February 25, 2021
Florida House District 2 Rep. Alex Andrade on Wednesday filed a new bill to impose term limits for the Emerald Coast Utility Authority board, days after another ECUA bill was withdrawn.
Andrade’s bill states that anyone elected to the ECUA board for three consecutive terms would not be eligible to run for the next succeeding term.
District 1 Rep. Michelle Salzman filed an ECUA term limit bill earlier this year, but withdrew the bill last week. She called for an extensive operational audit of ECUA and other water utilities created by special acts to gain “a clear picture of how we will move forward with legislation.” The bill had received the support of the local Legislative Delegation comprised of Salzman, Andrade and Sen. Doug Broxson.
February 20, 2021
Rep. Michelle Salzman has withdrawn a local bill that would have imposed term limits for members of the Emerald Coast Utilities Authority. Instead, Salzman and other legislators across the state are setting their collective sights on ECUA and similar utilities across the state.
Salzman set out to rewrite that legislative act that gives ECUA its authority after a 2018 grand jury investigation that was not made public until September 2020. The freshman District 1 representative’s bill would have limited ECUA board members to three, four-year terms.
“What we have discovered during the course of this process is that this issue is not specific to just our area. There are other ‘ECUA’s’ around Florida and for that reason we are partnering with other legislators across the state to request the office of the Public Counsel to conduct a study of how some utilities in Florida currently operate and report its recommendations back to the legislature,” Salzman tol