(The Center Square) – A bill active in the Florida Legislature could provide help for the state’s rural areas and create what the bill authors call a “rural renaissance.”
Senate Bill 110 passed the Senate 39-0 on Wednesday and would allocate $200 million to expand education offerings, increase health care availability for rural residents and help modernize commerce.
SB110, sponsored by Sen. Corey Simon, R-Tallahassee, would also appropriate $91 million for transportation projects in fiscally constrained counties.
Sen. Gayle Harrell, R-Stuart, represents a district that includes the wealthy coast and more rural agricultural areas of Martin County and parts of Palm Beach and St. Lucie counties.
“People don’t realize that agriculture is the No. 2 industry in our state,” Harrell said during debate on the bill. “We have to make sure we’re supporting our agricultural communities. They get forgotten a lot and we want to make sure with this bill that we are going to put them on the forefront, especially with health care.”
Simon’s measure would also mandate that the state land planning agency to give special preference for technical assistance funding to local governments located in what is called a rural area of opportunity.
The bill would also allow eligible rural counties to receive at least $50 million in sales tax distribution.
Under SB110, the state Department of Commerce would create an Office of Rural Prosperity and a Public Infrastructure Smart Technology Grant Program to help these areas upgrade their infrastructure.
Added to the measure was a change to the state’s Florida Reimbursement Assistance for Medical Education Program that would add eligibility for medical doctors or doctors of osteopathic medicine who are board certified in emergency medicine and employed by or under contract with a rural hospital.
Rural health care practitioners such as doctors and nurses could receive $250,000 each under a new grant program to build new facilities, buy new equipment and add telehealth services among other allowed costs.
The bill was amended on the floor to add that areas in the Everglades Agricultural Area in the southern part of the peninsula near Lake Okeechobee would be priority areas under the measure.
Counties eligible for designation as fiscally-constrained status must meet at least one of two criteria. Fiscally constrained counties are those where a 1 mill levy – which adds up to one dollar per $1,000 dollars of assessed value – would raise no more than $5 million in annual tax revenue or have been listed on the governor’s executive order as an area of economic concern.
Florida’s fiscally constrained counties are Baker, Bradford, Calhoun, Columbia, Desoto, Dixie, Franklin, Gadsden, Gilchrist, Glades, Gulf, Hamilton, Hardee, Hendry, Highlands, Holmes, Jackson, Jefferson, Lafayette, Levy, Liberty, Madison, Okeechobee, Putnam, Suwannee, Taylor, Union, Wakulla and Washington.
House Bill 1427 is similar, but it has yet to be taken up by the House Commerce Committee.
