Written by 1000 Friends of Florida and reprinted with permission
Updated: May 28, 2025
In the last scheduled week of this year’s session of the Florida Legislature, members passed Senate Bill 180, a measure that sponsors promised would improve emergency management and disaster recovery following the three hurricanes that struck the state in 2024. But SB 180 includes a provision that would prevent any local government in Florida from adopting any amendment that could be deemed more “restrictive or burdensome” to its comprehensive plan along with its land development regulations and procedures. This sweeping, undefined provision would rule out any changes to local growth guidelines in Florida unless developers agree and sponsor the change. Local governments that exercise their planning authority without obtaining approval from developers would face lawsuits, and their taxpayers could be forced to cover developers’ legal costs.
This provision would apply retroactively from August 1, 2024, through October 1, 2027. So if SB 180 becomes law, much if not most local land-use planning in Florida will be suspended for three years. A similar 2023 law that applied to 11 counties has already been cited to prevent local governments in the region from adopting stronger environmental protections. SB 180 would also nullify local efforts to adopt land-use changes to promote greater community resilience, to protect lives, property and public dollars from future storms. It would doom more storm-vulnerable communities in Florida to a cycle of destruction. It would raise flood insurance costs for thousands of Floridians.
We had hoped Florida Senate and House leaders would use the opportunity created by the extension of the 2025 session to revisit and fix the fatal flaw in SB 180. But after more than three weeks into that extended session, leaders have not acted. Therefore, we have sent a letter to Governor DeSantis, calling on him to veto SB 180 and save community planning throughout Florida.
We urge Floridians to join us in this effort by signing this petition and calling or emailing the Governor’s office to underscore this veto message. We have offered some sample email language. Feel free to customize or use your own.