Not much bugs me more than an outsider meddling in home rule in the Keys.
Witness Florida State Sen. Alexis Calatayud, R-Miami, whose District 38 includes a big chunk of Miami-Dade, but not a speck of the Keys. The 28-year-old (that’s what her website says) Calatayud, elected in 2022, is a prolific bill-filer. She’s introduced 37 bills in the 2025 legislative session and co-sponsored another six. Most of the bills align with her school and education priorities with the occasional side trip to fund Parkinson’s disease research or to strengthen ties between Florida and Japan.
She apparently decided in February that she’d dabble in Monroe County’s delicately crafted collaboration on hurricane evacuation times and our Rate of Growth Ordinance (ROGO), which determines how much residential development the Keys can handle. On Feb. 28, she introduced Senate Bill 1730, which she innocuously labeled “Affordable Housing.”
The bill is a blatant attempt to expand developer rights under the state’s “Live Local Act,” preempt local governments, like Monroe County, from making growth and development decisions, add some 4,000 ROGO units for housing in the Keys and increase the current 24-hour hurricane evacuation time to 26 hours.
Reading the proposed bill’s language feels remarkably reminiscent of the developer-driven revamp of Key West’s development and redevelopment rules. Even if one isn’t a conspiracy theory adherent, I think it’s safe to assume that the Florida Live Local Act, which passed in 2023 and has been tinkered with annually, is an omnibus catch-all for making it way easier for developers to build what and where they want in Florida and much harder for local governments to manage their communities.
There’s some affordable housing assistance funding in Live Local, and the legislation was marketed as a boon to local communities, but mostly it’s a lot of state-mandated pro-development change orders.
What’s hugely annoying about Calatayud’s bill is its potential to derail two carefully crafted bills hammered together over almost 18 months among Monroe County, its cities, like Key West, and a dedicated grassroots group called the Keys ROGO Coalition, itself the brainchild of Last Stand, a nonprofit established in 1987 and committed to ensuring “sensible land-use planning that protects quality of life, natural resources and community character.”
Keys ROGO compromise at risk
Since November 2023, when the state floated the idea of adding upwards of 8,000 ROGOs to expand development in the Keys, Last Stand, the county, the cities and our two state legislators have collaborated politically and pragmatically to write legislation that would manage the murky conflicts of unchecked growth and development, hurricane evacuation times and sustaining economic viability and quality of life in the Keys.
It took months of statistical research, legislative slogging and pragmatic compromise to bring the two locally crafted bills into alignment. On March 26, with wording agreed upon, Sen. Ana Rodriguez’s bipartisan bill, SB1326, and Rep. Jim Mooney’s bipartisan bill, HB995, are in sync with Monroe County, its cities and the Keys ROGO Coalition.
The two bills limit hurricane evacuation times in the Keys to 24.5 hours. They cap additional ROGO permits at 825 spread over 10 years. A substantial portion of the new ROGOs are allocated to workforce or affordable housing. The proposed allocations, combined with existing allocations, reduce the potential for takings lawsuits filed by disgruntled landowners who didn’t pay much attention to Keys building restrictions. And local control remains just that. Local control.
There isn’t always much the 83,000 residents of the Keys agree on, but right up there on the shortlist is this: We live here, and protecting the fragile Keys ecosystems, our safety and quality of life is paramount.
It’s time for me — and for you — to do our part. Support the Mooney (jim.mooney@flhouse.gov) and Rodriguez (rodriguez.anamaria.web@flsenate.gov) bills. Vigorously oppose Calatayud’s (calatayud.Alexis.web@flsenate.gov) state takeover bill.
I wrote this in a November 2023 column:
“Can we put aside our fascination with minutiae and our escalating outrage with overdevelopment, failing infrastructure and political partisanship, and agree on this: Monroe County, Key West and the other Keys municipalities must speak with one voice when we tell the governor and the legislature that there’s no way under God’s blue sky our island chain can evacuate its visitors and residents before a hurricane if we add excessive building permits. To those who want all building stopped now and forever, get this straight: That’s not going to happen. To those property-rights folks who want 7,954 allocations to build insanely on vacant lots, that’s not happening either.”
I was hopeful, but not wholly reassured of success. The dogged work by the county, the cities and Last Stand’s ROGO coalition made it happen.
Learn more
House Bill 1730 would increase hurricane evacuation times in the Keys to 26 hours
Overview of the Florida Live Local Act in 2024
How it started: We live here, too.
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