Failed SB 180 fix leaves counties ‘stuck’ under 2025 hurricane recovery law

Manatee County leaders say they are “stuck” under a controversial hurricane recovery law that limits their ability to change land-use rules after House lawmakers blocked a Senate-backed fix during the 2026 Legislative Session.

County Commission Chair Tal Siddique and at-large Commissioner George Kruse said lawmakers missed an opportunity this year to address fallout from SB 180, a sweeping storm recovery law approved in 2025 that restricts local governments from adopting or amending land-use regulations within a broad radius of a hurricane’s path — even when those changes are unrelated to storm recovery.

Manatee County is among several local governments that sued the state over SB 180, arguing the law had unintended consequences that hampered routine planning decisions, including comprehensive plan amendments and environmental protections.

Absent legislative action this year, SB 180 remains in place, forcing local governments to operate under state-imposed limits on growth management until at least the 2027 Session, when lawmakers could again take up proposals to restore local control.

In Manatee County, Siddique said one of the most visible consequences involves wetland buffer rules — a key issue for local voters. 

“The flashpoint issue here is certainly wetland buffers,” he said. “Voters want to see those restored to 50-foot buffers from 25-foot buffers, and more importantly want to have control over them. Because SB 840 failed to pass, we’re not able to do anything to restore wetland buffers.”

The county is also unable to move forward with a long-awaited comprehensive plan rewrite meant to reflect rapid post-pandemic growth, a process that was already underway when Hurricanes Debby, Helene and Milton made landfall in 2024.

“The Comprehensive Plan is important,” Siddique said. “By not being able to update it, we’re not able to give the community and even developers more transparency about the future direction of growth, and so we’re still operating off of these very outdated plans for growth that are based on pre-2020 notions of where the county was going to grow.”

Siddique said local officials were counting on SB 840 — proposed this Session by St. Petersburg Republican Sen. Nick DiCeglie, who originally sponsored SB 180 — to narrow the law’s scope after widespread concerns that SB 180 “cast too wide a net.” 

The Senate unanimously approved SB 840 earlier this Session, with lawmakers from both parties describing the bill as a necessary fix to address unintended consequences of the 2025 law. The measure would have reduced the geographic scope of SB 180, clarified when local governments can impose development restrictions and allowed planning decisions unrelated to hurricane recovery to move forward, and fast-tracked sunset provisions while still retaining hurricane recovery provisions from SB 180. 

DiCeglie said addressing SB 180 concerns was a top priority in the Senate, but the House never took up the bill in Committee.

“This Session, the Senate made it a top priority to fine tune Senate Bill 180 through Senate Bill 840 after hearing thoughtful feedback from fellow Senators, local elected officials, and our constituents. While meaningful progress was made on the Senate side to address these concerns, it is unfortunate that the Florida House of Representatives did not take up Senate Bill 840 in Committee,” DiCeglie said. 

“I made every effort to advance these improvements, including exploring opportunities to incorporate the language into other legislation, but ultimately those paths risked complicating or slowing other priorities. As a result, some of the refinements identified by communities and stakeholders across Florida were not finalized this Session.”

Kruse said a last-minute attempt by Orlando Democratic Rep. Anna Eskamani to attach similar language to another measure was ruled out of order on two occasions, effectively killing the fix for the year.

“The House did everything in its power to find ways of coming up with whatever rules they could do and every game they could play to avoid voting on that thing,” he said. “This wasn’t ‘they ran out of time.’ This was them intentionally not wanting to have this up for a vote. They didn’t even want people on record voting on that thing, that was never getting heard in the House.”

Kruse noted the procedural gamesmanship that went into House resistance to Eskamani’s efforts to amend SB 840 language into other bills, 

“Because it never got put in a Committee it didn’t exist in the House, so she could have legally filed an amendment with substantially similar language. Once she filled the amendment on a Friday, State Affairs grabbed 840 and threw it into a Committee, a Committee that was done hearing and was literally never scheduled to sit again. But because it was put in a Committee, they claimed this was a bill in the House at a Committee stop that hadn’t been heard yet — therefore she couldn’t use that language in amendments,” Kruse said.

“Then on the last day, for HB 399, she put in the language again and they had to take a recess to come up with a reason to call it out of order. They couldn’t even come up with a logical reason on the fly, they literally had to take a 10-minute break to dig through the book.”

With SB 840 drowning in the Legislature, both Commissioners said local governments are left with few options beyond litigation and waiting for future legislative action. Kruse suggested that even under a best-case scenario, relief may be years away — and by then it may be too late to matter. Provisions in SB 180 sunset in 2028.

Both Commissioners said the failure of SB 840 leaves counties operating under constraints that affect everything from long-term planning to routine land-use decisions. The issue extends statewide, leaving local elected officials unable to adapt to changing conditions. 

In the meantime, Siddique said Manatee County will continue pursuing local initiatives — including code reform, workforce development programs and budget planning — while navigating the constraints imposed by state law.

“There were some productive items that came out of this Session, like the Terra Ceia aquatic preserve protection bill, which is always appreciated, I think. But I think the bigger ask was to fix SB 180 so that we can take on issues like that ourselves,” Siddique said. “In the long run, our community knows how it should be government best and voters are very apt to tell us that.”