Florida Legislature Slashes Funds For Land Acquisition, Conservation

In 2016, no money trickled in from Tallahassee through the budget for Florida Forever, the state’s main program for acquiring lands for conservation and recreation, which has seen its funds — once as high as $300 million — thaw to less than $20 million in the last three years.  Gearing toward the May 5 deadline to pass a budget for the 2017–2018 fiscal year, the Florida House is earmarking no funds for Florida Forever, while the Senate is offering $10 million — a half of the dollars for all land protection programs. “That is devastating to us to see what the House and the Senate are doing,” McCarthy said. Eric Draper, executive director of Audubon Florida, said this year’s budgetary cut evinces lawmakers’ different priorities. “Even though Florida is a growing state and a very wealthy state,” he said, “legislators have an ideological belief that taxes should be cut, government spending should be cut. And a lot of legislators do not care about the environment at all.” The Florida Conservation Coalition, an association of environmental organizations, advocates for a quarter of the money in the Land Acquisition Trust Fund be spent on conservation. This is below the 33 percent the law requires but the legislature has failed to meet.   Florida Forever was launched in 2001 as a replacement for Preservation 2000. Its budget comes from a third of real estate sale taxes but has steeply plunged since the Great Recession. At the 2014 state Senate election, some 75 percent of voters approved Amendment 1, which restores consistent funding for Florida Forever.“Unfortunately, the legislature has not done the will of the people in this state and has failed to fully fund Florida Forever, even though this amendment passed,” said Preston Robertson, vice president for conservation and general counsel at Florida Wildlife Federation.In 2015, environmental organizations, including Florida Wildlife Federation, launched a still ongoing lawsuit against the legislature for misappropriating Amendment 1 resources for administrative costs instead of land acquisition and protection.