Dear Colleagues and Friends,

The 2025 Florida Legislative Session commenced on Tuesday, March 4, with over 1,800 pieces of legislation filed. During the 60-day session, many of these bills will be considered, potentially impacting your business or industry in various ways.

Each week, the Rotunda Report will provide a high level summary of what occurred in Session during the prior week. A practicing attorney in the related industry will also provide a deeper analysis of a single piece of legislation in our Legislation Spotlight. In Week 2’s Legislative Spotlight, Stearns Weaver Miller attorneys Jacob Cremer and Jessica Icerman provide an in-depth analysis of SB 482 and HB 665, which pertain to impact fees.

Week 2 Recap

As previously covered in the Rotunda Report, due to a confluence of events during Committee Weeks, many bills that would have already been heard in their second committee, are just now being placed on their first Committee Agenda. A few bills that have moved and are gaining traction, include the following:

SB 180 (DiCeglie) & HB 1535 (McFarland) – Emergency Preparedness and Response - Both bills address Florida’s statewide and local responses to emergency and natural disasters by seeking to:

• Strengthen Florida and its state agencies by increasing funding, but also ensuring proper reporting and auditing occurs;
• Ensure local governments properly coordinate with federal and state agencies, and adequately respond to natural disasters;
• Ensures local governments allow impacted communities to rebuild and prohibit the enactment of burdensome regulations

SB 1080 (McClain) & HB 579 (Overdorf) – Development Permits and Orders – Both bills seek to create uniform requirements for local governments to process development permits and orders, and to ensure that local governments adequately respond to applicants in a timely manner. 

Legislation Spotlight: Impact Fees, Extraordinary Circumstances and Art Exactions 

SB 482 & HB 665

Jacob Cremer and Jessica Icerman

SB 482, filed by Senator DiCeglie, and HB 665, filed by Representative Steele, seeks to define “extraordinary circumstances” as used in the impact fee statute, by tying the definition to an objective, population-based standard. The legislation also seeks to prohibit local governments from extracting payments from developers for city or county art installations in exchange for the issuance of development permits and orders.

Passed in 2021, HB 337 implemented caps on the amount local governments can increase impact fees. Local governments impose impact fees to fund local infrastructure needed to expand services to meet the demands of population growth caused by development. An impact fee enacted by a county or municipal ordinance or special district resolution must meet certain minimum statutory criteria. The amount of the impact fee must be proportional with, and be reasonably connected to, the need for additional capital facilities and the increased impact generated by the new development. Impact fees may not be collected before issuing a building permit for the subject property.

The 2021 caps created three buckets of increases:

• Less than 25 percent - If an impact fee increase is less than 25 percent above the current rate, the increase must be implemented in two equal annual increments.
• Between 25 percent and 50 percent - If an impact fee increase is between 25 and 50 percent above the current rate, it must be phased in four equal annual installments. No impact fee increase may exceed 50 percent and an impact fee may not be increased more than once every four years.
• Greater than 50 percent - HB 337 allowed for an exception to the above two restrictions if a local government establishes the need for the increased impact fee pursuant to the rational nexus test, utilizing a study completed within the prior 12 months demonstrating that extraordinary circumstances require the additional increase.

“Extraordinary circumstances” is currently undefined in Florida law. The term has been interpreted by local governments to mean a number of different scenarios across the state. The proposed legislation seeks to define “extraordinary circumstances.” If passed as proposed in SB 482 and HB 665, extraordinary circumstances would be limited to mean when a county faces an above-average population growth, which equals at least or exceeds 1.25 times the 5-year high-series projection for the immediately preceding year as measured by the University of Florida Bureau of Economic and Business Research. A municipality in such a county would maintain a proportional share of the county's growth.

The proposed legislation also seeks to prohibit counties or municipalities from imposing requirements upon a developer or property owner to build, fund, or reimburse local governments for county- or city-mandated art installations in exchange for the processing or issuing a development permit or development order.

Stearns Weaver Miller will continue to monitor all aspects of Florida land development legislation, including the proposed legislation, as the 2025 Florida Legislative Session continues.