By D. L. Norris
According to the Florida League of Cities, “in Florida, Home Rule language was proposed in the 1968 Constitutional revision, and was adopted by the people. After several legal challenges, the Legislature adopted the Home Rule Powers Act in 1973, which ended challenges to city and county powers. The Florida Constitution states in Article VIII, Section 2(b) for municipalities: ‘Municipalities shall have governmental, corporate and proprietary powers to enable them to conduct municipal government, perform municipal functions and render municipal services, and may exercise power for municipal purposes except as otherwise provided by law.'”
In 2011, the Florida Legislature, lead by Republicans, passed a statute that banned all local vacation rental regulations, essentially revoking the Home Rule Powers Act of 1973. In 2014, the Florida Legislature, lead by Republicans, amended the 2011 statute by allowing local governments to adopt ordinances targeted specifically at rental properties, such as inspection program or trash rules but did not restore the ability of local governments to impose minimum-stay requirements or ban short-term rentals (STRs) altogether. Any county, or municipality, that had STR ordinances regulating minimum-stay requirements or, prohibiting STRs completely, prior to 2011 were grandfathered and could continue to prohibit STRs.
The current Okaloosa County Land Development Code No. 91-01 as amended by Ordinance 11-01, states permitted uses in residential zones, then states all other uses are permitted by special exception or prohibited. STRs are not listed in the permitted uses section; therefore, they would be prohibited by the ordinance unless granted a special exception. The Okaloosa County attorney stated publicly in the January 21, 2020 Board of County Commissioner’s (BOCC) meeting that the county has not been enforcing the ordinance with respect to STRs in residential neighborhoods, despite numerous residents’ request to the county to shut down STRs in their residential neighborhoods. Based on this admission from the county attorney, and from previous code enforcement fiascos (reference previous posting in this blog, Okaloosa County’s Eroding Code Enforcement), it is now obvious that Okaloosa County has taken an extremely liberal approach to code enforcement and is not enforcing the majority of its code.
With complaints increasing against STRs in residential neighborhoods, the BOCC set out to pass a STR ordinance regulating occupancy numbers, safety, parking, trash, noise and taxes. The draft ordinance has approximately 850 lines of regulatory code. When District 2 Commissioner, Carolyn Ketchel, asked whether the code enforcement staff could even enforce the code as drafted, the growth management director stated the county could not enforce the draft STR ordinance with the staff they have right now.
Local government doesn’t get any more liberal than this: there is a short, unambiguous law on the books that prohibits STRs in residential neighborhoods but the county refuses to enforce it. Instead, the county is now drafting a very long, convoluted ordinance to take care of the nuisance issues generated by not enforcing the original STR law on the books. Added to that is the admission by the growth management director that the county code enforcement staff isn’t sufficiently manned to enforce the draft ordinance. So, if this ordinance is adopted, it too will not be enforced.
At the January 21, 2020 Board of County Commissioner’s (BOCC) meeting, the commissioners unanimously tabled the adoption of the draft STR ordinance until July 21, 2020. The BOCC wanted to wait until April for a decision from the Florida State Legislature on regulating STRs in residential neighborhoods. The commissioners did not want to pass an ordinance that may be overcome within a few short months by state statute. Commissioner Ketchel also wanted an opportunity to lobby the state legislature to return Home Rule over STRs back to the local governments.
So, a Republican lead legislature turned Tallahassee into a centralized government in 2011 and no one on the conservative side cried foul. There is nothing conservative about centralized governments. A centralized government is one in which a small group, or executive at the highest level of government, holds all political authority, and all other political units are subject to it. Autocracies and totalitarian governments are centralized. A federal government has local units that are autonomous, not dependencies of the central government. Any legislator supporting the current Florida State statute on STRs is not conservative. They can stick an R by their name all day long; but, they are liberals to their core if they support centralized government.
While Okaloosa County residents wait for July 21, 2020 to arrive, hoping to get some kind of relief from nuisance STRs, they can take this time to contact their current Florida State House District 4 Representative, Mel Ponder, and demand he work to revoke the Florida State statute on STRs and return Home Rule to the Okaloosa County BOCC. It’s the only conservative position to take.
You can contact the author at dlnorris@theparadisepatriot.com