Months after a construction crane fell during Hurricane Milton, pulverizing an office building in downtown St. Petersburg, Tampa Bay lawmakers are proposing a change to how officials regulate cranes during storms.Sen. Darryl Rouson and Rep. Lindsay Cross, both St. Petersburg Democrats, say they have filed bills that would strike a preemption blocking cities and counties from crafting local safety rules around cranes. Copies of the bills were not available on the Florida Senate and House websites Thursday, but Rouson’s office provided draft text to the Tampa Bay Times.In early October, a massive chunk of a tower crane fell several hundred feet from The Residences at 400 Central project, slicing through an office building on First Avenue S. It plummeted in the night, as Hurricane Milton lashed Tampa Bay with winds of roughly 100 mph. The damaged office building — home to the Tampa Bay Times, a law office and a juice shop, among other businesses — remains severely damaged.After the crane collapsed, a Times investigation revealed significant gaps in oversight for such heavy equipment. Florida lawmakers more than a decade ago passed a law that prevented local governments from writing regulations for cranes, including measures regarding “hurricane preparedness or public safety.”“It provided a real clear path to how we could right this wrong,” Cross said Thursday of the Times' coverage after the storm. “It’s a simple repeal of a statute that was really geared towards protecting private interests over public safety.”On Wednesday, the Miami Dade County Commission passed a resolution asking lawmakers to pull back the preemption. Commissioners there had made a similar request in 2017, after multiple cranes collapsed during Hurricane Irma.Without state or local oversight, crane regulations fall to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The agency mainly manages work-related risks, not threats to public safety. Days after Milton passed, an OSHA spokesperson told the Times that the federal regulator was not investigating the crane collapse.“It’s not a Republican or Democrat issue; it’s a human safety and property damage issue,” said Rouson, whose office is near the site of the collapse.“I realized we almost lost lives,” he said.St. Petersburg City Council members were outraged, fearing that the falling crane could have killed people living downtown, including some outside mandatory evacuation zones. Several large apartment buildings sit near the construction site, but no one was hurt.Council members plan to hold a discussion Feb. 13 to explore their options for improving crane safety in the fast-growing city.