The first Tuesday of Black History Month will see the second stop for Sen. Jonathan Martin's bill that would give the state the ultimate authority over Confederate statues in Florida's cities.
SB 1122 would impose penalties on local officials who removed those and other historical monuments after July 1, 2024.
"It is the intent of the Legislature that the state not allow a historical monument or memorial to be removed, damaged, or destroyed. Accurate history belongs to all Floridians in perpetuity," the bill contends, adding that "an elected official of a local government acting in his or her official capacity who knowingly and willfully violates this section on or after July 1, 2024, may be subject to
suspension or removal from office by the Governor."
Sanctions include civil penalties and required restitution for monument restoration from the responsible lawmakers' personal accounts.
The measure is intended to "protect Floridian and American history," the sponsor said in a previous committee.
The Senate bill would also give standing to any aggrieved party to sue if a monument was "removed, damaged, or destroyed on or after October 1, 2020," as long as they used the edifice for "remembrance," a loose term with a wide variety of meanings. Martin said in its first committee that was the date the Christopher Columbus memorial was removed from the St. Petersburg Pier.
"Going back to 2020 isn't that far," he said in the bill's first committee. "They're still around and they can still be returned to where they were. It isn't too late to do the right thing."
The Senate product is more punitive than Rep. Dean Black's House version, which saw major changes via a substitute passed by its first committee of reference. The House bill now stipulates the structure must have been displayed for 25 years, with an original expectation of permanent installation.
The preemption language is explicit in HB 395, ceding to the state "the whole field of removal, damage, or destruction of historic Florida monuments or memorials to the exclusion of any existing or future local government ordinance, regulation, or rule."
In a contrast to the original filing, which included a retroactive condition that would seem to be a remedy to Jacksonville's removal of two Confederate monuments in 2020 and 2023, the current House bill is focused on the future and seems to abandon any hope that the Legislature can compel local officials to reinstall previously removed memorials.
Rather, in future occurrences "the court shall declare the ordinance, regulation, or rule invalid and issue a permanent injunction against the local government prohibiting it from enforcing such ordinance, regulation, or rule. It is no defense that in enacting the ordinance, regulation, or rule the local government was acting in good faith or upon advice of counsel."
The new language also gives localities recourse to move monuments permanently, but that must still be on public property, "at a site with similar prominence, honor, visibility, and access within the same county or municipality as determined by the department after consultation with the Florida Historical Commission or, for a historic Florida military monument or memorial, after consultation with the Department of Veterans' Affairs."
Previously, there was no mechanism for permanent relocation of the memorial in the House bill.
Gov. Ron DeSantis started off Black History Month in the House bill sponsor's district by voicing his "100%" commitment to keeping the structures up in perpetuity.
"I have not seen the legislation, but I've been very clear ever since I've been Governor, I do not support taking down monuments in this state," DeSantis said Thursday in Jacksonville.
The Governor said calls for the removal of "some Civil War general or whatever" have evolved into other forms of historical erasure, such as "taking down Thomas Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt and (Abraham) Lincoln, taking (George) Washington's name off schools."
"You're already up to, like, Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. I mean, you're going to go on and on there because … if you're going to apply some type of hyperwoke 21st century test to pass people, you going to run into turbulence with MLK Jr., you're going to run into turbulence with a lot of people," he added.
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