For the past two years, Rep. Vicki Lopez made condo reform her top focus in Tallahassee. She’s still pursuing that effort this year, but she’s also carrying legislation to ensure Florida’s waters are as safe as its shores.

One bill (HB 289) has already cleared the House unanimously and awaits a vote in the Senate. Another (HB 481) received uniform support in both of its committees and pends a full vote by the lower chamber.

HB 289 is titled “Lucy’s Law” after 17-year-old Miami high schooler Luciana Fernandez, who died in a September 2022 boat crash that injured several other passengers. If passed, the measure would make it a third-degree felony to leave the scene of a waterborne accident that hurts someone.

Leaving an accident that causes a serious bodily injury would increase the charge to a second-degree felony, while leaving a fatal crash would be a first-degree felony.

Third-, second- and first-degree felonies are punishable by up to five, 15 and 30 years in prison, respectively, with fines of between $5,000 and $10,000.

The bill, which Lopez is sponsoring with fellow Republican Rep. Vanessa Oliver, would also maintain boating safety education requirements and criminalize knowingly providing false information on boat reports as a misdemeanor.

Lopez, a Miami lawmaker, has stressed that the impact of HB 289 will extend far beyond Miami-Dade County’s bounds.

“This will help every single boater and every single person who enjoys the waters throughout our state,” she said.

She commended Fernandez’s family, who spoke to lawmakers during the committee process about the importance of “Lucy’s Law” and turning their pain into a positive change for Florida.

“They seemingly have taken a tragedy and have determined that Lucy would not die in vain, that her memory would (help) all know that it is absolute mayhem on the water,” she said.

HB 289’s upper-chamber companion (SB 628) by Fort Myers Republican Sen. Jonathan Martin has also received nothing but “yes” votes. It has only the Senate Fiscal Policy Committee to clear before going to a floor vote.

HB 481, meanwhile, addresses mooring regulation. The bill and its Senate analog (SB 866), also by Martin, would enable counties with 1.5 million residents or more — Miami-Dade, Broward, Hillsborough and Palm Beach, currently — to regulate vessels that anchor overnight within their jurisdiction, among other things.

Lopez said in a statement that increased congestion in Florida’s waterways, environmental damage and safety risks “demand decisive action,” and HB 481 is just that.

“Current regulation leaves gaps that threaten the well-being of boaters and the health of our marine ecosystem. HB 481 addresses these issues by empowering local governments to establish stricter anchoring zones in heavily impacted regions … reduces anchoring periods in designated areas and expands protections to critical environmental zones and sensitive waterways,” she said.

“This important piece of legislation is essential to preserving Florida’s waterways for generations to come. It reflects our commitment to sustainable marine practices, community safety, and responsible waterway stewardship. By enacting these measures, we send a clear message: safeguarding our natural resources and protecting the boating community are top priorities.”

Lopez has proven an effective, moderate policymaker since winning her House District 113 seat in 2022. In her freshman House term, she passed well over half her bills, including 75% of those she carried this past Session.

Some were ambitious proposals. She was the House sponsor for the Live Local Act, a seismic measure meant to address Florida’s affordable housing shortage that critics argued preempted local growth controls while giving too much to developers.

She also tackled the thankless task of fixing the state’s post-Surfside condo safety law, which still needs more work, and created a pilot program that extended home-hardening grants to condo owners.

Her legislative victories, including nearly $26 million in appropriations, came despite her votes against her party’s six-week abortion ban and proposal to roll back age restrictions on long rifle purchases the Legislature passed after the 2018 Parkland massacre.

She won re-election in November with 55% of the vote.

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Janelle Irwin Taylor and Ryan Nicol of Florida Politics contributed to this report.

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A misguided rebellion is sweeping through state legislatures across America, masquerading as consumer advocacy while threatening the very innovation it claims to protect.

The “right-to-repair” movement — championed by well-intentioned but shortsighted lawmakers — has planted its flag in just four states: California, Colorado, Minnesota and New York, where legislators have succumbed to simplistic narratives about corporate villains and consumer victimhood.

The movement’s grievances rest on a populist foundation: Technology giants have erected an impenetrable fortress around repair services, artificially inflating costs and restricting consumer choice. Their prescription — mandating manufacturers surrender proprietary information, specialized tools and internal schematics — exemplifies the left’s reflexive impulse to solve perceived market failures with the blunt instrument of government intervention.

These crusaders conveniently ignore the profound cybersecurity implications of their crusade. In their haste to democratize repair, they would unwittingly create vulnerabilities exploitable by malicious actors, both foreign and domestic.

More tellingly, they fail to acknowledge how market forces have already addressed many of their concerns, with companies independently expanding repair options in response to consumer demand — a triumph of free enterprise that right-to-repair advocates seem determined to undermine through unnecessary regulation.

Like so many progressive causes, this movement mistakenly misrepresents a complex ecosystem as a simplistic morality play. In doing so, it risks sacrificing genuine innovation on the altar of misplaced consumer activism.

Today’s device owners enjoy a veritable buffet of repair options, which exposes the right-to-repair movement as a solution desperately in search of a problem.

The free market—not heavy-handed government mandates—has delivered precisely what consumers demand: choice. Device owners can certainly patronize manufacturer-authorized repair centers, but increasingly, they can access official components, detailed documentation, and specialized tools through manufacturer-sponsored self-repair initiatives that slash costs dramatically.

This quiet revolution in repair accessibility has occurred not through legislative coercion but through the invisible hand guiding companies — a testament to the market’s inherent wisdom and adaptability that renders the progressive regulatory impulse not merely unnecessary but actively harmful to the innovation ecosystem that produced these advances in the first place.

The crusade for “right-to-repair” legislation not only betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of free markets but recklessly endangers the very consumers it purports to champion. The movement’s advocates deliberately obscure the stark reality that our devices have evolved beyond mere tools into repositories of our most intimate data — banking credentials, irreplaceable family memories, and sensitive medical records now rest in these digital vaults.

The progressive push to open the repair ecosystem to all comers, qualified or not, creates a veritable Trojan horse for counterfeit components engineered by adversarial foreign entities and criminal syndicates. Once installed by well-meaning but unwitting repair shops, such compromised parts transform privacy-protecting devices into a surveillance apparatus with direct pipelines to our most confidential information.

This is the predictable consequence of the reflexive urge to impose regulatory solutions where market prudence is required. They demonstrate yet again their willingness to sacrifice genuine security concerns on the altar of populist talking points about corporate power—a dangerous gambit that puts American privacy at risk not through corporate malfeasance but through governmental overreach.

The right-to-repair movement exemplifies the fundamental problem with regulatory overreach, addressing problems the market has already solved. This crusade rests on outdated complaints that ignore today’s vibrant tech sector with its diverse repair options.

Upon closer examination, this movement appears less concerned with consumer benefits than with targeting innovative companies for political gain. The cybersecurity implications — endangering Americans’ sensitive data — should alarm any lawmaker genuinely concerned with digital privacy, yet these considerations remain secondary to the regulatory agenda.

The free-market solution is clear: let markets operate freely. Innovation thrives absent government mandates. Expanding self-repair programs demonstrate that consumers already benefit from competitive repair solutions.

This market-driven approach simultaneously protects property rights and encourages technological advancement.

As lawmakers consider following California, Minnesota, Colorado and New York’s misguided lead, those who stand for free-market principles must resist this regulatory assault. America’s digital sovereignty depends not on government intervention but on free enterprise developing secure solutions that serve consumers while maintaining our technological leadership in an increasingly competitive global landscape.

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Dr. Edward Longe is the director of national strategy and the Center for Technology and Innovation at The James Madison Institute.

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