Jesse Scheckner
Gov. Ron DeSantis approves of condo safety legislation lawmakers passed last week, but he thinks it could have come much sooner and believes the House’s initial version of the bill wasn’t up to snuff.
“I think it ended up in a good spot,” he said of the measure (HB 913) that passed unanimously April 30 after undergoing changes in both chambers of the Legislature.
“I was not supportive of the House bill. I would have vetoed that and called them in for a Special Session. And don’t forget, I did the Special Session in January. In that Special Session I called for the condo relief to be done then. There’s no reason the bill that was passed couldn’t have been passed in January.”
DeSantis called for a Special Session in mid-January to address a sharp increase in condo costs, crack down on illegal immigration and tighten strictures on petitions for constitutional amendments.
The Legislature pushed back, delaying the condo relief and petition-stifling efforts until the Regular Session — when the state expected to have more data based on milestone building inspections — and proffering different immigration measures than the ones the Governor supported based on federal dictates.
The Governor said Tuesday at a stop in Miami that he preferred the condo bill language that Fleming Island Republican Sen. Jennifer Bradley proposed in her version of the legislation (SB 1742) over provisions originally in HB 913, which Miami Republican Rep. Vicki Lopez carried.
In its original form, HB 913 would have blocked Citizens Property Insurance from covering condo owners and associations that didn’t comply with state-mandated inspection and reserve study. Bradley and Lopez removed that portion from the final bill.
It also included allowance for condo boards to obtain loans to perform necessary maintenance, enabled associations to secure lines for credit to meet reserve funding requirements and provided protections against double-dipping by inspection and repair companies.
Those provisions remained in the bill alongside portions of the Senate version allowing reserve funds to be invested in a limited capacity, among other changes.
DeSantis said Tuesday that he didn’t like the House bill at first because it “was more geared towards developers and probably would have helped force people out of their units.”
“They can’t afford a $100,000 assessment,” he said. “So, then they’re forced to sell.”
The Governor was referencing a rising outcry among Florida residents about the steep costs stemming from condo safety and funding requirements lawmakers passed after the June 2021 collapse of Champlain Towers South in Surfside.
Fearing being priced out of their home, some condo owners sold their units and fled Florida, sometimes at a significant loss.
Had they taken up the condo issue earlier this year, DeSantis said, lawmakers “would have given people peace of mind.”
“It would have averted some of the assessments that have come back in the intervening months. It would have given more time to be able to work this out,” he said. “It should have been done in January. It did get done. I’m glad that the Bradley bill is basically what passed.”
