Article Courtesy of  The Orlando Sentinel

By Tim Nungesser, Guest Columnist

Published May 26, 2021

America has a long history of entrepreneurship, with companies large and small launching from the kitchen table with little more than a great idea and a drive to see it through.

Walt Disney famously set up his first animation studio in his uncle’s garage, but in many cities and towns across Florida, you’d be violating numerous local laws if you wanted to make cartoons for money in your garage. In other cities, you’d get in trouble if you wanted to set up a lemonade stand at the end of your driveway.

The Florida Legislature passed a bill this year that could bring sanity to local laws dealing with home-based business regulations. House Bill 403, sponsored by Rep. Mike Giallombardo and Sen. Keith Perry, sets to curb excessive regulation at the local level that often feels like regulation for the sake of regulation.

It’s not just computer upstarts and lemonade stands that need protection from local governments. Another rapidly growing home-based business model is one where people manufacture and sell items through online retail platforms such as Etsy. These online stores are filled with products that were created by home-based business owners, at a kitchen table or in someone’s garage. If a business owner were to start that business in a city in Florida, they’d be prohibited from “conducting retail, wholesale, or warehousing activities at the residence.”

Practically speaking, this prohibition would ban a person from starting a business using one of these platforms.

Giallombardo and Perry’s bill will also stop invasive actions in several local jurisdictions where they send a code inspector out to inspect the inside of your home to make sure your home-based business isn’t violating one of these regulations dreamed up by an overzealous bureaucrat. A person’s home is often their place of sanctuary and should not be subject to government inspections just to exercise the right to earn a living.

I’m not making the case that regulation is never needed. The bill provides just those local controls that ensure that the local business isn’t bothering the neighbors. It allows local governments to regulate anything that creates noise, vibration, heat, smoke, dust, glare, fumes or noxious odors.

It also allows local governments to regulate parking, signage and any type of chemicals in the home-based business. The bill also provides protections for private contracts by exempting out homeowners’ associations, condo associations, and co-ops. The bill sponsors rightly recognized that Floridians who choose to live in these types of neighborhoods should not be subject to the bill since they voluntarily entered into those contracts when they purchased that property.

HB 403 sets the stage for the next crop of entrepreneurs to develop the next big idea into the next Disney or Apple, another successful former home-based business, while keeping in place only those regulations that are needed to protect the health, safety, and property rights of the neighbors.

The bill will arrive on Gov. Ron DeSantis’ desk soon. On behalf of the National Federation of Independent Business and the future small businesses in Florida that this bill will create, I urge DeSantis to sign this bill into law.