Environmentalists to Legislature: Quit spending land-buying money on admin costs

Environmentalists today marked the fifth anniversary of a popular land-buying amendment by urging lawmakers to commit to spending exactly what an overwhelming number of voters instructed them to spend it on.

The Florida Water and Land Conservation Initiative, better known as Amendment 1, approved by 75% of the voters, requires the Legislature to put 33% of net revenue from the real estate document stamps into the Land Acquisition Trust Fund for 20 years. 

But a sizable portion of that money has been diverted to administrative expenses voters didn’t intend it to go to, said Aliki Moncrief, executive director of the Florida Conservation Voters. 

“One-third of that money is going to operational and administrative costs,” she said.

For example a Department of Environmental Protection IT department gets $6 million a year of money that is intended for buying and conserving environmentally sensitive lands.

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Legislators also tend to see the Land Acquisition Trust Fund as a "cookie jar" for special projects, Moncrief said. 

Prior to Amendment 1, the money for those administrative expenses came from other sources, including the general fund, Moncrief said. “The voters didn’t vote to front the bill for IT.”

Sen. Linda Stewart, D-Orlando, has introduced legislation to do just that. SB 332 would require $100 million a year to be put into the Florida Forever Trust Fund to be spent on land acquisition. The bill also said the money cannot be used to fund “the budget entities that provide administrative support for the four state entities receiving these funds.”

It had its first committee hearing Monday afternoon. The Senate Committee on Environmental and Natural Resources unanimously approved the measure.

"I see that my county voted 86 percent in favor of this amendment, and so I support this very good bill," Sen. Lori Berman, D-Boynton Beach, said, calling it a step in the right direction."

Moncrief said she is grateful to Stewart for filing her bill, which would create a statutory requirement if approved. Ideally, the Legislature should spend a minimum of $300 million on Florida Forever, Moncrief said, and she’d be OK if the Legislature spent more.

At its high point, Florida Forever received $610 million from the Legislature, in 2006-07 — the year before the real estate bubble popped and the economy crashed. The next year it dropped to $300 million, then back up to $318 million before plummeting to zero dollars in 2009-10.

Since then, the Legislature has barely funded Florida Forever, and only once did it reach the $100 million mark, in 2018-19.

This budget year the Legislature earmarked $33.2 million for Florida Forever, even though doc stamp revenue is estimated to come in at $2.76 billion, of which $900 million would go into the Land Acquisition Trust Fund.

Florida statutes specifically state the Legislature must first pay off its debt obligation on the Florida Forever and Everglades restoration bonds. After that, the Everglades gets the minimum of the lesser of 25% or $200 million, and springs restoration gets a minimum of 7.6% or $50 million.

There is no specific statutory allocation for Florida Forever.

The Legislature has spent over $1 billion in Everglades restoration, and made strides with springs restoration, said Will Abberger, director of conservation finance for the Trust for Public Land.

“There is unrealized potential in the Florida Forever Land Acquisition and Trust Fund,” Abberger said.

Paul Owens, president of the 1000 Friends of Florida, said so much more could be accomplished if the Legislature fully funded Florida Forever. 

“Every year we fall short is a missed opportunity,” Owens said, urging the Legislature to “provide full funding to fulfill the mission” of Amendment 1 and purchase some 2 million acres on Florida Forever’s waiting list.

That includes a 5,764 acres of ranch land in Southwest Florida that is an aquifer recharge area for the city of Northport, he said.

Securing lands for conservation along rivers and coastal areas also helps protect the state’s water supply, he said.

Florida Defenders of the Environment sued the state Legislature in 2015, arguing that the money was being misspent. Several other plaintiffs, including the Florida Wildlife Federation and the Sierra Club, sued and their complaints were combined into one case on January 10, 2017.

 A Leon County circuit judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs In June 2018. Legislative leaders appealed the case to the First District Court of Appeals, which overturned the lower court ruling on Sept. 9 of this year, stating that the funds are "not restricted to use on land purchased by the state after 2015."

That case has been sent back down to the circuit court.

“We want a court ruling that will validate what the voters said they wanted,” Moncrief said. 

Contact Schweers at jschweers@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @jeffschweers.