It died on calendar this legislative session. But Sen. Greg Steube plans to revisit vacation rental bill next year

Florida cities will be able to maintain their local control of regulating vacation rentals — at least for another year.

A vacation rentals bill working its way through the Florida Legislature died on calendar, but Sen. Greg Steube, R-Sarasota, said Wednesday he plans to pursue it again next year.

Steube said he will keep pushing the legislation until it is successful.

“I think there are some things that we can do to tweak the language and make it less volatile to local governments,” Steube said.

Anna Maria Mayor Dan Murphy said Wednesday he’s “very pleased that Sen. Steube’s attempts to erode home rule failed on the Senate floor last Friday night.”

“Local issues are best addressed by local residents and governments and not by meeting the demands from out of state mega-businesses or by big government in Tallahassee,” Murphy said.

Controversial bills such as Senate Bill 188 sometimes take several years to pass, Steube said, noting it did make progress through the session.

“That’s pretty impressive at your first stab in trying to get something like that accomplished,” he said.

During the session, Steube’s bill was amended. An amendment by Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-Pinellas, would have allowed cities to keep their existing regulations intact. But it added provisions that if they wanted to be less restrictive, they could be, and if the vacation rental was owned by an active-duty service member or disabled veteran, the local regulatory burdens would be reduced.

“There were several amendments that were filed on the floor so you are going to spend a significant amount of time trying to vet those issues out,” Steube said.

Anna Maria resident Ruth Uecker, who traveled to Tallahasee to speak out against the bill, said they may have won the battle but they haven’t won the war.

“We all feel it’s going to come back at us again,” she said. “We need to be ready. We need to take a look at what has happened, dissect it if you will, and look at all the facts.”

Uecker said the island cities need to collectively “come up with a good strategy of how we are going to defend our home rule when this thing does come back to us.”

“It is an issue that is going to affect all of us,” she said.

Holmes Beach Mayor Bob Johnson said they will “absolutely” continue the fight in opposition.

“We still have a fight on our hand here in Florida with regard to home rule,” he said.

In the meantime, Bradenton Beach Mayor Bill Shearon said this will allow Bradenton Beach to proceed with implementing regulations.

“This will allow Bradenton Beach, because we really haven’t had a rental ordinance and we’ve been working on it for over a year with our planning and zoning board, and now we can move forward with some regulations to help the citizens and address this issue,” he said. “I believe that message was sent that our home rule authority is a concern, and I guess we will have to address that in the next session.”

This story was originally published May 10, 2017 at 3:40 PM with the headline "It died on calendar this legislative session. But Sen. Greg Steube plans to revisit vacation rental bill next year."