Lazaro Aleman
news@greenepublishing.com
If one of two bills winding their way through the legislative process make it to the governor’s desk and are signed into law, Madison County could well become the new terminus for the Suncoast Connector.
House Bill 6059, which District 7 State Representative introduced early in the current legislative session, passed 115 to 2 in the House on Thursday, April 15.
HB-6059 removes Jefferson County as the terminus for the toll road, in keeping with the expressed request of Jefferson County officials via a “No Build” resolution they approved in December.
HB-6059 does not propose an alternative terminus for the toll road, but in a legislative delegation hearing in Jefferson County late last year, Jason Shoaf mentioned the strong possibility of Madison becoming the new terminus.
“I’m completely against the toll road,” Shoaf said on Dec. 17. “We don’t need it. And if they’re going to build it, I’m going to do everything I can to get it built in Madison County. They want it.”
The only problem with HB-6059 is that its companion bill in the Senate, SB-1590, is not making headway.
Introduced by District 3 State Senator Loranne Ausley in February, SB-1590 has been stuck in the Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Tourism and Economic Development since Tuesday, March 2.
Elsewhere, however, a bill is moving forward that, if approved, would significantly alter the controversial Multi-Use Corridors of Regional Economic Significance (M-CORES), of which the Suncoast Connector is one of three proposed corridors. This bill definitely seeks to shift the toll road terminus to Madison County.
On Friday, April 16, the House Appropriations Committee responded favorably to SB-100 and released it to the full House for consideration. The 16-page SB-100, which Republican Senator Gayle Harrell introduced, seeks to dismantle a large part of the M-CORES legislation and divert much of the program’s funding to the improvement of rural roads and other existing infrastructure.
SB-100, which the Senate approved in March, would cancel the M-CORES Heartland Parkway between Collier and Polk counties and likewise delay the extension of the Florida Turnpike from Wildwood to the Suncoast Parkway in Citrus County. It would, however, leave in place the Suncoast Connector, although its terminus would be shifted from Jefferson to Madison.
In the specific language of SB-100, it instructs the Florida Department of Transportation to “develop and include in the work program the construction of controlled access facilities as necessary to achieve free flow of traffic on U.S. 19, beginning at the terminus of the Suncoast Parkway 2, Phase 3, north predominantly along U.S. 19 to a logical terminus on Interstate 10 in Madison County.”
According to the timeline set by the proposed legislation, the plan to extend the Suncoast Parkway north along U.S. 19 to the Florida and Georgia Parkway and ultimately beyond must be developed by the end of 2035.
It is reported that if the legislation were to be approved and the governor sign off on it, the Suncoast Connector would be the only portion of the M-CORES plan to survive in the current legislative session.
The original M-CORES legislation, which former Senate President Bill Galvano pushed through the 2019 legislative session as his pet project, set a completion date of 2030 for all three corridors.
Meanwhile, two proposals sponsored by Democrats to scrap the entire M-CORES project failed to get any traction in either chamber. Senate Bill 1030 and House Bill 763 – introduced by Senator Tina Polsky and Representative Ben Diamond, respectively – never made it out of committees.