Florida Native Plant Society Blog

When the 2023 legislative session closed with the traditional hanky-drop on May 5, it signaled the usual “mixed bag” of results for those of us who support native plant conservation and environmental protection. The good included $100 million budgeted for land conservation through the Florida Forever Program, and an additional $100 million to finance the purchase conservation easements through the Rural and Family Lands Protection Program (RFL). The bad included a continuing failure to address Florida’s water quality crisis by fully implementing the recommendations of the Blue-Green Algae Task Force. We have attempted to provide an itemized list of the good and bad of the 2023 session below, with a focus on the stuff we believe is most relevant to the FNPS mission to conserve native plants and native plant communities. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves! What does the “end of session” actually signify? Governing, and law-making (legislating!), are a continuous process. Wins and

  WHAT A Legislative Delegation is an office within (most) county governments and the group of state-level legislators that represent that county. This group holds public meetings once a year in the Board of County Commissioners chambers or some other public meeting place. Past meetings have been between December and February, but as the legislative session has been pushed earlier in recent years the Delegations have too. This year delegations start in September. Members of the public who wish to speak must submit a completed Public Hearing Form well before the meeting, although in most cases citizens can show up and file a card on the spot to speak to the delegation. Every county in Florida has a legislative delegation, which consists quite simply of the members of the Florida Legislature that represent that county and its residents. Each of us lives in a House District and a Senate District, with the boundaries of those districts drawn so as to ensure that each of the 120 Representat