Cities stand together in face of legislative assault on home rule

City officials on both sides of the Manatee River say they are seeing the strongest assault on home rule the Florida Legislature has taken in a decade. And 2007 and 2017 have a common denominator in Republican Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives Richard Corcoran.

Bradenton Vice Mayor Patrick Roff said it’s not likely a coincidence this year’s attack on home rule is being spearheaded by Corcoran because he was chief of staff for Marco Rubio, who was speaker of the House and leader of the last effort.

“I haven’t seen anything like this since then,” Roff said. “The Legislature went way too far in 2007 and the recession flowed in and we got killed. The Legislature realized too late that they shouldn’t have done all that. This is deja vu all over again under Corcoran, who was chief of staff under Rubio when this all happened the first time.”

Roff said some of the proposals coming out of Tallahasee are downright “crazy. But just because one legislator brings something up doesn’t mean it’s going anywhere. Some of what they are proposing would be devastating to a lot of cities, but especially in cities like ours that has a low tax rate.”

Roff is referring to the Legislature’s proposal to increase the size of homestead exemptions to the point that cities, in some scenarios, would cut property tax revenue substantially.

“For example, let’s say you have a house worth $75,000, you would get $50,000 in exemptions and pay taxes on $25,000,” Roff said. “When Senator Rubio did this, he had bigger plans and I believe Speaker Corcoran has bigger plans. As long as you get a headline, who gives a damn what happens.”

Palmetto Mayor Shirley Groover Bryant said the Legislature’s actions thus far are “upsetting to me in a lot of different ways. At that level, you would think they know better. The best government is the government closest to the people. It’s the people that local officials see at the grocery store. I’m really disappointed in some of our legislators.”

So are the Anna Maria Island mayors with Sen. Greg Steube leading yet another charge to take away local authority to regulate vacation rentals. Island residents say without local regulation, these type of “party houses” endanger their way of life.

Those concerns have fallen on largely deaf ears thus far, with a House version of Steube’s bill making it out of the Careers & Competition Subcommittee on a 9-6 vote on March 28. The bill now advances to the 30-member Commerce Committee, where it could face tougher opposition.

Bryant said this year’s attempt to push state mandates down the throats of local municipalities, “takes away local control. They are coming after us and this is really concerning.”

There are a lot of concerns with what’s being proposed, and for both cities, it’s the state’s proposal to do away with community redevelopment agencies over time. Bryant said for an old city like Palmetto, “We have issues that need (to be) addressed through the CRA funding. If they curtail that, it will hurt us.”

Roff doesn’t believe the proposal, as it is, will survive. The bill made it out of a House committee on a 9-6 vote.

“But when the speaker wants a bill, he wants it passed 15-0, and the Senate bill is nowhere near what the House is proposing. The Senate bill is more in line with the CRA’s mission of focusing on eliminating slum and blight,” Roff said.

Other bills include allowing the telecommunications industry to bypass city government and erect cellphone towers on public rights of way; eliminating the local business tax; and eliminating local construction permitting. Roff said the days preceding the Legislature’s session is always a little crazy and lawmakers can sometimes “chase a house fly with a .12 gauge. Everyone usually starts off panicking and then cooler heads prevail.”

Roff said it’s not untypical for the Florida Senate to “clean up the mess” the House makes every session and that would likely be the case this year. Roff also praised legislators representing Manatee County, “who have grown into power and know what our needs are.”

Bryant is taking a little more of a wait-and-see approach.

“It’s an amazing thing because we do have very good legislators and I’m at a loss how different ones have convinced them that you can do these things from a 1,000-foot view. It starts at the local area, the community. The public is not being well served. Our constituents want to know that we are in position to help them. If everything we try to do to make that happen is removed from our authority, it’s not going to be good for the citizens.”

This story was originally published March 31, 2017 at 10:53 AM with the headline "Cities stand together in face of legislative assault on home rule."