January 24, 2010

Aaron Deslatte

Brace for an ad blitz over Florida growth amendment

Get ready for a Super Bowl-like showcase of corporate-sponsored political advertising in the fall elections. No, we don't mean ads that will result from the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to allow companies and unions to blow big bucks directly on political ads for and against politicians.

We're talking about the war that Florida businesses and their lobbying arms are girding for against the Hometown Democracy constitutional amendment. It would ban local governments from making major changes in their development regulations without a public vote.

Publix Supermarkets, the Florida Chamber of Commerce, the Florida Association of Realtors and various developers poured $485,000 into a political-action committee, Floridians for Smarter Growth, last year. But that's just a down payment.

They officially kick off their campaign in Tallahassee this week, releasing an economic study that purports to show the amendment would kill jobs - the first move in an all-out blitz to convince voters that Amendment 4 would spell disaster for Florida's development-addicted economy.

Hometown Democracy's primary adversaries are all groups whose lifeblood could be cut off. Corporations and builders constantly need local governments to change their comprehensive growth plans in order to plop down new strip malls, gated communities, apartment complexes, even landfills. Publix gave $125,000 last year; the Florida Chamber gave $80,000; Realtors $70,000, Waste Management Inc. $50,000, and the Homebuilders Association of Metro Orlando kicked in $4,000.

Meanwhile, that corporate focus on Hometown Democracy could have ramifications for another fight that the Republican leadership of the Florida Legislature wants to wage.

Last week, another citizen-petition group called FairDistrictsFlorida.org turned in the last of the 676,811 voter signatures needed to place its two redistricting amendments on the November ballot. If passed, the amendments would force lawmakers to re-draw state and congressional legislative districts without benefiting incumbents or political parties when the reapportionment process begins in earnest in 2011.

FairDistrictsFlorida.org has raised and spent more than $3.1million from Democratic check-writers such as the Service Employee International Union, the state and national arm of the National Education Association, and a host of Florida trial bar firms. Democrats are hoping a "fairer" redistricting process would result in the election of ... more Democrats.

House Speaker-designate Dean Cannon, R- Winter Park, and Senate President-designate Mike Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island - who will oversee the re-drawing of political maps as the Legislature's presiding officers - have been doing their utmost to throw a wrench in the movement. Their House and Senate committees have collectively spent more than $270,000 on outside counsel to study the impact of the amendments. Cannon said the committees' work had raised significant questions about whether the amendments could be implemented.

But if the legislators decide to lead an opposition campaign, they'll have a hard case to make to traditional GOP major donors, who are more fixated on Hometown Democracy - which is more in their own economic self-interest to defeat.

"Whatever they do, we're going to be ready for it," said Miami lawyer Ellen Freidin, chair of the FairDistricts group.

Enter Associated Industries of Florida. The lobbying group says it has volunteered to be the "tip of the spear" by going to court to block the amendments from ever reaching voters. "This is a simple attempt by trial lawyers and labor unions to tip the scales in how things are done in Tallahassee," says AIF President Barney Bishop, a past Florida Democratic Party executive director who says the unions and trial lawyers had no problem with the process when Democrats were in charge. "The only reason they want to change the process now is because they're out of power."