The next time one of your state legislators tell you that they are in favor of small government and letting the people decide don’t necessarily believe it. While they may mouth those platitudes to mirror the sentiments of most Floridians, they may still believe they know what is best for local governments and you. An example is a bill being introduced in the senate to take away the rights of municipalities to bring water and sewer projects forward.

Known as SB 442 it is emblematic of a problem that municipalities in non-chartered counties face. Over time non-chartered counties have come to resemble municipalities in the services they provide. This has resulted in a competition between municipalities and counties that Chapter 180, F.S. was written to avoid. Counties are very much political sub divisions of the state and were created to help the state government in providing state services.

On the other hand, municipalities are also creatures of the state but with the difference that they would be formed by a group of citizens under the auspices of the legislature to provide urban services such as water and sewer. The intention of “home rule” was to allow cities to be centers of urban life surrounded by the rural area in the unincorporated part of the county.  As time passed and the rural areas became urban with higher densities outside the existing city’s boundaries, the city would annex those unincorporated areas and provide urban services to the newly added residents.

The legislature should be encouraging more annexation of unincorporated areas into municipalities as they go from rural to urban. The legislature should also encourage builders of larger, newer developments to provide urban services and to incorporate as cities as part of the approval process.  By having only municipalities providing urban services, the schizophrenic nature of non-chartered counties in terms of what and whether to provide urban services would cease.

As a state, we need to distinguish between the functions that counties should provide and those that municipalities should. If each acted only within the scope of its responsibilities, then instead of competition developing, a symbiotic relationship would occur between non-chartered counties and their municipalities. This would further the people’s right to “home rule” and lessen the issues of “dual taxation.”

Counties need to remember that when surrounding areas are annexed into a municipality the people in those annexed areas are still citizens of the county. They still live within the county, they still vote within the county and they still pay county taxes. The nature of the services provided by the municipality is essential in allowing for increased density and development to occur in the area outside current municipal boundaries.  This development will occur and the citizens of the unincorporated area will demand urban services. Does it not make more sense to have the entity that was created to provide such service to do so? Annexation is a good thing and not something that should be looked on as an encroachment.