{"id":41363,"date":"2024-01-25T14:34:29","date_gmt":"2024-01-25T19:34:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=41363"},"modified":"2024-01-25T14:34:33","modified_gmt":"2024-01-25T19:34:33","slug":"florida-senate-committee-backs-bill-that-would-ban-removal-of-confederate-monuments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2024\/01\/25\/florida-senate-committee-backs-bill-that-would-ban-removal-of-confederate-monuments\/","title":{"rendered":"\u00a0Florida Senate committee backs bill that would ban removal of Confederate monuments"},"content":{"rendered":"
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An effort to prevent the removal of historical monuments and memorials started to advance Monday in the Senate as cities such as Jacksonville fought over Confederate statues.

The Republican-controlled Government Oversight and Accountability Committee voted 4-2 along party lines to support a bill (SB 1122), filed by Sen. Jonathan Martin, R-Fort Myers, that would prevent local governments from relocating, removing, or destroying monuments. It also could lead to civil liability for anyone who takes or damages a monument or memorial on publicly owned land.

\u201cThis is not a Confederate bill. It\u2019s an American history bill,\u201d Martin said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Martin said monuments and memorials are available for people who don\u2019t have time or money to take history in college.

Sen. Tracie Davis, a Jacksonville Democrat who voted against the bill, said statues honoring the Confederacy aren\u2019t about the Civil War, but about \u201chate\u201d during Reconstruction and \u201cto degrade Black people.\u201d

\u201cThis is a thinly veiled, targeted attack against my city and my constituents, especially people that look like me,\u201d Davis said.

The measure comes after numerous controversies in recent years in Florida and other states about removing historic markers, many honoring members of the Confederacy.

In December, Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan ordered the removal of a \u201cWomen of the Southland\u201d monument that had stood as a tribute to the Confederacy in Springfield Park since 2015.

Denise Scott of Jacksonville told the committee Confederate monuments \u201cmisrepresent history\u201d and for many are a \u201cpainful reminder\u201d of a racist past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But bill supporter David McCallister of Hillsborough County, representing the Guardians of American History, said the measure is about fighting efforts to erase history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWho speaks for the dead? These memorials are the silent speakers,\u201d McCallister said.

The bill would give the governor power to suspend or remove local officials who violate the proposed prohibitions on moving or destroying monuments. Also, people who approve removal or destruction could face paying restoration costs. In some cases, the state would withhold arts, cultural, and historic-preservation funding.

Martin proposed a bill last year that sought to give standing to people to file lawsuits if they believed they had \u201clost history\u201d or the ability to teach about the past because of monuments being removed or relocated. The bill did not pass.

Parts of this year\u2019s bill would be retroactive to Oct. 1, 2020. It doesn\u2019t mention the Confederacy, but seeks to protect military personnel in \u201cany armed conflict since settlers from other countries came to what is now the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The retroactive date was picked for when a statue to Christopher Columbus was removed from the St. Petersburg Pier District, Martin said.

\u201cGoing back to 2020 isn\u2019t that far,\u201d Martin said. \u201cThere\u2019s still many of those monuments available. However, there is not as many in museums as was promised to be placed in museums. But they\u2019re still around and can be returned.\u201d

The proposal would allow monuments and memorials to be temporarily relocated \u2014- up to 12 months \u2014- because of nearby construction.

A House version of the bill (HB 395<\/a>) would direct a bronze sculpture of former Confederate Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith be displayed in Lake County or \u2014- if no suitable location is found by July 1, 2025 \u2014- anywhere else in the state. The Senate version does not include that requirement.

The Smith statue, which spent nearly a century in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S. Capitol as one of two representatives of Florida, hasn\u2019t been showcased the past few years while it has been in the possession of the Florida Department of State.

The House bill has not been heard in committees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An effort to prevent the removal of historical monuments and memorials started to advance Monday in the Senate as cities such as Jacksonville fought over Confederate statues. The Republican-controlled Government… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41364,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[14],"tags":[7383],"class_list":["post-41363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-florida-senate-committee-backs-bill-that-would-ban-removal-of-confederate-monuments"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41363\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}