Court pans legislative sabotage

Daytona Beach News Journal

February 21, 2010

Court pans legislative sabotage

By MARK LANE
FOOTNOTE

Your correspondent strives to be a full-service columnist. When he writes about something and tells you something else will happen later, he means to return.

Last summer, he wrote about the Florida Supreme Court decision that helped put the Florida Hometown Democracy Amendment on November's ballot. The court didn't issue a full opinion. It mentioned an appellate court decision approvingly and promised to say more later.

Courts work with a different sense of urgency than you or I. So, a mere eight months later, the state high court explained itself. I guess it falls to me, then, to also follow up and explain the explanation.

The Hometown Democracy Amendment would require a referendum anytime a city or county changes its master plan. A master plan is a kind of map for future development that a local government must follow in its zoning and permitting decisions.

Currently, master plans are routinely changed by city commissions and county councils. If an architect, developer and attorney show up at a meeting with maps, a PowerPoint presentation and an economic study promising wonderful things, then the master plan gets changed.

Sometimes I wonder why governments even go to the trouble of drawing them up in the first place.

Unsurprisingly, development interests reacted with fury and incomprehension at the idea of turning master planning into a referendum process.

The Legislature decided it might avoid fighting the initiative at the polls if it quietly mugged it on its way to the ballot.

In 2007, the Legislature passed a law saying people could revoke their signatures on amendment petitions. Legislators argued that some signed the petitions unknowingly and suffered buyer's remorse.

Of course, a lot of voters suffer buyer's remorse after voting for legislators and never get a chance to take their vote back in a competitive election, but that's different.

As soon as the law took effect, voters were barraged with deceptive mailings urging them to revoke their signatures from Hometown Democracy petitions. Supervisors of elections had to scramble to process the requests.

You may have seen the developer-funded mailings suggesting "big developers" and "slick lawyers" want to use the Hometown Democracy Amendment to wreck Florida's "scenic beauty." Pretty cynical.

Last June, the state Supreme Court struck down the take-back-your-signature law.

In a 37-page ruling released Thursday, the court majority said the Legislature went too far in making it hard to change the state constitution by petition and referendum.

The justices said the Legislature had, in effect, repealed the constitutional right to change the state constitution through voter initiatives.

"In operation, this timing requirement would erase the citizen-initiative process from Article XI because, under this framework, it is simply impossible for initiative proponents to ascertain the number of signatures necessary for ballot placement before the time to do so expires," the court said.

The court was just stating the obvious.

It caught the Legislature trying to change the Florida Constitution on the sly. And when legislatures do that, well, that's what supreme courts are for.

mark.lane@news-jrnl.com