While four proposed statutes this Florida legislative session sought to clarify and resolve problems with the original 2021 statute cancelling local licensing by July 2023, only one of those has significantly advanced through committees and last week it was amended to simply extend the deadline for cancellation to July 2024.
SB 1570, originally proposed on March 3, 2023, amended 489.117, Florida Statutes, and set forth a revised list of specialty construction for which local governments could require a local license and prohibited local governments from requiring a local license to pull a building permit. You can read that summary in full by clicking here.
That bill moved into the regulated industries committee, where, on Friday, March 31, 2023, the committee proposed a substitute removing all of the proposed changes to 489.117, Florida Statutes, and instead amending 163.211, Florida Statutes, as follows:
163.211 Licensing of occupations preempted to state.—
(2) PREEMPTION OF OCCUPATIONAL LICENSING TO THE STATE. — The licensing of occupations is expressly preempted to the state, and this section supersedes any local government licensing requirement of occupations with the exception of the following:
(a) Any local government that imposed licenses on occupations before January 1, 2021. However, any such local government licensing of occupations expires on July 1, 2024 July 1, 2023.
The revised statute would take effect as soon as it is signed by Governor DeSantis. You can read our summary of the original implementation of this statute in 2021 by clicking here.
The net effect of the statute is that local governments and local contractors alike now have an extra year to prepare for the cancellation of local licenses. But, some local municipalities have already started removing local licenses and stopped renewing them as early as 2022. Contractors should stay on the lookout for updates from their local building departments and contractor groups, and should reach out to their building departments for clarification if this extension becomes law.