DeSantis signs new law

 Stop petition collection

Submit all signed petitions 

 

On Friday evening, Governor DeSantis signed HB 1205 into law.  Regrettably, RTCW volunteers are to cease petition gathering until further notice.  Submit all signed petitions in your possession to your county captain or regional directors immediately. If you have signed petitions for outside your county or region, mail them immediately to our Fort Myers office. (Address is on the petition and at the end of this email.)

 

We may soon instruct you to send signed petitions directly to Supervisor of Elections offices.For now, follow the instructions above.

 

Our attorneys are giving a thorough reading to the 58-page law, and we will provide a summary of their analysis in a few days. What you need to know now is that although some aspects of the law take effect in June and July, others are already effective, such as delivering signed petitions to Supervisor of Elections offices within ten days.

 

The law states that “The petition gatherer will be fined $50 per each day late for each petition form received after 10 days. That fine will be increased to $2,500 for each petition form received if the petition gatherer ‘acted willfully.’” These are substantial fines that can add up quickly.

 

We don’t want individual volunteers nor our organization acting in violation of the new law and incurring fines. Cease petition gathering. Act immediately to get all signed petitions to your county captain or regional director.

 

HB 1205 institutes a new definition of “petition circulator.” It now means “an entity or individual who collects signatures for the purpose of qualifying a proposed constitutional amendment for ballot placement. The term does not include a person who collects, delivers, or otherwise physically possesses no more than 25 signed petition forms in addition to his or her own signed petition form or a signed petition form belonging to the person's spouse, or the parent, child, grandparent, grandchild, or sibling of the person or the person's spouse.”

 

This goes into effect July 1st. All future petition circulators will have to register with the state. Applications will be available June 1st. We will soon provide more information about how this and other aspects of the new law apply to our RTCW campaign.

 

HB 1205 is a terrible law. It’s a power grab by the legislative and executive branches of government. It significantly erodes the inherent political power of the people of Florida by crushing grassroots citizen initiatives like ours with overly burdensome restrictions.

 

Our fight to protect and restore Florida’s waters is not over. FL RTCW believes strongly that parts of HB 1205 are unconstitutional and will be challenged in court and an injunction against the law may allow us to again collect petitions to qualify for the 2026 ballot.

 

Until that happens, however, we comply with the new law.