©2024 The News Service of Florida
Attorneys for the Legislature and state agencies Monday urged the Florida Supreme Court to reject two appeals in a long-running legal battle over state conservation funding.
Environmental groups went to the Supreme Court in April after the 1st District Court of Appeal upheld the dismissal of challenges to how the Legislature spent money 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 that the state improperly diverted money to other expenses.
The allegations involve state budget decisions for the 2015-2016 fiscal year.
In a February ruling, a three-judge panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal agreed with a 2022 decision by Leon County Circuit Judge J. Lee Marsh that the funding issue had become moot.
But environmental groups such as Florida Defenders of the Environment and the Florida Wildlife Federation, filed petitions in April asking the Supreme Court to take up the dispute.
In two similar briefs filed Monday, attorneys for the state argued the Supreme Court should reject the petitions.
“The FDE’s (Florida Defenders of the Environment’s) endless procedural maneuvers have served no better purpose than to exhaust public resources and needlessly prolong this obsolete proceeding,” one of the briefs said. “This (Supreme) Court should decline review and bring much-needed finality to this wasteful and unfruitful litigation.”
