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   Legislative Update Presentation by The Southern Group

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   Mike from The Southern Group provided a legislative update to Council covering the 2025 session, appropriations, and key bills affecting local government. He reported the Rio Drive Resiliency Project received $1,125,000 while the New Port Richey Elevated Storage Tank Improvements appropriation was vetoed by the Governor. He also reviewed property tax reform (HB1F) heading to the November ballot, sovereign immunity veto, DEI prohibitions, municipal utilities changes, local government spending requirements, and building permit reforms.

   🏢Florida Building Commission🏢League of Cities🏢Public Service Commission🏢The Southern Group👤Ben Albritton👤Daniel Perez👤Debbie👤Jay Trumbull👤Jennifer Kennedy👤Jim Boyd👤Mike👤Mike Rotunda👤Pete👤Representative Yeager👤Rob👤Sam Garrison👤Senator Hooper👤Tom Leek#$7,500 building permit threshold#2026-27 State Budget ($117.63B total; ~$1.6B vetoed)#Building Permits and Inspections legislation#Congressional Redistricting Special Session#DEI Prohibitions legislation#HB1F Property Tax Reform#Local Government Spending requirements#Manufactured homes zoning preemption#Municipal Utilities bill (25% cap on outside-city utility charges)#New Port Richey Elevated Storage Tank Improvements (vetoed)#Rio Drive Resiliency Project ($1,125,000 approved)#Sovereign Immunity legislation (vetoed by Governor)#Special Election for Senator Hooper's seat

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   [00:02:36] Actually failed. And it talks about how many amendments were filed too. So we always like to say it's probably good that only 237 bills passed. Right. It's not always good when so many bills get through and pass. So. That's like fewer than 13% of the bills passed. What was interesting this year, and rob and I talked about this up there as well a few times he remembers this. It was funny because we're sitting there during the committee weeks and a lot of bills weren't being filed. We're like, where are these all going to drop? I know they're coming at some time. And that's what really what happened, like just that week, the first week of session, a week before session, bam, they just, they started coming out like wildfire. Before that, there wasn't a whole lot actually going on. Let's go to the next slide. The one thing I failed to indicate in introducing mike is one of the real benefits of working with The Southern Group, which is, is the group that mike is with is they have just a myriad of resources available to them. We stay pretty connected in discussions with them and watch legislatively what's going on to determine if a bill might impact the city somehow. And they always. If mike doesn't have the answer, he certainly has someone on staff that does. And that's very helpful to us. And staying up to date on what's going on in tallahassee. Yeah. Thank you so much for that. Debbie. Yeah, we have we have quite a number of my partners and, and other lobbyists within my firm that were former state agency heads, you know, which is obviously a huge help for a county commissioner or county commissioner. Yeah. And former former legislators and speakers of the house, etcetera, etcetera. But having those connections with agencies is, is very beneficial as well. I might have to put my glasses on here. There we go. Okay. Let's talk a little bit about some of the special sessions. As you all know, we had a quite a few special sessions this past year. State budget ran over. The legislature did not finish, quote, on time. So they we had to extend that session from May 11th to 20 to May 2029. I get to spend a lot of. I got to spend a lot of extra time in tallahassee this year before and after session. They did congressional redistricting, as you all know, April 20th to 2024. Although those lines are a lot different than they previously were. And then they had that special session session. We'll talk about a little bit more later on. On [00:05:03] Property tax reform, the governor did call for a special session on a couple other items, but the house decided not to take those up, and that did not move forward. Okay. So let's talk about the approved budget this past year. He actually approved the 2020 627 budget. It was signed by the governor on June 29th. There was about 1.36% of that budget was actually vetoed as well. There was about 1.6 billion of veto. There's line item vetoes, which you'll see, a lot of which is over 800 million. But all the vetoes altogether were closer to 1.6 billion. And the actual budget itself at 117.63, that's a total state budget. When I say that total state budget number, that also means like back of the bill items, things like revert reappropriate numbers were actually put on that as well. The budget just from the session itself was about 114 billion, little over 114 billion. I was about to say. Next slide. I keep forgetting I have it. I always like to talk about our legislative leadership pipeline. As we know we have an amazing delegation here. Your delegation in particular is Representative Yeager and Senator Hooper. Senator Hooper didn't announce that he was going to retire and not finish his last two years. We're very grateful for both of them, and obviously very grateful for Senator Hooper for all the time he represented Pasco county. So without getting into the political side of things, there is a special election this year for Senator Hooper seat, and we will find out who our next state senator is in november. Leadership wise, outgoing speaker of the house and outgoing senate president Daniel Perez and speaker and then Ben Albritton in the senate. Senate president again, their their outgoing. So we will see this year, our speaker of the house will be Sam Garrison, which we have an extraordinary relationship. He's a great man and one of my great, very dear friends in the legislature love this man to death. He's just a just a good person. He used to be the mayor in palmetto, Florida, by the way, at one time too. So he has small city government behind him or that experience, a small city government. He's just he's just amazing. Jim Boyd will be the next senate president. And then locally, the next year, Jennifer Kennedy, she's from the polk county area. She'll be the speaker of the house and then Jay Trumbull. And then we can go down a little bit further. Mike Rotunda will be speaker. And then Tom Leek, all great people that down the line, they have to be reelected, really hold that position. Right? They do, they do. I mean, listen, I'm not saying things don't happen. Things don't change. But right now that's how the lineup is. So how it works. Basically, each freshman class, when they come in, they decide amongst themselves who the future speaker will be down the road for that class. So they don't wait until the year or the year before that. They decide who the speaker is going to be. The during that during those freshman class years, who the next speaker is. Same with the senate president. So again, if somebody decided to move on or whatever happened, they would have to obviously, amongst themselves, that class of legislators would have to vote amongst themselves again, who that person will be. We did see it happen quite a few years ago. There was somebody in orlando that was supposed to be speaker, and they did lose an election. So somebody else ended up being speaker. Okay, let's go into appropriations. Now. We had two appropriations that were in play. When I say that, it means Senator Hooper and Representative Yeager both sponsored those appropriations. They both got through the entire process of and were in the budget. And then when it came down to it, the governor did leave our new port richey rio drive resiliency project in for 1,125,000, which was our larger project, our larger number. And it did veto number two, which is the new port richey elevated storage tank improvements. So unfortunately, when things get vetoed, I think it's the first one you've actually had vetoed since I've been here. You know, he did veto quite a few projects that are kind of related to that in similarities when it came to things that were related to your your I can't think, no, no, your your utilities. Thank you. That's what I meant to say. Which the kind of maybe the feeling a little bit is, hey, they should be able to provide that funding. Yeah, yeah. Provide that funding themselves for that. But we're still very grateful obviously to our, our, our sponsors and to the governor for obviously getting that real drive resiliency project down. They knew how important it was to all of us and to the obviously city itself. And, you know, just talking about that process, I know we talked about it while we're up there. You know, it starts with our sponsors in the [00:10:04] Legislature and it goes through a process. So it has to go through that process. When it comes to those chairs and those committees, those appropriations committees as well. And then it goes all the way up to the appropriations chair, which this year was in the senate was hooper. And then it's going to then the final okay, is really going to be with the speaker and the senate president again, got all the way to the line, and then boom, it was one it was part of that large number that that got vetoed. And before we go to the next one. So we'll we'll talk, obviously, I'll work with debbie, rob and the team on next year's. But one of the things that's it's important to consider is what are the next speakers? What are the next senate presidents? What's the next governor's priority is going to be as well. So, you know, we work together obviously behind the scenes of of, you know, of some potential projects. And debbie works with her team and of what they feel that, you know, are good projects. But, you know, once it gets closer down there, I'll come back and have those conversations with debbie and rob and, and, and explain like, hey, listen, this is what I'm hearing. Their priorities are, these are things I'm hearing they don't like to see or they don't want to see, right? So we can have the best chances of getting these projects through in the future. All righty. So let's go in. We don't need to talk about the budget I just did. So let's talk about some top issues obviously for local government, not just new port richey, but across the board. So as we all know, 1fhb1F, which is property tax reform that was going to be on the ballot in november. I know we've all had some some communications on this and had these conversations. So basically what does this mean. It means that the the voters are going to be able to vote in the general election on if they would like or not like a first year, 150 additional $150,000 assessment that goes up to $250,000. Therefore, the year after, again, like I said, it will be on the ballot and that takes 60% to approve that ballot initiative. If it approved, it will go into effect. It's, you know, January 1st, 2027. So it'll it'll get you the it'll, it'll happen the first year. Something else that I think it's very important to realize too, is, is when we think about that number, we think about your, your, your, your, your residential homes. But there's also a part that would have an effect on your commercial properties as well. So the non in non homesteaded properties that right now it's that increase is limited to 5% a year. No sorry 10% a year. My apologies. 10% a year. That would go down to 5%. So when you're looking at some of your numbers and I know your team and your team's looking at these, and you've probably seen some of the numbers come out from like League of Cities and fac and things like that. And you may look at it and go, wow, wait, we're a similar sized city than these. And maybe they get hit harder or we get hurt, hit less or vice versa. Well, some of these cities or counties that have a lot of commercial properties, they may see a bigger hit because of that 10% going down to that 5%. If you look at Pasco county, for example, Pasco county is smaller than orange county. Pasco county is actually smaller right now than polk county. But the number that's coming out shows the effects on Pasco higher than orange county or a polk county because of those non homesteaded properties, whether it be residential or commercial. Any other question? I mean, I can I could really get into the weeds. Or if we feel we're good on this we got to wait till november. Yeah. Okay. I do have a question about the non homestead property assessment increase limit. So what they're saying is you can't just go and increase the non-homestead property to get your money back by more than 5% of what they were the previous previous. Correct. That's the the millage rate or the assessment itself. I mean that would be. No, that would be your that would be your. Let me make sure I'm answering this properly. So for example, yes, your assessed values, your assessed values. So the property property appraiser comes out. Here's your assessed value. But as you know save your homes is in play your homesteaded properties. It's kind of similar from the non homesteaded properties with a 10% cap. So that's a rule for the property appraiser really [00:15:04] Then not us. So on every individual property they won't be able to increase those values by more than 5%. This is correct. Yeah. So you know, you still you know, you know, you follow the property, you watch the trends. And obviously, you know, the I'm not saying you hope for this or anything, by the way, but that's typically how you may budget for it. You're budgeting for that up to 10% increase going forward. You're going to be able to budget for that cap of that 5%. They answer your question, sir. Again, kind of. Yeah, yeah. Okay. There's people out there that are saying that there's an additional provision or additional law that gives a tax break to the other to the commercial properties. The only thing in it is the homestead, but the reduction of the the reduction of the increase might be misinterpreted as being. You know, a reduction of their taxes, but it just limits the amount it can grow. Sounds like, which is good. This is correct. Yeah. That's a good way to put it. You know, there were some legislators who were out there saying, and don't try to pick up that tax by somewhere else. We want you to cut your budgets. And I know we have the 10% budget, you know, for counties to have to produce one just for discussions sake. But I never saw anything that required them to reduce it. They just put them through the pain of saying what it would be if you took 10% off of it. Yeah. So let me give you this language. This will help you to reduces the annual annual assessment growth cap on non non-homestead real property, commercial rent or second homes from 10% to 5% doesn't even limit our millage rate on that growth cap. We're up against a ten mil cap. That's what we have to work with. But okay. But they know we're not going to be the last straw to go that route. Not saying by any means the city was was looking to do this. But to answer your other question, there is nothing in this legislation that says that prohibits somebody from. If you have to have another additional msd or something like that, there's there's nothing that states that this legislation was getting to. Thank you. You know, originally there were schools were included, too, and schools were put out or pulled out. So it does not have an effect on your your school systems. There's no it does not affect the school levies, I should say. Okay. Sovereign immunity. I know this is something that debbie's also discussed with each one of you. That was something I know some folks were concerned about that was vetoed. That was the third year in a row and had been brought up in other sessions as well, but it hadn't got to the governor's desk. And this is the first time it got to the governor's desk and he vetoed it. And what he stated was that he had concerns about it having a negative impact on local governments. And he also made statements about maybe concerns for like frivolous lawsuits as well. So he decided to veto that, you know, that would have raised your per claim cap from 200,000 to 3000, the aggregate cap from 300,000 to 450. There were attempts in the beginning, you know, put that at 750 and a million. So it started off very high. That was on the house side. The senate was a lot lower. I didn't know if it was going to get through the senate, but it did. This year they came to this agreement, but then the governor vetoed it. Somebody asked me, well, many people asked me, do I think it's going to come back? It'll probably it'll come back. I'm sure. I'm sure they'll take another stab at it. Okay. Another bill. And these are things, you know, obviously we have a direct impact or could have had a direct impact. The dye prohibitions that prohibits counties and municipalities from adopting, maintaining or operating diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, and voiding any existing local ordinances, resolutions or policies that are related to dye. It also prohibits the the public use of funds that support any type of dei offices, officers or related activities. And actually, here's here's the big one, too. It it, it actually gives authority to the authorizes residents to bring civil action against non-compliant local governments. That could be injunctive relief, damages, recovery of costs, attorney costs, things like that. It also requires government contractors and companies granted any public funds to certify that those public funds will not be used for any d e related materials or activities going forward. [00:20:01] Municipal utilities. I know this is one of the bills that the button. Oh sorry sir. Oh thank you. There it is. Municipal utilities. I know this is something that your team was looking very closely at. You guys kind of. I don't if you want me to get in the weeds on this. But you know, we were so worried about we were worried about the, the, the number that you're able to charge outside people outside of the city limits that are utilizing your water utility. So it's at 25, it's basically 25% cap. You can't charge more than that. You guys are under that. We're right at it. You're right at it. We're at right at it, right at it. So if it had been 30 or 20, either way, it would have had a, you know, I don't want to say a positive impact. It could have had a if you want to consider that positive, it could have had that or more of a negative impact. But if it would have been like a 20 cap, you would have obviously had a revenue loss going forward. It also requires public meetings to be held as a condition, precedent to the effectiveness of new or extended agreements under which the municipality provides utility services and other municipalities or the unincorporated areas. You're also going to have to send certain information back to the Public Service Commission annually. So that's something new as well. And it directs the legislation, directs the psc to submit an annual report to the governor and the legislators of what they're getting from all the cities, municipalities, counties that have these private utilities, local government spending. Okay. So this is something that affects all cities and counties, and some of this actually affects constitutions as well. Where are things going forward that all the above will have to do is going to the city of new port richey, and all others are going to have to publish on their website. Every staff member's salary going forward. I know it's public record now, but that's being required to publish that data online for everybody. So going forward, everybody's I'm sure people are excited about that, but I'll but I'll everybody's salaries are going to be have to be published moving forward on a website. It also requires counties, municipalities to post a detailed multi-year budgets online. You also going to have to make sure before you have a move forward with your budget or have any budget workshops, you're going to have to publish that five days before that meeting is held online as well. And one of the things you're also going to have to do, you're going to have to do an exercise to, to look at if there's a way for you to cut your budget 10% without cutting essential services, and you're going to also post those results or study results online as well. There's some other things when it comes to impact fees, adopting or increasing impact fees, you're going to have to follow as well. And if there's refunds or credits that need to be moving forward, there's new procedures that involves that as well, and there's penalties that could be imposed if you're not, if a city or municipality or counties not issuing those refunds or credits properly, or if they overpay, all right, building permits and inspections. And this is another one we talked about quite often. It prevents municipalities from enforcing zoning or land use rules that treat off site manufactured homes differently from site built homes within the same residential district. If everybody follows what I mean by that, basically you have a you could have a manufactured home in your residential area, and there's nothing that can be done about it. Now. I could talk to, you know, debbie off line about this in more detail, but, you know, it doesn't prohibit you from, you know, having certain ordinances for landscaping and facades and design and things like that. Right, right. But if somebody wanted to put a prefab, manufactured home on a parcel, they would be allowed to do that. Now, if you have certain codes, hoas that have covenants, they could prohibit that because their covenants could say that you have to have certain types of homes, certain size homes, garages, whatever it may be. But just if they're in an area without any hoas or seeds, you cannot prohibit that. Something else that's important when it comes to building [00:25:01] Permits for single family residential projects. If these permits are in the price. Sorry. The project itself is valued at under $7,500. You cannot require a building permit unless it has something to do with maybe more life safety, electrical, structural, plumbing, mechanical or gas work. So if you require a permit for projects and it's under the $7,500 that's not related to any of those things, you no longer could require those building permits going forward. And then when it comes to private providers, it mandates local governments reduce commercial permit fees. When owners utilize private providers for plan, review or inspections. In addition, going forward, it's done by, I think, july July 2027, the Florida Building Commission is actually been mandated by the legislature to develop a complete uniform statewide residential and commercial property applications. So by july of next year, there's going to be uniform application that every municipality and county across the state is going to have to use. Any questions on any of those items. No, no. Okay. So obviously we know there's quite a few more bills. You know, we just kind of went high level. Some things that we had talked about during session that we felt were going to have an impact on you. We know there's more that have an impact on citizens statewide, but these were some of the larger ones that would affect the city. So I'm here to answer any questions. Sure. Pete's got a question. Yeah. They're so easy, I love it. When do we get. If we have to say how we're going to reduce the budget by 10% in january for the next year, kind of a disincentive to reduce it this year. And well, again, you're not required to reduce your budget, required to go through an exercise that shows this is what we could cut to get our budget down by 10%. There's nothing that states you have to cut it by 10%. It's it's, it's an exercise. And it's about getting your budget down from the previous year's budget. That's right. So my point there is that as we go through our budget hearings, I'm going to be. Encouraging us to be aggressive with respect to our budgets, capital items, which particularly because a lot of it depends on maybe potential other funding sources. And in order to get those funding sources, things have to be in the budget. So if we cut ourselves short in the future in our budgets, then we don't have the ability to put things in the budget that can match grants of substantial size. So that'll be a discussion we can have. But you know, it's not actual to actual. It's budget to budget. Now, the budget doesn't mean the property taxes. So we could always reduce taxes. But it's the budget, not the not the taxes part of the budget that they're talking about. So yeah, it sounds it sounds very onerous. But I think if we do it right, we don't have to be so concerned because we can always reduce our capital in a future year or something and still stay on track. But it's good to know that's coming. Absolutely. No I'm good. No good. Appreciate you, mike. Thank you. I appreciate all of you. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Our pleasure. And thank you for all the good information. Thank you for always being available when we need you. Yeah, I appreciate it. Happy to be here. Now you have to talk budget. Is that what's next? Oh. Regular council. Okay. Yes. Understood. Get a reprieve tonight. Okay. Yeah. We have budget tomorrow night. Oh, okay. I know you're jealous to get you into the next traffic jam, I appreciate it. Oh, yeah, that's right. But it's always easier to leave new port richey than to come back to it, because we're the commuting. Yeah, yeah, I came from palmetto last night. I gave an update to this. The city of palmetto, which is, which is a client of mine. And I hit that right during rush hour. That was a long commute and it was storming. So that was a doozy. Our senate candidates that we have that would replace Mr. Hooper. Is this the one that we've got our current sheriff putting in for the the sheriff is one of the candidates, correct. Do we know who are the other ones? I, I, I do not know who the other people are. I'm just since you [00:30:04] Mentioned the sheriff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't I don't I don't know who the other folks I don't know. I was curious. Yeah, yeah. I'm not sure. Well, from what you've said to us, having the senate president as someone new who we know is helpful at the end of the legislative part of the budget process, right? Because they have the final sign off or and they also have some authority what moves through that sort of thing. Yeah, obviously, having a good relationships with your senate president and your speaker of house are obviously very beneficial. And we'll work on making that visit. When whoever comes up, we'll work on see if we can get to meet those folks as well. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Good. People fill our schedule as you usually do. They're good. They're all good people. We appreciate it. But thank you. Thank you. But we're again, we're very grateful f * This transcript was compiled from uncorrected Closed Captioning.

   Original caption was ALL CAPS; this page lowercases and capitalizes sentence starts. Names from the meeting’s entity index are restored. For exact wording, consult the video or the city clerk.