Gentry seeks District 27 seat in the Florida House

Richard Gentry

After 50 years of practicing law and lobbying throughout the state of Florida, Richard L. Gentry has now set his sights on the Florida House of Representatives District 27 seat. He will take on Steve Shives and Becky Sirolli in the Aug. 20 Republican primary election.

The winner of the GOP primary will face Democrat Andy Ferrari in the Nov. 5 general election. The District 27 seat is open because incumbent Republican Stan McClain is termed out of the State House and is now running for Marion County’s sole State Senate seat.

House District 27 encompasses parts of Lake, Marion, and Volusia counties. Gentry has been endorsed by all three sheriffs of those counties and each of the fire unions in those counties.

When Gentry began practicing law, he worked for the state of Florida as a staff attorney and a private law firm for approximately six years before going to work for the Florida Home Builders Association, where he would ultimately spend almost half his career either as legislative counsel or general counsel.

“That’s when I started getting into lobbying,” he explained.

During that time, there were legislative efforts to put guardrails on growth by requiring local governments to have their comprehensive land plans approved by the state. Gentry said he was instrumental in representing the FHBA builders when the Growth Management Act of 1985 was being shaped.

“The two leading groups that lobbied that issue, from the standpoint of business, were the Florida Chamber (of Commerce) and the Florida Home Builders (Association). We were the two big groups that were really on that,” he recalled.

“We knew it was going to pass, so what we were doing was trying to make it as palatable as possible. The (Florida) League of Cities was also involved heavily in it, and we were all worried about what it was going to do to our interests,” he said

Gentry said the Growth Management Act changed everything related to development.

“Until the Act was done away with, there was a bill nearly every year seeking to clean up what had been done with shortsightedness,” he said. “It was a huge, huge, huge switch for Florida. It turned everything up on its head. The idea of infrastructure and concurrency were big deals back then. They still are big deals.”

Gentry said the Act put too many fingers in the pie, granting rights to environmental groups including the Audubon Society and the 1000 Friends of Florida to oppose building permits.

“Concurrency is a two-edged sword,’’ he said. “If you had absolute concurrency, nothing would ever be built that didn’t already have infrastructure. What that really cuts out is your big building projects mostly done by multistate builders and developers.”

Gentry acknowledged there was a delayed response in local government and development settling on impact fees at permitting, absorbing the community roads after platting, lift stations for sewer, but reaping the benefit of a future tax base took time.

“Growth doesn’t initially pay for itself,’’ he said. “It amortizes out.”

Gentry explained a neighborhood may be approved for construction, and impact fees are paid as each house is permitted, but the necessary road infrastructure can’t be built until enough of those fees are collected.

The best thing local governments can do right now as it relates to concurrency, he said, is to make sure “infrastructure planning matches up with their future land use plan.”

“There’s nothing truer in the building and development world than if you build it, they will come. You know, roads, water and sewer are the biggest attractor of development that I know of,” he said.

Gentry told the “Gazette” he supported local governments controlling development decisions, and he worked hard to get them the funds they needed for infrastructure.

After working for the FHBA, Gentry started his own private practice “doing legislative consulting in land use, local government, utilities, transportation and insurance fields” for 16 years. One of his clients for 16 years was Escambia County, and every year he was lobbying for that community to get money for water and sewer infrastructure and found that “often times, Legislatures want to see matching [local] dollars for it.”

In 2021, Gentry was appointed by the Florida Legislature to represent the public through the Office of the Public Counsel, where he supervised a team that included six lawyers and four accountants. At the time, Gentry was thinking of slowing down his lobbying practice and thought serving in this role would facilitate that. What he didn’t anticipate when he accepted the position was that Florida Power & Light, Duke Energy and Tampa Electric Co. (TECO) would all be asking for a rate hike at the same time.

Gentry described the legal efforts on the rate increase cases as “intense,” involving months of work all over the state seeking community feedback and taking depositions of the companies before the cases could be heard by the Public Service Commission.

In those cases, the Public Service Commission approved the rate hikes. Gentry attributed the approval to overwhelming public support for energy infrastructure that protected the environment—yet it came at a cost.

Gentry said the utilities were responding to federal regulations encouraging moving away from fossil fuels. “In Florida at that time, 80% of our total power generation was done with natural gas, which is considered a fossil fuel.”

Gentry told the “Gazette” that FPL’s rate increase totaled over $1 billion but was spread out over four years. The revenue generated through the first two years of that rate increase was to be used for hardening infrastructure, including power lines, “because they were getting killed every time a hurricane (came) through.”

Gentry left the Office of the Public Counsel after those cases were complete in 2022, retiring to his home in Astor on the St. Johns River. He and his wife built the home 12 years ago in sight of his half-brother’s home across the river.

Gentry has also maintained a home in Tallahassee that he and his wife use when visiting their children and grandchildren who live in North Florida and Georgia.

According to campaign financial disclosures, his net worth as of June 3 was $4,299,073. Approximately $1 million of that net worth is wrapped up in three real estate properties. The rest is in stocks, savings, and mutual funds.

Gentry reports no liabilities of more than $1,000 and approximately $60,000 in income from Social Security, Florida Retirement System and collected rent on one of his properties.

Gentry reports $136,341 in campaign contributions. Notable contributions are reported from many organizations representing industry interests in utilities, building, and insurance around the state.

Gentry has been married to Carol Gentry for 18 years and has two children and two grandchildren.

On the topic of abortion, he told the “Gazette” his religious beliefs lead him toward pro-life policies that contain exceptions for life of the mother, rape or incest. He said he knew women who had abortions and who later regretted their decision. “As a Christian, I just don’t believe in abortion,’’ he said. “My position now is, just say no.”

Gentry said he supports Second Amendment rights to carry a gun but thinks there should be restrictions on where you can take them, for example, to schools.

“I have a concealed carry permit; I had to go through training and learn the rules,’’ he said. “I think that training has served me well.” Gentry noted he sees the logic of restricting people who are guilty of criminal activity from owning a firearm.