| 08 March 2010
Space Florida: Legislative Update 2010
Overview of Week 1:
During the first week of session, aerospace industry members came to Tallahassee to meet and speak with legislators as part of Space Day. Significant budget and policy issues were discussed in committees and in individual Member meetings. We especially want to recognize each of the legislators who are sponsoring space-related bills including:
Space Florida Board Members Senator Thad Altman and Representative Ralph Poppell; Senator Mike Haridopolos, Senator Don Gaetz, Senator Lee Constantine, and Senator John Thrasher. Representative Steve Crisafulli, Representative Ritch Workman, Representative Scott Plakon, and Representative Sandy Adams joined the Senators in sponsoring important legislation that will positively impact our space-based economic business climate for Florida.
The very active Space Caucus has worked aggressively to lay the foundations and build awareness and support for the space industry. Today, they number 46 bi-partisan members from both the House and Senate. If you would like to see which members are actively involved on behalf of space, please go to www.spacecaucus.com.
Even while this was the first week of session, several bills of the following space-based bills moved through committee(s).
SB1776/HB969 – Legislation altering the 2008 Infrastructure Appropriation
SB1776: sponsored by Senator Altman, passed the Senate Commerce committee unanimously after some debate and discussion over how the funds would be used. This bill will be heard next in Senate Transportation Economic Development Appropriations.
HB969: sponsored by Representative Crisafulli, passed the House Transportation and Economic Development Appropriations committee unanimously with much support from committee members. This bill will be heard next in the House Full Appropriations Council on Education and Economic Development.
SB1178 – Cost and Benefit Analysis
This bill, sponsored by incoming Senate President Haridopolos, passed out of the Senate Finance and Tax committee unanimously. Though there was some discussion on how this can be used in the future to analyze economic development legislation, the committee supported the bill. This bill will be heard next by the Policy and Steering Committee on Ways and Means.
HB607 – Research and Development Tax Credits
Sponsored by Representative Plakon, this tax credit legislation was work shopped by the House Economic Development Policy committee. There was much support both from the general business population but from the aerospace industry as this would add a great incentive which many competitor states already have in place.
Other Priority Legislation – STAR & Commercial Launch Zone
Both the Space Transportation and Revitalization (STAR) Act (SB2500 & HB1389) and the Commercial Launch Zone legislation (SB1188 & HB133), which are priorities of Space Florida, will likely be heard by the Revenue Estimating Conference (REC) on Friday March 12.
Space Florida released the results of its research on the economic impact of space in Florida. The county by county data is available on the spaceflorida.gov website under Legislative.
The $8B of investment in space activity in Florida represents $20B in economic impact to all 67 of 67 counties and ONLY 3% of the global space activity. Florida’s opportunity is to capture as much of the 97% global space activity that does not exist in Florida today.
If you have any questions about any of the legislation, please call: Chris Snow (321) 474-9754 or Deb Spicer (321) 947-4300.
Click Below to open a full, graphic version of this Legislative Update:
| File | Description | File size | Last Modified |
|---|---|---|---|
 Week 1 2010 Legislative Update | 192 Kb | 11/03/10 17:18 |
