http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/orl-edped281032804mar28,1,3556192.story?coll=orl-opinion-headlines

EDITORIAL from Orlando Sentinel

Leave it alone

Our position: Don't make it harder for voters to change the state's constitution.

Big Brother knows best.

At least, that's what state lawmakers want voters to believe. In fact, Senate President Jim King hopes to leave as his legislative legacy a series of proposals that would make it more difficult for citizens to amend the Florida Constitution.

Like many other lawmakers and Gov. Jeb Bush, Mr. King is alarmed that voters, with increasing regularity, are taking legislative matters into their own hands -- approving constitutional amendments that should have been considered and addressed by lawmakers. And to a certain extent, they're right. Such initiatives as smaller public-school classes, a bullet train and pre-kindergarten for all children could have been addressed by the governor and lawmakers.

But they weren't. So voters reacted. Really, it's as simple as that.

Ideally, changes to the constitution would be limited to altering the structure of government. That's what the constitution is supposed to be -- a framework for government operations.

But proposals floating around the Legislature don't address that issue. Instead, Mr. King would make it harder to amend the constitution by requiring three-fifths of voters to approve amendments instead of a simple majority. Other, far more insidious proposals include applying the super-majority requirement only to citizen initiatives. And Mr. Bush, who despises the very notion of the bullet-train initiative, doesn't want the supermajority to apply to repeal efforts.

How much more unfair can you get?

Citizens aren't solely to blame for corrupting the constitution. Between 1968 and 2002, voters proposed 21 amendments to the state constitution. The Legislature, by contrast, proposed 86 changes during that same period. So who really is out of control here?

Mr. King and his cronies like to say that the process by which citizens can get an issue on the ballot has been co-opted by special interests. That's nonsense. Just look at the legislative process. Campaign contributions and well-heeled lobbyists so control the flow of legislation in Tallahassee that lawmakers often are viewed as mere pawns in the process. Not surprisingly, those very same special-interest groups are now foursquare behind the Legislature's effort to curtail voter access to the constitution.

The truth is, voters now decide whether to approve an amendment or relegate it to the garbage dump. Not special-interest groups.

What's more, getting an initiative on the ballot hardly is the cakewalk that Mr. King would have voters believe.

Of the 47 initiatives circulating around the state for consideration by voters this November, only 12 have reported collecting any signatures of support to the state elections agency. Only two have collected enough signatures to warrant a review by the state attorney general. And not a single initiative has collected anywhere near the 488,722 verified signatures required by Aug. 3 to make it on the fall ballot. Citizen initiatives, too, must pass single-subject and word-length requirements.

If lawmakers and the governors paid a little bit more attention to what voters want -- and a little less attention to the deep-pocketed interests that finance their political careers -- voters wouldn't feel a growing and compelling need to adorn the constitution with all sorts of ancillary ornaments.

As it is, though, none of the legislative proposals restricting the opportunity of voters to amend the constitution warrants further consideration. In this instance, Big Brother needs to re-establish contact with the family.  

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Amendment has developers in a panic

A grass-roots move to give Floridians a defining voice in how their communities grow has touched off a backroom panic among some developers, builders and the politicians they own.

The proposed Florida Hometown Democracy Amendment would provide citizens with the final vote on substantial changes to local comprehensive land-use plans .

For example, if the development boundaries in your county were to be altered to make way for an outlet mall, a high-rise condo or a new housing subdivision, the project would go to a public referendum.

Such a radical notion -- giving voters a direct say over projects that affect their lives -- is viewed as pure poison by the special interests that hold power.

''A bad, bad, bad, bad idea,'' fumed a lobbyist for the Florida Home Builders Association. That view was echoed, literally, by Gov. Jeb Bush, who called the Hometown Democracy Amendment ``a great name but a bad idea.''

Still, the measure is well on its way to getting the 50,000 signatures needed before the initiative is reviewed by the Florida Supreme Court. About 489,000 voter signatures must be gathered to put the amendment on a statewide ballot.

It wouldn't be an issue if the state and local governments were doing a responsible job of monitoring growth, but they're not. The so-called Growth Management Act is a polite charade in which the public's input is sought, acknowledged, then often ignored.

Chaotic sprawl

Witness the stampeding fiasco in the Panhandle, which the St. Joe Co. is steamrolling into its own lucrative version of Boca Raton. Long-time residents have seen their concerns brushed aside as local officeholders unabashedly embrace the role of St. Joe cheerleaders. All that's missing are the pom-poms.

Selling out to wealthy developers is a grand tradition in Florida politics. Those who are paving and malling the state throw more money at candidates than do any other groups.

Their high-paid lobbyists and lawyers typically call the shots with county commissions and zoning boards. They're accustomed to getting what they want, which is why they so dread the prospect of a citizen referendum.

They know that people are fed up with ugly chaotic sprawl, and its attendant headaches of gridlock, overcrowded schools, crime and pollution.

The push for the Hometown Democracy Amendment comes from two lawyers, Russ Burnaman and Lesley Blackner, who grew up in Florida and were dismayed by the damage caused by runaway growth.

Contrary to what some opponents say, the measure would not dismantle the present system by which major developments are processed. Local zoning and planning boards would still be involved from the beginning. Basically, the major difference is that voters -- not elected officeholders -- would make the ultimate decision in cases requiring changes in the land-use plan.

Its foes condemn the amendment as a no-growth weapon. Some contend that average citizens aren't technically qualified to evaluate complicated development projects (as if politicians are), and that they'd automatically reject most proposals.

It's a flimsy argument. Vero Beach has for years required a public vote on any new project in which the height or density differs from the comprehensive plan. The city has continued to grow robustly, and so has its business core.

There are other precedents for growth-issue referendums, at least one of which has been endorsed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The city of Eastlake, Ohio, passed an ordinance stating that any change to its comprehensive plan be approved by 55 percent of voters. Eastlake was sued by a high-rise developer, who said his constitutional rights were being violated.

The high court disagreed, and upheld the city's right to call a land-use referendum.

The stakes are high in Florida. The state has no serious manufacturing base, and its agricultural acreage is shrinking rapidly. More than ever, the economy is relying on growth for the sheer dumb sake of growth. As an industry it ranks second only to tourism.

As you'd expect, state legislators are studiously conspiring to keep the Home Democracy Amendment away from the electorate -- after all, they feed at the same trough as other politicians.

Secret influence

There are some legitimate apprehensions about land-use referendums. As in any election, the risk exists for confusion, impulsiveness and, ultimately, unwise choices.

But the next time you're stuck on the interstate in southwest Broward, look around and ask yourself if ordinary citizens could possibly do a worse job of managing growth than the chowderheads who are currently in charge.

In theory, of course, we shouldn't have to go out and vote on every major development. In theory, the people we elect to office should be able to make those decisions competently and free of secret influence.

In theory, the interests and welfare of a neighborhood should carry just as much weight as those of St. Joe, or any other big powerful company.

Maybe things really work that way somewhere in the universe, but not here in Florida.

Not in real life.

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21 Mar 04

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/columnists/fred_grimm/8232304.htm

Fred Grimm 

In Broward, concerns on growth

This sense that development has burst out of control, like an incurable virus, like an epidemic, like a plague of strangers, has been nagging at locals since the 1960s, a decade when Broward County was hung with the dubious honor as the fastest-growing county in the nation.

The 1970s brought no relief -- 700 new residents a week moved into the county. Broward's 1977 Land Use Plan, meant to harness unfettered development, noted in the preface that the peasants were grumbling: ``The electorate of Broward County expressed its disenchantment with the rapid pace and the manner of development. Roads, water and sewer facilities, as well as other service-delivery systems, were not keeping pace.

``Uncoordinated and unmanaged growth . . . alarmed the citizens and some concerned elected officials to an unprecedented degree.''

So on Nov. 7, 1977, the cure, a tough land-use plan, was adopted.

Some cure.

Through most of the 1980s, Broward was ranked first or second or third among the fastest-growing counties in the fastest-growing state. That land-use plan might as well have been printed on tissue paper. Elected officials, toadies to developer interests, were just too willing to grant exceptions.

SUPPOSED BENEFITS

Meanwhile, the supposed benefits of growth never quite caught up with the problems.

''The faster we ran, the behinder we got,'' John DeGrove, then director of the FAU-FIU Joint Center for Urban and Environmental Problems, told The Herald in a late 1980s interview. ``We believed growth was giving us a free ride, when just the opposite was true.''

Broward County had grown 1,346 percent from 1950 to 1989. DeGrove assured The Herald that during the '80s, ``our love affair with growth cooled and people really began to complain about the declining quality of life in Broward.''

So what happened, then, in the next decade? How did the political leadership respond to this wave of citizen ''disenchantment''? Broward County grew faster in the 1990s than all but two of the nation's larger counties.

Great news if you were in the business of building houses in Broward. Not so great if you happened to live in one.

Now, with 1,698,425 Broward residents, the stated goal of the 1977 Land Use Plan, ''maintaining a tropical resort character,'' mocks reality. If there's any character left in this one-time tropical resort, it can't be trusted to politicians. A measure of hope lies in the proposal County Commissioner John Rodstrom offered on Tuesday to give voters the exclusive right to decide whether developers can bust the land-use plan's density limits.

VOTER APPROVAL

County voters would first need to approve a change in the county charter. But there's no doubt how such a vote would go anywhere in South Florida. A similar proposal received 67 percent of the vote in Miami Beach two weeks ago, and 91 percent in Surfside on Tuesday.

The charter change would circumvent a legislative effort by Sen. Steve Geller, D-Hallandale, to excise the county from city decisions to alter the land-use plan. Geller, who also doubles as a lobbyist for developers, was not pleased.

But Rodstrom said his measure would finally give voters some control after years of watching, helplessly, as runaway development deviated from the land-use plan and overwhelmed their communities. And he senses growing support for the so-called Florida Hometown Democracy initiative for a constitutional amendment granting voters across the state the same veto power.

''People are just shocked at our inability to deal with the growth issue.'' Rodstrom said. ``Growth is the No. 1 issue now. More people are talking about it than ever before.''

More people are talking about it lately. But their frustration has echoed through Broward for five decades.

19 Mar 04

Citizens initiative hot issue at real estate conference

Amendment seeks to change the way developers get approval for land-use changes.

By CHRISTOPHER CALNAN
The Times-Union, Jacksonville, FL