Jackie Toledo and the Curious Case of Local Control
Jackie Toledo now wants to serve on the Hillsborough County Commission, where she would help decide on growth, infrastructure, development, public safety, and other local matters.
This means it’s a good time to take another look at her record in Tallahassee. For six years in the Florida House, Toledo often backed bills that limited what counties and cities could decide for themselves.
Let’s start with impact fees.
Counties use those fees to help pay for roads, parks, public safety facilities, and other infrastructure needed when development brings more people and traffic. Florida law itself calls impact fees an outgrowth of local home-rule power.
In 2021, Toledo supported HB 337, which put state limits on how local governments could raise those fees. Increases above 25 percent had to be phased in. An increase generally could not exceed 50 percent, and local governments normally could raise the fee only once every four years. Getting around those limits required a study, public workshops, and a two-thirds vote.
Apparently, local officials could govern locally, provided they first followed Tallahassee’s instructions on how to do it.
Occupational licensing faced the same kind of limits.
Toledo voted for HB 735, which expressly preempted much occupational licensing to the state. Counties and cities lost authority to impose or change many licensing requirements, including requirements covering several construction and service trades. The House passed it 82-32, and it became law.
Next was utility policy.
HB 919 barred counties and cities from restricting specified types or sources of energy supplied by utilities. It also voided local rules that conflicted with the new state law. The House passed it 81-34.
So much for the quaint notion that elected local officials might know what their own communities want.
Toledo didn’t just vote to limit local authority. In 2018, she sponsored HB 1033, a bill about bicycle-sharing companies. This law made it harder for local governments to stop approved bike-sharing businesses from operating. It passed the House but did not make it through the Senate.
There was also HB 1 in 2021.
Most people remember that bill for its provisions on protests and public disorder. It contained another provision that fits neatly into Toledo’s local-control record. If a municipality reduced its police operating budget, specified officials could appeal the decision to the state Administration Commission. Put more simply: Tallahassee could review and even override local officials’ decisions on police operating budgets.
That is quite a bit of supervision for people supposedly elected to run their own communities.
This doesn’t predict how Toledo would act as a county commissioner, but it does show what she supported while in Tallahassee. And generally, leopards don’t changed their spot.
- Impact fees came with state restrictions.
- Occupational licensing was handled by the state.
- Utility policy? State preemption.
- Local police budgets? Tallahassee gets a say.
Now, Jackie Toledo is asking Hillsborough County voters to give her a seat in local government. It’s ironic to spend years helping Tallahassee limit local officials, then return home and ask to become one of them.
Maybe local control feels different depending on which side of the desk you are sitting on.
Sources
Florida Statutes, 2021 — Section 163.31801, Impact Fees
(https://www.flsenate.gov/laws/statutes/2021/163.31801)
Florida Senate — 2021 Bill Summary, HB 337, Impact Fees
(https://www.flsenate.gov/Committees/billsummaries/2021/html/337)
Florida House of Representatives — HB 735, Preemption of Local Occupational Licensing
(https://flhouse.gov/Sections/Bills/billsdetail.aspx?BillId=71241)
Florida Senate — 2021 Bill Summary, HB 919, Utility Services
(https://www.flsenate.gov/Committees/billsummaries/2021/html/919)
Florida Senate — HB 1, Combating Public Disorder, 2021
(https://flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2021/1/ByVersion)
