To be fair, Gov. Rick Scott signed the much-loathed HB 631 back in March, when he was still in the mode of a right-wing, Trump-loving, rich guy with a private beach in Naples to protect from barefoot interlopers.
Naturally, that particular version of our governor would embrace legislation designed to discourage cities and counties from allowing riffraff to contaminate snazzy private beaches. The upper crust versus the unwashed masses? Of course, the old Rick Scott was going to sign the bill.
The law went into effect July 1, amid much public grumbling. By July 12, the reconfigured Scott, a wanna-be U.S. senator in a dead heat with the incumbent, was ready to scuttle the unpopular law. Sort of. He issued an executive order directing the Florida Department of Environmental Protection “to do everything in [its] power to advocate to keep our beaches open and public. Also, I am putting a moratorium on any new state regulation that could inhibit public beach access and [I am] also urging local government officials to take similar steps to protect Floridians’ access to the beach.”
Tracking our governor’s abrupt ideological shifts these last few months could give a fellow whiplash. A hardcore Tea Party conservative and Donald Trump sycophant has repackaged himself as a born-again environmentalist, champion of school funding, opponent of off-shore drilling, advocate for storm-stricken Puerto Rican, signer of gun-control legislation.
If nothing else this campaign season, Rick Scott has proved that a man can change. Especially a man looking to impress a changing electorate. Still, his turnaround on beach access has been something to behold. Just 12 days after the controversial law took effect, the governor was already trying to inoculate himself against the backlash.
Not that Scott’s executive order altered the substance of the law. Local governments trying to preserve traditional beach access must still negotiate a cumbersome legal process and acquire a circuit judge’s approval before invoking Florida’s “doctrine of customary use.” That’s the legal theory — embraced by the Florida Supreme Court in 1974 — that enshrines the public’s right to frolic on private beachfronts where “the recreational use of the sandy area adjacent to the mean high tide has been ancient, reasonable, without interruption and free from dispute.” The court reasoned that beaches require a more expansive view of property law: “No part of Florida is more exclusively hers, nor more properly utilized by her people than her beaches.”
(The concept of beach access as a fundamental right was bolstered by the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday when it rejected an appeal from a California billionaire angered when the state kept him from blocking an access road to his private beach, a famous surfer haunt.)
Average Joe Floridians may not be schooled in the “doctrine of public use,” but they sure as hell resent getting kicked off their longtime favorite beaches because of some hotel, condominium or superrich hedge fund exec wants them gone. Scott ran headlong into that sentiment Sept. 9 on Santa Rosa Beach, when he was so cowed by demonstrators outraged by HB 631 that he skipped out on his own political rally.
Oddly, this statewide controversy seems to have grown out of one very local conflict. Back in 2016, the Walton County Commission upset some very influential beachfront homeowners, including Mike Huckabee, the Fox News commentator, with an ordinance that barred no trespassing signs or fencing on the sand between the water and the dune line. HB 631 seems to have been crafted to please Huckabee and his neighborhoods.
But beachfront class warfare has spread across Florida. Since HB 631 passed (with support from both Republican and Democrat legislators, who also know where the sugar daddies live) no trespassing signs have been sprouting like weeds. Videos of cops rousting tourists off so-called private beaches are bouncing around the internet — not images a politician wants to explain in an election year. (Wisely, the House sponsor of HB 631, State Rep. Katie Edwards-Walpole from Plantation, whose landlocked district is 10 miles from the beachfront, has decided not to seek reelection this year.)
But I wonder, as our beaches erode and sea waters rise, whether any of this is worth the tussle. When taxpayers ante up millions to replace beaches washed away by ever more powerful storms, the new sandy expanses constitute public property. We paid for it. It’s ours. No matter who’s living in the beachfront mansions along the shore. With more than 400 miles of critically eroded beaches in need of replenishment, Florida has plenty more beach access in the works.
The real problem is global warming, which scientists expect will raise sea levels in Florida two, three feet, maybe more, over the next four decades. The doctrine of customary use loses its zing when most beachfront real estate is under water. When the waves come lapping against Rick Scott’s beachfront mansion, the commoners will be welcome on his beach. As long as they bring their own snorkels.
