Gas lobbyists want tighter handcuffs on local communities

Florida in Five: Five stories to read from the past week in Florida politics.

Feb 02, 2025

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Welcome to another installment of Florida in Five: Five* stories you need to read from the past week in Florida politics.

In the spring of 2021, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a new state law that forces local communities across Florida to permit natural-gas connections in new construction.

It was part of a nationwide campaign orchestrated by the natural gas industry. A growing number of U.S. cities and counties had passed local laws banning new natural gas hookups, to ensure the electrification of new homes and commercial buildings — and in doing so, to reduce demand for climate-warming greenhouse gases. Industry lobbyists used state Legislatures to overrule them.

The result: more than two dozen states passed laws that preempt their own local governments from banning natural gas hookups.

And now the industry wants to go even further in Florida.

Specifically, lobbyists representing companies like Chesapeake Utilities Corp. and Tampa Electric Co. want Florida lawmakers to pass a new law this spring that could prohibit local governments from charging fees on natural-gas hookups, too.

The Florida Natural Gas Association says this latest lobbying push was prompted by the Orlando Utilities Commission, the city-owned electric company in central Florida, which imposes a tariff on developers that include natural gas infrastructure in residential developments.

It’s essentially an impact fee that OUC says it charges in order to ensure that homeowners who use electric appliances don’t end up subsidizing homeowners with gas appliances.

The natural gas lobby contends OUC’s decade-old fee is now illegal under Florida’s 2021 law, which prohibits local government from doing anything that has the effect of “restricting or prohibiting” the type of fuel serving a development. It wants Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature to pass another bill making that crystal clear.

“The tariff, or ‘impact fee,’ amounts to a substantial $595 per home, making it prohibitively expensive for developers and consumers to include natural gas services,” said Jessie Werner, a spokesperson for the Florida Natural Gas Association.

This is, on the surface, a small issue.

OUC’s natural gas impact fee is a relatively small revenue-raiser; a spokesperson said it typically generates between $100,000 and $500,000 a year for an agency that does more than $1 billion in annual operating revenue. The gas association says it isn’t aware of any other local governments that charge a similar fee, either.

And while I might argue the 2021 law does not prohibit a fee like this, OUC has essentially conceded that debate already: The utility’s governing board voted in December to eliminate its natural gas tariff starting in 2026.

But this also illustrates an important point about the corporate lobby and the Florida lawmakers who cater to it: They will simply never be satisfied when it comes to stripping local communities of power and consolidating control in Tallahassee.

There’s no point in looking for the bottom. There is none.

Consider House Bill 433, which Republican lawmakers passed and Ron DeSantis signed last spring. It’s one of the most barbarian preemption bills Florida has ever seen. Literally written with help from Big Business lobbyists, the legislation stripped cities and counties of the power to ensure that outdoor workers are protected from extreme heat; that hourly employees can get a bit of predictability to their work schedules; and that government contractors are paid a living wage.

But lobbyists for Florida’s biggest corporations are still pushing state lawmakers to go farther and outlaw any kind of local workplace protections at all. “We feel like the state of Florida has more work to do in that regard,” Carolyn Johnson, a lobbyist for the Florida Chamber of Commerce, told the House Intergovernmental Affairs Subcommittee during a Jan. 15 hearing.

It’s also important to pay attention anytime politicians in the state Capitol start sniffing around a publicly owned power company like OUC. Two years ago, for instance, Republican lawmakers rushed a last-minute bill through the Legislature seizing the city of Gainesville’s municipal utility and handing control to Ron DeSantis.

The reality is that there are some legislators — and utility industry lobbyists — who would love to privatize all public power in Florida and allow corporations like Florida Power & Light and Duke Energy to take over every municipal utility in the state.

So while this OUC dustup is a minor controversy right now, it’s also the sort of issue that could suddenly escalate at any time.

*To paraphrase Barbossa, five is more what you’d call a guideline than an actual rule.