After the removal of a long-standing roadside memorial this year blindsided the families of those it honored, lawmakers are proposing a fix to ensure such a thing never happens again.
Doral Sen. Ana Maria Rodriguez and Highland Beach Rep. Peggy Gossett-Seidman filed twin bills (SB 572, HB 421) to require government or private entities to "make best efforts" to give advance notice of any changes to a roadside memorial.
That includes removal, alterations, dismantling or destruction of the structure. Notice would be due to the entity or person that installed the memorial and "any person whose deceased loved one is commemorated" by it.
The measure, which would go into effect July 1, does not include any criminal or civil penalties for ignoring it.
Dubbed the "Dori Slosberg, Carolina Gil Gallego, Margo Scher, Crystal Cordes and Ryan Rashidian Memorial Notification Act," the legislation is named for five teens who died in a horrific car crash in Boca Raton on Feb. 23, 1996, and the memorial installed for them.
In mid-August, Palm Beach County road crews removed the memorial — four Christian crosses and a Jewish star — on Palmetto Park Road. After a week and a half of outcry and admission by the county that the memorial was removed "in error," crews reconstructed it.
Inquiries by the Palm Beach Sheriff's Office and Commissioner Mari Woodward found the memorial was removed following a complaint about another shrine nearby that obstructed the right of way.
Woodward told WPTV county engineers surveyed the area and removed three memorials. Photos of the memorial to the teens who died in 1996 show it situated in a grassed area safely distanced from the road.
One of those it commemorated, Dori Slosberg, was the daughter of former state Rep. Irving Slosberg, a champion for roadway safety legislation and founder of the nonprofit Dori Saves Lives.
He and his daughter Emily Slosberg-King, his successor in the Legislature and Dori's twin sister, told WPTV that none of the families were informed of plans to remove the memorial or any complaints about it.
Palm Beach officials confirmed the memorial was removed "in error." The land on which the memorial stood didn't belong to the county but to the Lake Worth drainage district, which approved its construction years before.
Slosberg has since called for an investigation.
Rodriguez told Florida Politics she wants to prevent others from enduring the "great emotional distress" the memorial's removal caused.
"With this bill, I hope to prevent incidents like this from occurring in the future and allow loved ones of those being commemorated to emotionally prepare for the removal or alteration of roadside memorials," she said by text.
In 2019, Slosberg-King successfully sponsored a bill that made texting while driving a primary offense, meaning an officer would need only to see a motorist using their phone while driving to pull them over.
Before the measure went into effect, distracted driving was a secondary offense. It could only be penalized if police witnessed drivers or motorcyclists committing an infraction such as swerving, speeding or running a red light.
Slosberg-King tried the following year to expand a law the Legislature approved in 2009 granting police authority to pull vehicles over if a driver, front-seat passenger or passengers under 18 were not wearing seat belts.
The measure (HB 179) died without a hearing and hasn't been returned.
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