"Local news worth reading" — The New York Times
SUBSCRIBE
The independent voice for West Orange County news
Ocoee’s comprehensive plan, Envision 2045, is legal, and the Florida Department of Commerce has no authority to suggest otherwise, City Attorney Rick Geller said Tuesday at the city commission meeting.
Geller’s comments came in the wake of a Nov. 18, 2025, Florida Division of Administration Hearings ruling in which the city lost its case, but at the same time officials got exactly what they wanted.
Here’s what happened: In August, the city received a letter from the Florida Department of Commerce, which said Envision 2045 had development provisions that were more “restrictive and burdensome” than those prior to Aug. 1, 2024 — the standard under Senate Bill 180, passed in June 2025 — and declared the city’s plan null and void ab initio. That means Envision 2045, which became effective Aug. 28, 2025, was not only not in effect, it was as if it never existed. Not only would that undo the years of effort that went into assembling the plan, but negating it could leave the city open to lawsuits from developers who had been denied approvals based on the plan, according to board-certified government law attorney Clifford Shepard of the Maitland firm Shepard, Smith, Hand & Brackins.
The city challenged the Department of Commerce's position, arguing that because Envision 2045 includes an opt-out clause, allowing any developer who wanted to build under the prior comprehensive plan to do so, it complies with SB 180's restrictions on construction and development in areas hit by Hurricanes Debby, Helene and Milton.
“With that type of setup, no one could, with a straight face, say that our Envision 2045 was more “restrictive or burdensome,” Geller said during the commission meeting.
Ocoee was not the only city to receive a “null and void” letter from the Department of Commerce. Geller said that eventually, they found more than 20 cities that had all received such letters.
" They just, on their own, said This is null and void and That city's is null and void and The other city's is null and void. More than 20 municipalities. That's the equivalent of a rule," Geller later told VoxPopuli. But a rule that had been invented on the fly since none of the typical procedures for putting regulations in place had been followed, he said.
However, the administrative law judge declined to acknowledge the other letters, which Ocoee had not yet collected, and that was the “technicality” that lost the city the case.
“The administrative law judge said I saw no evidence of letters to other cities so I cannot find that it’s a rule,” Geller said. “Never mind that we had a stipulation on the record with the Department of Commerce that they had sent letters to other cities. That was the technicality that [the administrative law judge] used to say we did not establish the rule. City, you lose.”
But in the time-honored tradition of losing the battle and winning the war, the city was able to get the Department of Commerce to admit during the legal proceedings that their August “null and void” letter was meaningless.
“They said, You know, this really wasn’t a binding letter. This is just our opinion,” Geller said. “I was like Okay, why are you sending these things to everyone saying Your comprehensive plan is null and void? That seems to have a legal effect, coming from a state agency with authority over reviewing comprehensive plans.”
Geller added that the administrative law judge said the Department of Commerce had no authority to send the letters in the first place.
Now, he said, the city has verification from the administrative law judge and the Department of Commerce that Envision 2045 is valid.
“And if there's a business owner or a citizen who wants to challenge it, they go to a circuit court judge and try to persuade that circuit court judge that our opt-out provision's not good enough," he said. "And I doubt they're gonna win on that.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story referred to the administrative law judge as a special magistrate. That has been corrected.
