During an October meeting of Sarasota MAGA Patriots — a rightwing coalition pursuing a range of issues, from anti-vaccine activism to emergency preparedness — attendees railed against a new state law curbing local oversight of development and the Republican lawmakers who backed it.
Their ire reflects tensions inside Florida’s dominant party, between Tallahassee’s power brokers and the populist base that helped put them there.
Passed this spring with near-unanimous support in both the Senate and the House, SB 180 limits counties and cities from imposing new limits on building — a measure framed as a way to help homeowners rebuild after major storms, but whose reach extends statewide and far beyond coastal areas still recovering from 2024 storms.
The backlash to SB180 highlights a growing divide within the GOP, between state leaders consolidating control in Tallahassee and grassroots conservatives demanding decisions stay local. It has also united a broad range of political groups — libertarians, MAGA activists, conservationists, blue-leaning municipalities and good-government groups who say the law favors developers over communities.
Already, chapters of the Republican Liberty Caucus — a national group with roots in the Tea Party movement — have condemned the bill as “a giveaway to developers at the expense of Florida’s families, farms and future.” They’ve found unexpected allies in organizations such as Audubon Florida, League of Women Voters of Florida and neighborhood coalitions like Sarasota’s Phillippi Creek Coalition, whose members warn that unchecked growth could worsen flooding.
“I’ll work with anybody that wants to accomplish the same goal, I don’t care what party you’re in,” said John Hallman, executive director of Defending Rural Florida, a statewide advocacy group that Hallman founded this year to counter legislation like SB180.
All this comes at a critical moment; just 12 months before the November 2026 elections, when voters will choose a new governor and Republicans will seek to defend a broad legislative majority.
That tension is salient on Florida’s Suncoast, where conservative activists expressed outrage toward State Rep. Fiona McFarland, R-Sarasota, who inserted the language preempting local building regulations into the law through a last-minute amendment.
“I like Fiona, we supported Fiona when she ran for office,” said Lourdes Ramirez, a Republican who serves as president of the Sarasota County Council of Neighborhood Associations and has advocated for restrictions on Siesta Key development. “When I heard that she [sponsored] the amendment part of SB180, it really was a disappointment.”
McFarland did not return requests for comment.
Across Florida, the fight over SB 180 is beginning to test how much control the state can exert over local governments — and how far communities will go to resist it. County boards have shelved growth restrictions years in the making, while a coalition of cities and counties has taken the step of suing the state, arguing the law violates Florida’s constitutional guarantee of home rule, which allows county and municipal governments broad authority to govern themselves.
“We have to elect people who are willing to respect home rule,” said Conni Brunni, who chairs the Sarasota MAGA Patriots but is more broadly known for her efforts to elect far-right activists to the county school board and for her alliance with former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.
“This state is so diverse,” she said. “From the panhandle all the way down to Key West.”
SB 180 evolved from an earlier, narrower law
The roots of Senate Bill 180 trace back to a 2023 disaster-recovery measure passed in the wake of Hurricane Ian.
That law, which was called Senate Bill 250, was narrowly focused on 10 Southwest Florida counties hit hardest by the storm — including DeSoto, Manatee and Sarasota — and suspended local moratoriums and other growth restrictions in disaster zones. Lawmakers pitched it as a temporary, targeted fix to help homeowners rebuild quickly after one of the most destructive hurricanes in state history.
But this year, legislators revived and expanded the concept. By the time SB 180 cleared both chambers this spring, its reach extended statewide, restricting any county or city from imposing new limits on construction, adopting temporary building moratoriums or enforcing rules deemed “more restrictive or burdensome” than state standards — regardless of whether a storm had ever hit there.
The sweeping preemptions — added late in the process by McFarland — effectively strip local governments of their ability to regulate growth.
Since Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the measure into law in June 2025, its effects have rippled far beyond the storm-damaged coast. Counties across Florida have been forced to shelve regulations years in the making.
In Polk County, officials froze plans for stricter flood-zone protections; in Orange County, environmental advocates warned the law could derail resiliency efforts. And on the Suncoast — where questions about growth and development have long divided local politics — SB 180 has become a lightning rod, uniting uncommon political allies in opposition to it.
‘Learn from Manatee County’
“Learn from Manatee County,” urged Alexandra Coe, a former member of Sarasota County’s Charter Review Board, as the Sarasota MAGA Patriots discussed how to respond to SB180. To her, the neighboring county’s revolt against overdevelopment — and the conservative backlash now building there — offered both a warning and a roadmap.
In Manatee County, a slate of Republican commissioners swept into office last year on promises to rein in sprawl. But when they tried this summer to strengthen wetlands protections and limit growth in rural areas, Tallahassee stepped in. The state’s Department of Commerce warned their proposals would violate the new law preempting local control over development. The board shelved the vote.
Commissioner George Kruse, who fought off a developer-backed challenger for his seat in 2024, said the stream of calls and messages from constituents upset about the matter have been “continual.” Rather than sit back and hope legislators will listen to their concerns and pass an amendment to the law, Kruse said he viewed legal action as a more efficient means of challenging the law.
On Sept. 29, the county joined more than 20 local governments in a statewide lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of SB180. They argue the law violates the state’s home rule powers, which allow county and municipal governments broad authority to govern themselves.
“If we can get a court to put a stay on this bill, it’ll allow us to start collecting our impact fees,” said Kruse. “It’ll allow us to start protecting our wetland buffers and start protecting our development boundary.”
Amid the standoff between the county and the state, DeSantis’s office has struck back, initiating an audit by the state’s newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an office styled after Elon Musk’s efforts to strip federal spending during the first months of President Donald Trump’s second term.
Political observers interpreted the move — which was the first such audit targeting a Republican-dominated jurisdiction — as a warning shot to scare off other counties poised to take a stand against the governor.
But rather than deter opposition, the standoff has energized a rare coalition that crosses Florida’s usual political lines, drawing together activists and organizations with little else in common except their belief that Tallahassee has gone too far.
“Clearly, this needs to be a bipartisan effort, because it affects everyone,” said Connie Neeley, a member of the Phillipi Creek Coalition who pushed for the county to reform its stormwater protocols after floodwaters ruined homes during back-to-back storms in 2024.
Neeley, who describes herself as “Republicrat” and an independent, pointed to concerns about new development potentially raising flood risks, and called for grassroots pushback against any effort to block local governments from regulating building.
Hallman echoed the sentiment.
“It’s actually unifying,” he said, “during a time when we’re so divided.”
This story was produced by Suncoast Searchlight, a nonprofit newsroom of the Community News Collaborative serving Sarasota, Manatee and DeSoto counties. Learn more at suncoastsearchlight.org. Alice Herman is a an investigative/watchdog reporter at Suncoast Searchlight. Reach out to Alice at alice@suncoastsearchlight.org.
