By Rich Pollack
Highland Beach commissioners agreed recently that having smaller commercial signs in town would be beneficial and had just started the ball rolling on passing new rules when the process hit a snag.
Delray Beach officials had plans in the works for the development of an Atlantic Avenue conservation district that Mayor Tom Carney says would preserve the charm of the buildings there. It, too, was stopped in its tracks, at least for now.
The roadblock in the way of both municipalities is a provision in a new state law, added to the bill in the waning days of this year’s legislative session, that prevents local governments from passing any land-use changes that are more restrictive than what currently is on the books.
The legislation, known as Senate Bill 180, is drawing fire from municipalities across the state, and many have joined a lawsuit claiming that the “legislation represents the largest incursion into local home rule authority in the history of Florida since the adoption of the (revised) Florida Constitution in 1968.”
Among the more than two dozen municipalities that have joined in the lawsuit, asking that enforcement of the law be stopped, is Delray Beach, whose mayor says the state has gone too far.
“It’s a big overreach and there are unintended consequences,” Carney said.
Carney said that the city staff had already been working on plans for a conservation district along Atlantic Avenue that would provide a process where buildings that may not qualify for historic preservation but contribute to the charm of downtown could still be saved from demolition.
Defending the law
Senate Bill 180, according to State Rep. Peggy Gossett-Seidman, is intended to protect property owners who suffer damage from hurricanes that is compounded when local governments make changes that negatively affect their property rights.
There were numerous cases on the state’s west coast, Gossett-Seidman says, where local governments changed zoning or land-use regulation in the aftermath of hurricanes that made it difficult for property owners to build back to what they had before the storm.
A land-use change implemented after a storm could, for example, mean that a home that was two stories before the storm could be rebuilt only as a single-story home.
“There were hundreds of complaints,” said Gossett-Seidman, who voted for the legislation. “Based on what was coming out of the west coast following three hurricanes, the state felt it necessary to allow people to rebuild in a fair manner.”
Much of the bill is focused precisely on that. But there are portions — including the section added on the last day of the session — that affect all municipalities in the state.
More than what’s intended
One portion of the law says that if a county or municipality is listed in a federal disaster declaration of a hurricane, it is considered an impacted local government. As part of the legislation, impacted local governments cannot implement more restrictive development rules until at least October 2027.
In reality, says Highland Beach Town Attorney Len Rubin, all municipalities in Florida are impacted local governments because the whole state was considered a federal disaster area.
“It ties the hands of communities that weren’t impacted by hurricanes at all,” he said. “This goes beyond the scope of what was intended.”
For Highland Beach, it means changes that make most commercial signs smaller — including real estate signs — will have to wait another two years unless changes are made to the state law.
Town leaders, who said standardizing signs to be smaller and with just two colors would be less intrusive, were planning to get input from the Planning Board when Rubin discovered that sign ordinance changes are covered by Senate Bill 180.
Other impacts
To demonstrate additional impacts the law could have on local governments, Rubin provides a possible scenario where a municipality may want to update obsolete parking regulations. With the legislation in place, the community would not be able to make any changes that were more restrictive.
The legislation also gives those who feel they’ve been hurt by local government changes, dating back to August 2024, the ability to sue the government agency and collect reasonable attorney fees and costs.
Gossett-Seidman recognizes that some areas of the state were impacted more than others, but says the state law has to be applied equally.
“We can’t say you on the west coast have to follow the new state law but you on the east coast don’t,” she said.
Carney and Rubin both see Senate Bill 180 as a further incursion into the ability of local governments to determine what laws govern their communities.
“This is part of a larger issue of the legislature preempting local governments,” Rubin said.
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