The Florida Legislature unanimously approved a measure to provide grants and tax breaks to North Florida businesses and residents impacted by Hurricane Idalia in late August. The provisions will give a boost to farmers in the Big Bend area where the storm made landfall and help all Floridians to make their homes more resilient for future storms.
The legislation is now making its way to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ desk, given that the state House had already passed the bill on Tuesday and the state Senate approved it Wednesday, as part of Florida’s special legislative session this week.
North Florida Republican state Sen. Corey Simon, the bill sponsor, said the proposal will bring plenty of help to Florida farmers in his district “that they were so desperately asking for.”
“It’s good that folks are seeing rural Florida,” he told his fellow legislators. “And seeing our producers that are out there. Their needs. Their wants. They don’t ask for much. They don’t ask for much at all.”
The measure provides farmers with a revolving $75 million 10-year loan program that provides low-interest or interest-free loans to agriculture and aquaculture producers.
It will also allocate $37.5 million for a timber grant program that authorizes the Department of Agriculture to assist timber landowners in Charlotte, Citrus, Columbia, Dixie, Gilchrist, Hamilton, Hernando, Jefferson, Lafayette, Levy, Madison, Manatee, Pasco, Pinellas, Sarasota, Suwanee and Taylor counties. The maximum grant would be for $250,000.
And it will give $50 million for hurricane repair and recovery projects in counties that received Federal Emergency Management disaster designations.
There are other tax relief provisions for farmers affected by Idalia, including sales tax refunds for fencing materials to replace damaged property and building materials used to replace or repair nonresidential farm buildings damaged by the storm, as well as a gas tax refund for fuel used for hurricane debris removal.
The $416 million measure includes more than $181 million allocated to the My Safe Florida Home Program that was created during the 2022 legislation to provide hurricane mitigation inspections and grants for qualified homeowners up to $10,000. That is expected to address the waiting list for the program, which totals more than 17,000 applications, according to a House bill analysis.
That analysis also reports that since the program went into place, more than $209 million has been obligated to homeowners who are in various stages of completing work on their homes.
South Florida Democratic Sen. Jason Pizzo asked Simon if the state is collecting data to gauge the efficacy of the My Safe Florida Home program. Simon said he was not aware of that. Pizzo said that the Legislature frequently has allocated funding to certain programs “without any benchmark,” and said he hoped they would begin doing that in the future.
This article originally appeared in florida phoenix