©2024 The News Service of Florida
Environmental groups Thursday urged the Florida Supreme Court to take up a long-running legal battle over state conservation funding.
Attorneys for the groups filed a brief arguing the 1st District Court of Appeal erred in February when it upheld the dismissal of the case, which stems from a 2014 constitutional amendment that requires setting aside a portion of real-estate documentary stamp tax revenues for conservation efforts.
Environmental groups said the money, which is put in what is known as the Land Acquisition Trust Fund, is supposed to go to buying and managing additional property and have contended in the case that the state improperly diverted money to other expenses.
The allegations involve state budget decisions for the 2015-2016 fiscal year.
In February’s ruling, a three-judge panel of the appeals court agreed with a 2022 decision by Leon County Circuit Judge J. Lee Marsh that the case had become moot.
“Key to our analysis is the narrow scope within which the plaintiffs consistently framed their claims,” the appeals court ruling said. “They alone controlled their pleadings, and they challenged only the validity of specific 2015-16 appropriations, asking the trial court to order those funds returned to the LATF (Land Acquisition Trust Fund). Once those appropriations were completed or reverted and the fiscal year ended, however, no remedy remained within reach of the active complaint as pleaded, through no fault of the defendants. The claims were moot.”
But in the brief Thursday at the Supreme Court, attorneys for the environmental groups disputed that the issues are moot.
In part, the brief said the “appropriations recur every year including in the 2024 legislative session that just concluded.”
The groups are the Florida Wildlife Federation, St. Johns Riverkeeper, the Environmental Confederation of Southwest Florida and the Sierra Club.
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