Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Statute Compliance topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
CRA attorney tells board to require developers to specify statutory uses before approving rebates
Summary
Attorney Clifford Shepherd advised the Fort Myers CRA to make developers state which statutory expenditure category their TIF rebate would fund and to send applications to legal review before board approval to ensure compliance with Florida law.
At the workshop, CRA counsel Clifford Shepherd urged a procedural and legal tightening: require developers to identify, in writing, which section of the statute they rely on for a rebate and have legal staff screen applications before they reach the board. Shepherd framed the issue as statutory compliance rather than policy discretion.
“You can only spend money in the ways outlined in the statute,” Shepherd said, arguing that some recent rebate requests lacked the necessary legal justification. He told commissioners the guidelines were revised so the onus is on applicants to explain how their request fits a lawful category such as infrastructure, demolition, foundation work or life-safety improvements. Shepherd added that if an application is legally insufficient, he will reject it: “If an illegal application is sent to me for review, I have no problem...I would reject.”
Shepherd also clarified that penalties or reductions tied to deadlines extended by executive orders are potentially vulnerable to legal challenge; however, a schedule that withholds awards only for developer-caused delays (and not for executive-order extensions) can be drafted to be enforceable.
Direction taken: the board agreed to route applications to legal review for sufficiency before formally presenting them for CRA approval and to update application language to place the initial burden of proof on applicants.
