Orange County Schools warns about unintended consequences of vacant land bill now ready for House floor
Florida Politics | By Gabrielle Russon | February 17, 2026
A House bill that would require School Districts to document their vacant land to the state is now ready for the full House floor.
With a 12-3 vote, the Education and Employment Committee advanced HB 1147 with no debate from lawmakers.
Rep. Danny Nix Jr. called his legislation “a straightforward transparency and planning bill.”
“We have vacant land that’s sitting out there we’ve owned for 30, 40 years,” said Nix, a Port Charlotte Republican who works as a commercial Realtor. “I think the public needs to understand the transparency of what we have. This isn’t a, ‘You have to sell your land.’ This isn’t, ‘We’re going to tell you what to do with your land.’ But from a public standpoint, it’s nice for them to know what the school has.”
But the bill could bring unintended consequences, warned Marquise McMiller, Senior Director of Government Relations at Orange County Public Schools (OCPS), the fourth-largest District in Florida.
McMiller argued there’s often more to the story if School Districts, like his, would be required to report all their empty land to the Florida Department of Education.
“Once data does come out and show that maybe some Districts have more land than others, it’s because, at least in the case of Orange County, we do it for the interest of our tax dollars and our residents,” McMiller said during public comment.
OCPS has been building up its land bank as it projects future enrollment needs.
“It’s the most fiscally responsible way,” McMiller said of the land. “We procure land to ensure we have it at the time that we need it because if we went the eminent domain route, it’s a far more expensive method to procure land in the state of Florida. Because unlike the federal government when you procure land through eminent domain in the state of Florida, we have to pay fair market value.”
Nix’s bill would require School Districts to document their vacant land’s acreage; parcel ID number; address; date of acquisition; current use, if any; and fair market value. That information would be collected into a statewide report.
A similar Senate companion bill (SB 824) filed by Sen. Keith Truenow has been moving through the upper chamber.
Nix’s bill has been amended significantly since he first filed it. The original bill language targeted School Districts with declining enrollment to push them to sell their empty land to charter schools, but that was removed by a proposed committee substitute earlier this month.
Some Democrats were cautious, saying they feared HB 1147 could be the next Schools of Hope bill at a previous hearing earlier this month. Schools of Hope stem from a new state law that allows charter school operators to take over traditional public school buildings rent-free if they are underenrolled.
