City won't join home rule lawsuit against State of Florida

In a 3-2 vote, the City Commission decided not to join other Florida municipalities in a lawsuit that will challenge the state constitutionally of parts of Senate Bill 180, now a state law that bars local governments from passing building moratoriums or tightening development regulations through Oct. 1 2027.

The debate Tuesday night was not over the merits of SB 180, also known as the “Emergencies” law. None of the commissioners had anything good to say about it, given that it voided the stormwater management regulations that the city put in place earlier in the year in response to damage from Hurricanes Ian and Milton. Some also view the law as overreach by the state into municipal matters.

The state’s summary of the law emphasizes empowering rapid hurricane recovery, but Jamie Cole, the lead litigator for the pending lawsuit, tells Beat that the law’s impacts are much broader. “The way it’s drafted, it prohibits a city from implementing any new land use regulations that hinder or are burdensome.” It does so retroactively to Aug. 1, 2024 and forward to Oct. 1 2027. Some critics view the law as turning hurricane damage into a windfall for developers.

Cole, an attorney with the firm of Weiss, Sorota, Helfman, Cole and Bierman, says he expects to file the suit around Sept. 20. As of Wednesday, 17 local governments had signed on to it.

The debate Tuesday amounted to a search for the best strategy for defeating the parts of the law the city finds disagreeable.

City Attorney Carrie Avallone began the discussion by defining the “quandary” for the commissioners. They could seek to amend the law through their contacts with state legislators, as Volusia County is attempting to do, or they could approve a resolution authorizing the city to join the lawsuit. Neighboring Edgewater had just joined, she noted, bringing the tally of municipalities on the suit to 15 Tuesday (the count rose to 17 on Wednesday) out of 411 towns and villages in the state. “It’s a little bewildering, you know, why the participation is so low,” Avallone pondered, according to the livestream of the meeting.

Commissioner Valli Perrine expressed frustration that the new law overrode the city’s stormwater management plan. “I would like to battle this, but do it by amendments, not a lawsuit,” she said. A lawsuit would produce acrimony with the state but might not produce results before Oct. 1, 2027, she said. “Why even burn those bridges in communications with others?”

Vice Mayor Lisa Martin cautioned against being swayed by how many cities have signed onto the suit at this point. “I believe the number of cities will continue to grow,” she said, “and we should be a leader.” She also questioned whether amendments to the law could gain traction or be effective even if one or more were adopted. “We tried through the League of Cities for months to get SB 180 thrown out,” she said. “The amendments that I have seen proposed actually allowed the most vulnerable to return to the position once again where they were the most vulnerable.”

Commissioner Jason McGuirk couldn’t see how state legislators would suddenly be agreeable to amendments. “We let them know in a hundred different ways that we had a problem with this, ‘Please don’t do this. Please hold it. Change the bill around, take some things out.’ And they did absolutely nothing and then they passed it.”

McGuirk was likely referring at least in part to a June 9 letter appealing to Gov. Ron DeSantis to veto the bill. In the letter, Avallone argued that the bill would raise flood insurance premiums for property owners and prevent the city from taking steps to break the cycle of rebuilding and flooding. “Enabling the property owners of these structures to continue to repair repetitive damage, only to flood again, is nonsensical,” she wrote.

DeSantis signed the bill into law on June 26 without changes.

The law struck another blow to home rule in the eyes of critics. “Our ability to govern our own city is going away dramatically, in ways that you people out there do not understand,” McGuirk said. “So now this Senate Bill 180 comes up, and the people who created the problem, drafted the problem, legislated the problem, committeed the problem, and ignored us, say ‘No, no, no, don't sue us. Let us let us figure this out later. We promise.’ I have zero confidence in the legislature to do that. So, I’m for the lawsuit.”

 Commissioner Brian Ashley said he was attempting to work matters out through a meeting he has scheduled for today with an aide to Florida State Rep. Chase Tramont. “If for some reason I have a meeting that is highly unsatisfactory, I would then be in favor of a lawsuit, but at this moment, I'm not,” he said.

Mayor Fred Cleveland said he was among those “incensed” by the loss of home rule represented by SB 180. He said that the state legislature’s “nearly unanimous” vote was “astounding” to him. “And so, am I angered? Without a doubt. Am I disappointed? Unbelievably so.”

But Cleveland said joining the suit would be a mistake. “I don't want us to be on the blacklist of those that get punished from one way or another, under the radar.” He said that in discussions with members of the Volusia County Council, he was advised that if the city or county were to sign on, “we will get punished as a county and as a city.” He added: “I don't like it, but it's human nature.”

Martin, the vice mayor, rejected that thinking. “I don't like the idea of backing down because we are being bullied and threatened.” She indicated that she does not support the proposed Volusia County amendment.  “As far as I can see, this just gives a license for the type of development to rock on without real concern for the ramifications for our residents, our businesses of our city. So, I don't like bullies and I don't like threats. I would go for the lawsuit.”

When the motion came to consider the resolution, Martin and McGuirk voted to authorize joining the suit. Ashley, Cleveland and Perrine voted against doing so.

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