Fat cats hate slow-growth amendment

The Miami Herald

Sat, Jun. 12, 2010

Fat cats hate slow-growth amendment

BY FRED GRIMM  

fgrimm@MiamiHerald.com

Power boys do love YOLO, Fort Lauderdale's slickest pickup joint, where they can valet their Italian sports cars, order Cristal and make believe that pretty girls in tiny dresses are oblivious to pot bellies, thinning hair and acute Viagra dependency.

Wednesday night was different. The lobbyists, builders and business titans who gathered at YOLO, just across Las Olas Boulevard from Scott Rothstein's old law offices, were more interested in deluding voters than young women.

They came to kill Hometown Democracy, or at least raise a couple of hundred grand toward defeating the proposed constitutional amendment.

Outside the restaurant, a few dozen decidedly less flashy demonstrators carried signs supporting the slow-growth amendment. One placard, featuring a black feline in silhouette, said, ``Yes Amendment 4. No Fat Cats.''

Fat cats hate restrictions they'd endure under Amendment 4, which would require voter approval before Florida cities or counties approve developments prohibited by comprehensive land-use plans.

The amendment would cripple Florida's construction industry and stifle the state economy, they argue.

The catch phrase among the YOLO set was ``job killer.''

Despite such foreboding, polls indicate 61 percent of Florida's likely voters are apt to vote yes. It hardly matters whether the amendment would actually improve governance. Just the fact that the YOLO gang opposes No. 4 inspires a yes -- make that hell yes -- vote.

It's just too much to hear talk of good government from the same selfish interests who transformed South Florida into mindless sprawl, creating Ground Zero for a nightmare recession with a giant inventory of foreclosed houses, deserted shopping centers and unsold condos.

They invented this Ponzi-scheme economy based on perpetual growth that forces older residents to pay ever-escalating taxes to finance roads and other infrastructure in new developments.

Voters watched as representative democracies were supplanted by lootocracies, with city and county commissioners acting as wholly-owned subsidiaries of lobbyists, voting to approve whatever awful project could come up with the requisite campaign contributions. Or, as the unfolding scandal in Broward has revealed, outright bribes.

In a perfect universe Amendment 4 would amount to a lousy idea. But in Florida's universe, state and local governments have evolved into retail outlets. (Only the occasional federal indictments deters the influence business.) South Florida has devolved into a place where the single most powerful person in government has no official capacity. The self-proclaimed ``super lobbyist'' Ron Book, by the way, hates Amendment 4.

Retiring Miami-Dade Commissioner Katy Sorenson, a champion of actual government reform, understands the frustrations propelling Hometown Democracy. But she worries that special interests will simply pour gobs of developer money into low-turnout land-use referendums with expensive campaigns designed to ``confuse the issue.''

The YOLO gang ought to steal her much more persuasive argument: ``Vote no on Amendment 4 because us fat cats will get what we want anyway. We always do.

``Vote yes. Vote no. Who cares? We win either way.

``Hey, baby. Wanna take a ride in my fat cat's Maserati?''