This story is part of WLRN's podcast Tallahassee Takeover. You can subscribe on your podcast feed or find episodes here.
For years, Florida government has been chipping away at what local governments can do — whether they can make rules about natural gas, gun sales, regulate their own ports, or control their own police budgets. But all of this has been piecemeal, one topic at a time, some getting passed through the Legislature and some through executive orders.
This year, lawmakers in Florida are flirting with the potential endgame: two bills that would let almost any private business block local laws from ever going into effect. Lawmakers say it will prevent those one-off state laws from having to be passed in the first place. And critics say this is an assault on local governments like we've never seen before.
