House Signs Off On BP Settlement Bills For Escambia, Santa Rosa

March 24, 2017

Northwest Florida counties moved closer Thursday to getting money the state received last year from the multibillion-dollar BP settlement tied to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

The House unanimously voted for a pair of measures that would create a trust fund from which the BP settlement money would be available to the non-profit organization Triumph Gulf Coast and set a framework for how the counties most impacted by the disaster can use dollars.

However, the House and Senate must still agree on those uses.

“I think it’s pretty close,” said Rep. Jay Trumbull, a Panama City Republican sponsoring the bills. “There are obviously some significant differences — the Senate version does have economic incentives. But we’ve done a lot of things that mirror the Senate’s version.”

Both chambers have proposed measures to allocate $300 million of the $400 million received last year to eight Gulf Coast counties — Bay, Escambia, Franklin, Gulf, Okaloosa, Santa Rosa, Wakulla and Walton — hit most severely by the disaster. The proposals would also send to those counties three-fourths of the remainder of the $2 billion the state is expected to receive for economic damages associated with the disaster, which dumped millions of gallons of oil less than 100 miles off the Florida coast.

However, the House proposals go further than a Senate measure (SB 364) by imposing additional guidelines on how the money can be used to market Northwest Florida and to support broad economic-development projects.

Those issues reflect ongoing, larger philosophical differences between the House and Senate on business-recruitment and tourism-marketing issues.

Sen. George Gainer, a Panama City Republican who is a co-sponsor of the Senate proposal, on Thursday said the differences were minor.

“I think we’re like-minded as far as taking care of North Florida,” Gainer said. “As long as we have that common denominator, I think we’re going to be fine.”

by The News Service of Florida

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Written by William Reynolds · Filed Under News