DeSantis signs bill preserving GRU Authority’s governance over GRU

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

Updated at 7:20 p.m. with quote from Commissioner Eastman.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Governor Ron DeSantis has signed CS/CS/HB 1451, which preserves the GRU Authority’s governance of Gainesville Regional Utilities. The law takes effect immediately.

GRU CEO Ed Bielarski said, “With a stroke of the Governor’s pen, the seemingly never-ending attacks upon the governance of GRU have been put to rest. This comes days after the GRU Authority approved a budget with no electric base rate increases for the third consecutive year. GRU is headed in the right direction, and the Governor’s action today ensures the Authority can continue to support our customer-first approach. This is a huge win for GRU and its customers.”

Gainesville City Commissioner Bryan Eastman said, “Seventy-five percent of Gainesville voters voted to change course because the GRU takeover has failed. The opposition was broad, bipartisan, and overwhelming… Yet today, Tallahassee chose to side with the special interests that have wanted control of GRU for decades instead of the people paying the bills. If residents are unhappy about their GRU bills, they should let the legislative delegation know. The Legislature chose to overrule their own constituents, and now they own the results.”

The signed bill includes the following section:

Section 4. (1) The subject of a regional utilities authority created by the Legislature through charter amendment after January 1, 2023, is expressly preempted to the state.
2) This section shall take effect upon this act becoming a law.

The GRU Authority, consisting of five Directors appointed by the Governor, was created when Governor DeSantis signed HB 1645 on June 28, 2023, and that statute took effect on October 1, 2023. Gainesville voters twice passed a ballot referendum that would return governance of the utility to the City Commission, but the results of both elections have been stayed while lawsuits from the Authority make their way through the courts.

Because the Authority was originally created through a change in the City’s Charter, the City argued that the City Commission could regain governance of the utility by a voter referendum to change the Charter, and the two ballot measures, which both passed, were attempts to do that; CS/CS/HB 1451 prevents the City from making any further attempts to change those sections of the Charter by preempting any changes related to the Authority to the legislature.