by Steve Wilson
After taxpayers spent more than $200 million on highway landscaping in the previous fiscal year, a report says Florida lawmakers might need to consider a cap on that spending.
Florida Taxwatch analyzed the Florida Department of Transportation’s spending on highway landscaping, which can provide benefits such as erosion reduction, safety enhancements and support of local ecosystems.
The nonprofit, taxpayer-oriented organization recommends that lawmakers either enact a tiered pricing system such as the one included in Senate Bill 1226 or establish a cap on highway landscape spending like the one in Texas.
SB1226 died on the calendar without a floor vote.
The group also recommends that the state should conduct a review of its highway maintenance rating program to ensure taxpayer funds spent on plants is protected and create a way for transportation funds spent on landscaping to be tracked.
“Although highway landscaping is undoubtedly valuable, Florida TaxWatch finds it odd that the Legislature established a minimum spending threshold but no upper limit on landscape spending,” said Dominic Calabro, the president and chief executive officer of Florida Taxwatch, in the report. “This statute should be reviewed.”
The federal Highway Beautification Act of 1965 created funding programs for highway landscaping, but didn’t require states to participate. In 1999, Florida lawmakers passed a law that required 1% of every highway project to be spent on landscaping projects.
This was later increased to 1.5% in 2023 by lawmakers who also added a requirement that the plants be purchased from in-state nurseries and 50% of that total be used for large plant materials.
According to the Transportation Department, the agency tries to use indigenous plant species because it helps the ecosystem and they require less maintenance.
Regulations require no more than 10% of the same species, 20% of the same genus and 30% of the same family to make the landscaping more resistant to disease and provide better help to the local ecology.
The amount of money spent on landscaping has increased as lawmakers continue to spend more taxpayer funds on road projects. In fiscal 2014-15, the state spent $9.2 billion on the Transportation Department. As of last fiscal year, transportation received $13.6 billion, a 49% increase from only nine years ago.
According to the report, spending on highway landscaping increased by 37% during that same period. The report says expensive projects such as new highways, the construction of the Howard Frankland Bridge and widening projects with state highways and additional turnpike lanes contributed to the increase.
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Steve Wilson has been an award-winning writer and editor for nearly 20 years at newspapers in Georgia, Florida and Mississippi and is a U.S. Coast Guard veteran and University of Alabama graduate. Wilson is a regional editor for The Center Square.
Photo “Florida Highway” by Lars Plougmann. CC BY-SA 2.0.
