FL H0883

Beginning October 1, 2018, new community redevelopment agencies (CRAs) may only be created by special act of the Legislature, and CRA commissioners must complete 4 hours of annual ethics training; CRAs reporting no revenues, expenditures, or debt for 3 consecutive fiscal years beginning October 1, 2015 shall be declared inactive by the Department of Economic Opportunity.

CRAs must file detailed annual reports beginning March 31, 2019, including performance data on property values, vacancy rates, code enforcement violations, affordable housing expenditures, and the ratio of public to private redevelopment funds; CRA audits must be included with the creating entity's annual financial report to the Department of Financial Services.

CRA trust fund expenditures are restricted to an enumerated list of allowable purposes under an annual board-adopted budget, and CRAs are prohibited from using increment revenues for festivals or street parties promoting tourism, grants to tourism-promoting entities, or grants to nonprofit entities providing socially beneficial programs.

Beginning October 1, 2020, lobbyists must register with the local government entity before lobbying a CRA, with an annual registration fee not to exceed $40 per principal; the Commission on Ethics has jurisdiction to investigate violations upon sworn complaint.

Public officers on county or city commissions may hold employment or contractual relationships with law firms whose lawyers represent clients before the officer's body, provided the officer abstains from voting, recuses from discussion, and does not communicate with other officers or staff on such matters.

The bill substantially overhauls the Developments of Regional Impact (DRI) program by deleting extensive provisions governing new DRI applications, preapplication procedures, regional reports, and approval criteria, while preserving vested rights under existing DRI development orders and consolidating statutory exemptions and dense urban land area exemptions into s. 380.0651.

Proposed developments exceeding statewide DRI guidelines must be approved by local government pursuant to s. 163.3184(4) in lieu of DRI review, and developments consistent with the local comprehensive plan are not required to undergo further review; changes to existing DRI orders use doubled percentage criteria and a 10% increase on other criteria.

Qualified parcels within 3 miles of a state university campus are deemed within an urban service area or urban development boundary and may not be classified as rural land, and local governments may not prohibit motor vehicle access to a transportation facility if it is one of only two points of ingress/egress from a state university.

The definition of "blighted area" is expanded to include higher unemployment, poverty, foreclosure, and infant mortality rates as qualifying factors, and community development districts may identify adjacent lands for anticipated addition within 10 years at the time of establishment, streamlining future expansion.

The Florida Quality Developments program is closed to new applications, with existing approved developments required to transition to local government control through adoption of a local development order; s. 380.065 is repealed and multiple administrative rules governing DRI review procedures are also repealed, effective July 1, 2018.