Why I want to keep Florida’s local governments strong

David Silverberg
Advocacy

Freedom of speech in Florida, with respect and appreciation to Norman Rockwell. (Illustration: AI for Silverberg4Florida/ChatGPT)

April 13, 2026 by David Silverberg, candidate for Florida Senate, District 28

Most people don’t know this but until now America had a secret superpower.

That superpower was the relationship of its federal, state and local governments.

They were like the three legs of a stool, each one contributing to the strength of the whole. Each one could provide support for the others and fill in if gaps appeared.

This was especially true when it came to disasters and nowhere more so than in Florida.

If a local government couldn’t cope with a disaster—like a hurricane—then the state government could step in. If the state government needed assistance, it could count on the federal government. Each form of government, by being autonomous and making its own decisions, by functioning in a democratic fashion according to law, and by cooperating together, created a remarkably strong whole that served the needs of all the people, especially in emergencies or under duress.

Until now.

Unfortunately, the stool has been broken. At the federal level Donald Trump bullies and threatens all other governments in his quest for complete domination and dictatorial power.

In Florida a governor seeking to rule in the Trump mold, an ambitious, ideologically-driven attorney general, a rapacious chief financial officer and an extremist legislature are waging war on “home rule,” the ability of town, city and county governments to make their own decisions.

Overruling home rule is usually called “preemption,” in the sense that state government preempts local government powers and takes decisionmaking out of their hands.

I call it “Big Tallahassee”—and it’s been going on far too long.

If elected state Senator from the 28th District, the area including Collier and Hendry counties and the Lee County area east of Route 75, I intend to do everything I can to protect, strengthen and respect local governments, not just in my district, but in all of Florida.

We just had an example of Big Tallahassee bullying right here in the 28th District; the state took away the City of Naples’ power over the airport within its city limits. The city will no longer name the commissioners on the airport’s board. Instead, they’ll be elected by the surrounding county.

This was proposed in House Bill 4005 by Florida House Rep. Adam Botana (R-80-Estero), whose district doesn’t include the City of Naples. He had no relationship to the airport. He just decided to strip the Naples city council of its authority and the rest of the Republican legislature and the governor went along with it. Naples’ desires were simply ignored and overridden.

(Botana is being challenged this year by Meg Titcomb, whose website, VoteMegTitcomb.com, will soon be operational.)

Another example occurred last year when members of the Fort Myers City Council voted not to participate in the 287g immigration enforcement program but were subsequently threatened and bullied into surrendering to Big Tallahassee.

Other examples of Big Tallahassee overreach are passage and enactment of bills preempting local governments from planning land use changes after disasters (Senate Bill (SB) 180, 2025), stopping local governments from trying to reduce harmful environmental emissions (Committee Substitute (CS) /House Bill (HB) 1217, 2026), prohibiting local governments from using non-gasoline power tools (SB 290, 2026), or from seeking diversity in hiring decisions (CS/CS/SB 1134, 2026).

Big Tallahassee even stopped local governments from mandating heat breaks for workers (CS/CS/HB 433, 2024)—and that’s really saying something in Florida’s sunbaked fields. I swear, Big Tallahassee would have denied water to Jesus on the way to Calvary.

I’m not the only one saying this. On Sunday, April 12, in the Naples Daily News, in an op-ed titled “Naples is losing its constitutional right to local control,” authors Gregory Fowler and Stacy Vermylen pointed out that, “Taken together, these actions point to a clear shift. Home rule is no longer functioning as a broad constitutional right. It is becoming a shrinking space in which cities can act only where the state ban has not yet intervened.”

Even legislation with relatively benign intent, like the Live Local Act, which was introduced and shepherded to passage by Sen. Kathleen Passidomo in 2023, has preemptive provisions—prompting the Sarasota County Commission to challenge it in court.

So far, these preemptions have had three overall purposes. The first is to end home rule and strip local governments of the power to make land use decisions, like determining their own zoning and preserving the natural environment.

The reason for this is simple and obvious: developers, their legislative puppets (and in many cases legislators who are also land speculators, realtors and developers themselves) don’t want any interference as they pursue profits by paving over Florida. They truly don’t care what we local residents want, think or need.

A second purpose is to prevent any effort to prepare for the effects of climate change. Big Tallahassee, following Donald Trump’s dictates, denies that climate change exists. But it’s not enough that they themselves deny it, they want to force everyone else to deny it and ignore it—and this particularly means crippling local governments that are more alert, aware and awake to the dangers climate change presents.

Nowhere is this truer than in Collier County, part of the 28th Senate District I’m running to represent. With its over 20 miles of shoreline along the Gulf of Mexico, Collier County’s beaches are ailing and eroding, after being battered by repeated hurricanes, sea level rise and salt water intrusion.

But if Collier County ever tried to change its zoning or planning in order to cope with this, it would be stopped by Big Tallahassee.

The third reason for preemption is to aid Donald Trump’s efforts to turn back the clock to fossil fuel use and stop any kind of renewable energy. Trump is insisting on fossil fuels, fossil wars, fossil pollution and fossil costs—no doubt to pour fossil cash into his own pockets.

Big Tallahassee is completely on board with this. What else are we to make of a law that prohibits local governments from requiring use of electric leaf blowers or any other non-gasoline landscaping equipment to tend its lawns? Big Tallahassee is seeking a new Florida fossil age and it’s trying to send all of us the way of the dinosaurs.

It’s time we were no longer led by dinosaurs with fossilized thinking.

If elected to the Florida Senate I intend to do everything I can to preserve, protect and defend the integrity and autonomy of our local governments.

I can’t say I’ll be able to stop all preemption but I can certainly say that I’ll be on the look out for it. I’ll fight it any way and any time that I see it. I want the people of Florida to have a say in how they’re governed; that’s just Democracy 101.

When it comes to the City of Naples, I will certainly explore ways to rescind HB 4005.

The next assault on home rule will come in a special session of the legislature that is likely to be held in the coming weeks. In that session Gov. Ron DeSantis and his cohorts will attempt to end property taxes.

They’re painting this effort as an anti-tax way to improve affordability for Floridians. But that’s because they don’t dare criticize the real reason Floridians are in an affordability crisis—Donald Trump’s wars, tariffs and mismanagement of the economy.

So don’t buy their bull: it’s a trap and a con—and another assault on home rule and Florida’s local governments.

If property taxes are eliminated, local governments will be starved for revenue along with the policemen, firemen and school teachers they employ. Local services—think of your water supplies and sewerage, repairs to roads and bridges, even things like marriage and business licenses—will be crippled. Public schools, already under assault by Big Tallahassee, will be further damaged.

What is more, ending property taxes will only mean that everyday Floridians will ultimately pay more, adding to their affordability woes. The revenue lost by ending property taxes will need to be made up somehow. That will likely be in the form of sales taxes. Those taxes will hit everyday Floridians hard, while billionaires with huge mansions taking up large tracts of property will get off Scott-free and avoid paying their fair share to support the services and facilities that make their lavish lifestyles possible.

Ending property taxes is a bad idea hatched by Big Tallahassee to crush home rule and local governments. Floridians should fight it and I certainly intend to do so.

America’s strength has always been in its local governments where people have the most say. We shouldn’t let Big Tallahassee bully and order our towns around. If elected, I can’t promise a perfect outcome—but I can certainly promise a vigorous effort.

Florida should be run by and for Floridians; not developers, not speculators, not dinosaurs—and certainly not for the convenience and profit of Big Tallahassee.

I hope you agree and you’ll join me in this fight. Please volunteer and donate and in November vote for David Silverberg for state Senate from District 28.

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