TALLAHASSEE — A Senate Republican on Tuesday filed a invoice that combs by state legal guidelines and would substitute references to the “Gulf of Mexico” with the “Gulf of America” after President Donald Trump issued an govt order to rename the gulf.
Sen. Nick DiCeglie, R-Indian Rocks Seaside, filed the 70-page invoice (SB 608) for consideration in the course of the legislative session that can begin March 4.
After Trump issued the manager order final month, Gov. Ron DeSantis jumped on the problem. In an order he issued a couple of winter storm, DeSantis referred to an “space of low stress transferring throughout the Gulf of America.”
However that couldn’t change state legal guidelines, which embody dozens of references to the Gulf of Mexico. DiCegilie’s invoice famous that the “Gulf of Mexico spans roughly 1,700 miles alongside america shoreline, of which 770 miles are situated alongside the Florida coast.”
It stated Trump’s govt order directed the secretary of the U.S. Division of the Inside to “rename the Gulf of Mexico because the ‘Gulf of America’ with a view to acknowledge the significance of the physique of water to america.”
For instance of the modifications that will be made by the invoice, authorized descriptions of boundaries of gulf-front counties from Escambia to Collier embody references to the Gulf of Mexico, which might change to the Gulf of America. That features the boundaries of DiCeglie’s residence county, Pinellas.
However different references in legal guidelines to the Gulf of Mexico are a bit extra obscure. For example, a legislation about using tourist-development taxes refers to counties “adjoining to the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic Ocean.”
Different legal guidelines embody references to the Gulf of Mexico in addressing coastal growth points. One such legislation expresses intent for the Division of Environmental Safety to “set up coastal development management traces on a county foundation alongside the sand seashores of the state fronting on the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, or the Straits of Florida.”
One other legislation defines coastal barrier islands as which means “geological options that are utterly surrounded by marine waters that entrance upon the open waters of the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, or the Straits of Florida and are composed of quartz sands, clays, limestone, oolites, rock, coral, coquina, sediment, or different materials, together with spoil disposal, which options lie above the road of imply excessive water.”
Along with the state legal guidelines, ordinances in gulf-front counties embody references to the Gulf of Mexico.
Trump’s govt order addressed federal references to the gulf’s identify, directing the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, which works below the Division of the Inside, to “present steerage to make sure all federal references to the Gulf of America, together with on company maps, contracts, and different paperwork and communications shall replicate its renaming.”