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.