Florida Forever Coalition

Saving Essential Florida: Creating Permanent Funding for Land Conservation

A proposal by the Florida Wildlife Federation, working with its partners in the Florida Forever Coalition, to create a permanent, dedicated source of state revenue from the existing documentary stamp tax to fund land preservation. This will continue and expand one of the world’s largest and most successful land conservation programs.

Goal:
Utilize every approach available to renew and expand Florida’s land conservation efforts by succeeding the present Florida Forever program with a larger, more flexible and inclusive program of land preservation. The need to get it done now is urgent, while there are still opportunities to conserve large, connected landscapes. Many private landowners who wish to protect their lands are willing to sell or donate conservation easements. Public lands, such as our state parks (which hosted more than 19 million visitors last year) and our state forests, both need additional lands and linkages to protect them from rampant development. What is lacking is a reliable source of funding to accomplish these goals when Florida Forever ends.

Means to Accomplish Our Goals:
We propose to amend the Florida Constitution via the Taxation and Budget Reform Commission while simultaneously initiating a legislative remedy in 2008. We anticipate that one of these two options will succeed. However, if either option proves unsuccessful, we will have set the stage for passing a citizen’s constitutional ballot initiative by 2010.

Current Situation:
Florida Forever, the state’s $3 billion, ten-year land conservation program is essentially out of funds, even though it is not scheduled to end until 2010. A report issued in March 2007 by auditors at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection purports that the Division of State Lands actually over-committed funding, by nearly $13 million, for major statewide environmental land purchases this past fiscal year. Projections from the Division show that with two full fiscal years remaining in the Florida Forever program, the Division has only $45 million to spend. Current Florida Forever projects on the state’s approved list awaiting purchase exceed $11 billion.

Approaches to Date:
For the past two years the Federation and its partners have sought to raise the successor program to a first-tier legislative concern. We had received assurances that a successor program was a top priority of Legislative leadership, and that we would be able to accelerate Florida Forever spending in 2007 and 2008 in order to exhaust program funds, double the conservation effort and prepare for an adequate successor. Although we did essentially receive “double” the funds in 2006 through the one-time purchase of the 74,000-acre Babcock Ranch, in Collier and Lee Counties, our efforts to accelerate funding in 2008, were unsuccessful, even with the backing of Governor Crist.

Present legislative conditions for renewed efforts to accelerate and promote a successor to Florida Forever do not appear to be promising. State tax revenues are lower than expected and short term projections are not sunny. Thus, few elected officials want to initiate a robust new program. These conditions have caused the Federation to recognize that any expectation of automatic renewal, much less an expansion of Florida Forever, is far from likely. We have therefore turned to other means, including amending the state constitution, as an approach we can embrace in order to complete Florida’s conservation effort. We recognize that at the current pace of development, if we do not take action now, we may never have the opportunity to preserve our biologically important natural resource lands. We may lose the opportunity to save essential Florida.

Method:
The Taxation and Budget Reform Commission (TBRC) meets once every 20 years and it is within this commission’s scope to recommend constitutional amendments and statutory changes that would modify the levels of service and funding of programs, including delivery of services such as parks, water supplies, conservation land, etc.

The 29-member Commission is comprised of four committees: Governmental Services, Governmental Procedures and Structure, Finance and Tax, and Planning and Budget. Ballot proposals will work up through the committee process in order to heard and voted on by the entire Commission. A statewide land conservation proposal would go through the Governmental Services Committee. Each constitutional proposal will be automatically reviewed for legal requirements (performed by the Supreme Court) and the financial impact statements required by law.

May 4, 2008 is the deadline for TBRC submission of ballot proposals, and the vote by the state’s electorate will be held in the November 2008 General Election. All proposed amendments to the Florida Constitution are required to pass by at least a 60% margin, and will carry a fiscal impact statement on the ballot.

Process:
We have begun meeting with TBRC members in order to explain our proposal and ask for consideration. We must also begin to reach out to the Commissioners on the Governmental Services committee as well as the broader Commission in order to build support for our proposal. All organizational contacts, including donors, trustees and CEOs must be utilized for this grasstops level contact with Commissioners.

Once our entry is established, TBRC staff would research our issue and we would work the proposal through the process much the same as Amendment 5 for Conservation proponents did during the 1998 Constitution Revision Commission process. We have appraised the Governor and his staff of this effort and are seeking his full endorsement and support.

Steering Committee:
The present members of the Florida Forever Coalition Steering Committee are: Florida Wildlife Federation, Trust for Public Land, Audubon of Florida, Florida Recreation and Parks Association, The Nature Conservancy, Defenders of Wildlife, 1000 Friends of Florida.


For more information, please contact Jay Liles at jliles@fwfonline.org or (850) 656-7113.