and for our whole state.

Manatee County’s new Board of County Commissioners promised changes in how we manage our growth and our environment during the 2024 elections. We are going to honor those promises and continue moving forward with our plans - your plans - to reinstitute our wetland buffers, rescind Policy 2.1.2.8, update our comprehensive plan, and increase our impact fees to the maximum extent allowable.

If some developer wants to force us to spend your hard-earned tax dollars on legal fees to defend your rights against their frivolous lawsuits just so they can try to retain control and squeeze a few more dollars of profit out of another poorly-planned development, then that’s just what we’ll do.

If nothing else, I’m sure the lawsuit’s discovery phase about how this burdensomely vague language made it into SB180 in the first place will be worth the price of admission alone!

George Kruse is Chair of the Manatee County Commission and its District 7 commissioner. This article originally appeared on his Substack blog. Click here to subscribe.