[Watch] HB 927 qualified-contractor registry adoption

HB 927 became Chapter 2026-64, signed by Governor DeSantis on
May 6, 2026, effective July 1, 2026, having passed both chambers
unanimously (House 110-0, Senate 33-0). The law directs local
governments above a threshold to establish and maintain a registry
of at least four qualified contractors or two qualified contractor
firms — engineer, surveyor, architect, or landscape-architect — for
a developer-elected pre-application review pathway. The process is
optional: the developer chooses whether to use it, and if so the
reviewer comes from the local government's own registry, not the
developer's own pick. The certified-element affidavit must be
accepted and the permit decided within existing timeframes without
further review of the certified elements. It supplements staff
review rather than bypassing it, and final approval stays local.
Building the registry is the mandated compliance; the city's
discretion lives in how it gates membership. Altamonte Springs
(Ordinance 1844-26, second reading June 16) requires registry
members be familiar with City development requirements with local
track records, and pairs that with fee-recovery for staff
processing time. The watch tracks which cities build robust
local-familiarity-gated registries versus perfunctory compliance,
and whether developers use the opt-in pathway at all.