Citizens for Lower Taxes and a Stronger Economy, Inc.

 

The Amendment 4 spin machine is working overtime to manufacture as many half-truths and outright lies as possible before voters cast their ballots on this measure in November.  And while the Amendment 4 campaign is entitled to its own opinion, it is not entitled to its own facts.

 

THEY SAY: St. Pete Beach is an “isolated incident” that “does not have any bearing on [Amendment 4’s] statewide implications.”

 

IN REALITY: No one’s buying it.  Not Florida’s leading Editorial Boards (here, here and here) and certainly not the residents of St. Pete Beach (here, here, here and here), who have often warned Florida voters of the consequences of Amendment 4.   Heck, even Lesley Blackner, the author of Amendment 4, admits that her measure will lead to costly legal battles, at taxpayer expense. 

 

And who benefits from that litigation?  Special interest lawyers—like Ms. Blackner—who make a living suing taxpayers.

 

St. Pete Beach is not only a fair example, it’s a damning one.  It proves that Amendment 4 is not designed to empower voters; it is designed to hand power over to special interest lawyers and hand taxpayers the bill.   That’s one of the reasons that the St. Pete Beach City Commission passed a resolution warning Florida voters about the consequences of Amendment 4. 

 

After years of costly litigation that wasted tax dollars and drained the city’s legal fund, St. Pete Beach is now considering a full repeal of their Amendment 4-style provision this year. 

 

But until the disaster in St. Pete Beach became apparent, Amendment 4 proponents were pointing to the small town as a success story.  Case in point: In 2007, the St. Petersburg Times reported on the St. Pete Beach experiment in Amendment 4, quoting Amendment 4 co-author and co-founder, Ross Burnaman:

 

The end result makes St. Pete Beach the only city in Florida that requires voters to approve any changes to the comprehensive plan affecting land use.

A political action committee called Hometown Democracy wants to make that change standard throughout the state.

"Its part of the broader purpose behind Hometown Democracy that people have at least some control over the long-term land use of their community," Ross Burnaman, vice president of Hometown Democracy, said.

 

A year later, Burnaman again went on to draw favorable comparisons to the St. Pete Beach example when responding to the Amendment 4 concerns raised by 1000 Friends of Florida.

 

For the lawyers behind Amendment 4, it seems that St. Pete Beach is only a “fair” comparison when it suits their agenda.  These days, Amendment 4 supporters are frantically claiming that St. Pete Beach is no longer a fair example.  In a guest column to the Orlando Sentinel, former St. Pete Beach Mayor, Ward Friszolowski, called their claims, “false, desperate and insulting to the residents of our community, who have frequently spoken against the Amendment 4-style experiment.”

 

To support their dubious claims, Amendment 4 proponents assert that St. Pete Beach did not follow state law when it comes to the “process” of approving comprehensive plan amendments.   Although these arguments failed to persuade the Department of Community Affairs or an Administrative Law Judge, they are routinely regurgitated by Amendment 4 proponents.

 

Ironically, Amendment 4 proponents claim that they have filed lawsuits in St. Pete Beach because elected officials were not consulted on comprehensive plan amendments.  That’s hard to believe when it’s coming from the same special interest lawyers who have routinely ridiculed local elected officials and who spend much of their time suing taxpayers and developers.  Former St. Pete Beach Mayor, Ward Friszolowski, put it best in his guest column to the Orlando Sentinel:

Coming from the same folks who routinely hurl accusations against local elected officials, their calls to respect the decision-making of those same officials seem disingenuous. Are we to believe that Amendment 4 proponents are suing the taxpayers of St. Pete Beach, to overturn an election they lost, simply because they wanted to give everyone a civics lesson?

After all, Amendment 4 is supposed to be simple. According to supporters, it just gives the people a say on growth.

But the voters of St. Pete Beach exercised their say on growth in 2008. If Amendment 4 was about giving us a say on growth, they would have let the election stand. Instead, they are wasting hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars in lawsuits designed to stop progress, even though the voters approved it.

Also ironically, many cities, like St. Pete Beach, have charter provisions that allow citizens to place comprehensive plan amendments on the ballot by initiative petition.  Kevin Hing, a St. Pete Beach resident, attorney and Chairman of his town’s Beach Stewardship Committee explains in greater detail:

 

For example, during an Amendment 4 event in Dunedin on May 21, Amendment 4 supporter Chris Giuliana stated that he believed that if Amendment 4 passes, local governments should "take out of your city charters provisions for initiatives in connection with land use plans.   That's the mischief that bothered [St. Pete Beach].  It is not really appropriate for us to initiate land use plan amendments, it is up to local governments to do it [and then] for us to say "I don't think that's a great idea."

 

It is commendable that Mr. Giuliana acknowledges the problem...he is the only Amendment 4 supporter to my knowledge who has done so.  Unfortunately, his suggested solution to the problem is fatally flawed because it violates the core principle of Hometown Democracy:  i.e., giving citizens the right to vote on land use changes.  Mr. Giuliana's solution to the problems posed by voter-initiated comprehensive plans and land use changes is to amend all city charters to deprive voters of their right to petition for a vote on such changes pursuant to Florida Statute 166.031.

Thus, in order to gain a right to vote on comprehensive plans under Amendment 4, supporters argue that it is necessary to deprive voters of the right vote on the same plans under the existing Florida Statute 166.031.

It seems to me that the "right to vote" on comprehensive plans under Amendment 4 can not be validly justified by depriving Florida voters of their right to vote on such plans under an existing Florida statute.

 

However you view it, the workability problems inherent in Amendment 4 can, will and have provided special interest attorneys with the grounds to sue taxpayers.  However, at the core of the litigation in St. Pete Beach is the problem with Amendment 4-style ballot summaries.  Why?  Under Amendment 4, hundreds of pages of dense, technical planning data would be condensed into 75-word ballot summaries—that’s the law.  That problem is certainly not unique to St. Pete Beach—in fact, the very same grounds for litigation would exist under Amendment 4.  Mayor Friszolowski points out the ballot summary litigation in St. Pete Beach would “quickly become ‘copy and paste’ lawsuits, readily available to any disgruntled special-interest group on the losing end of a land-planning referendum.”

 

The litigation in St. Pete Beach has now wasted nearly $750,000 in taxpayer dollars.  And what do Amendment 4 supporters say about that?  Amendment 4 author and president, Lesley Blackner, admitted to the St. Petersburg Times that her measure would produce the same result!  According to Blackner, “I fully expect there will be fights over ballot titles and summaries.”

 

The bottom line: The only difference between St. Pete Beach and Amendment 4 is that Amendment 4 is even more extreme and more unworkable than the local experiment that has crippled St. Pete Beach.  According to The St. Petersburg Times:

 

"When they (proponents) say that Hometown Democracy is different than St. Pete Beach, in a very slight element it is," Bonfield said. "But overall the issue of voting on comprehensive plan amendments and our experience in voting on comprehensive plan amendments is the same, except in Hometown Democracy it's going to happen more often.

"So it's not exactly identical," Bonfield said. "It's worse."

 

A recent statement by the Amendment 4 campaign piled high the rhetoric but was noticeably devoid of supporting facts, reasoning or evidence.  As usual, the backers of this amendment are knowingly and shamelessly promoting a series of falsehoods that have already been disproven by Florida's Supreme Court and Florida's leading Editorial Boards; among those claims:

 

THEY SAY: "Amendment 4 wouldn't require voter approval of all land use decisions."

 

IN REALITY: The Florida Supreme Court does not agree with them.  Florida's leading Editorial Boards do not agree with them.  And, as of September 2009, their own website did not agree with them!

 

Let's start with the court.  The Florida Supreme Court has already dispelled the myth that Amendment 4 only requires votes on "certain" land use decisions.  In fact, while reviewing the ballot title and summary for Amendment 4, the court issued an opinion (Pages 19-20) that amounted to a rejection of this very claim.  In that opinion, the court plainly indicates that Amendment 4 would trigger votes not simply on all land use items, but, in fact, on every change to a local government's comprehensive plan.  Citing statute, the court points out that Amendment 4 would lead to referenda on:

 

 

And how about those Editorial Boards?  In a response to Amendment 4 author Lesley Blackner's frequently misleading statements on this very topic, the Editorial Board ("The Real Amendment 4") of the Palm Beach Post said of Ms. Blackner's claim, "If true, it would be a proper narrowing of her over-reaching amendment. But it's not true. At best, the issue is open to interpretation. At worst, Ms. Blackner is purposefully misleading the public."

 

And finally, even last year's Amendment 4 campaign website disagrees with this claim.  As of September 22, 2009, the official Amendment 4 campaign site said that we will vote "only on comprehensive plan amendments approved by local governments."  The content from that site was saved to the website of the League of Women Voters and can be found here.

 

Later, Lesley Blackner--the author of Amendment 4--changed her mind and said that we'll only vote on comprehensive plan amendments that effect the land use element.

 

And now, it seems that Amendment 4 has morphed yet again!  According to their last statement, we would not even vote on "all land use decisions."

 

If the authors of Amendment 4 had written their measure properly in the first place, they would not need to redefine it every few months.  Instead, their description of Amendment 4 has become a moving target.  An idea so over-reaching and so fatally flawed does not belong in Florida's constitution.

 

In fact, we just don't know if Amendment 4 will also lead to votes on zoning issues, too.  A number of well-respected attorneys have looked into the "fine print" of Amendment 4 and have concluded that it might lead to referenda on "garden variety zoning issues":

- In the Miami Herald: "An Invitation to Chaos"

- In the Palm Beach Post: "No Fair Rewriting Flawed Amendment 4 on the Fly"

 

THEY SAY: "But under Amendment 4, you will then get the opportunity to veto or approve your commission's decision on the next regularly scheduled Election Day. It's that simple."

 

IN REALITY: It's anything but simple.  Nowhere does Amendment 4 say we'll only vote on regularly scheduled elections.  Just take a look at the language of the amendment itself.   The authors of Amendment 4 could have written that into their measure.  But they did not.  And now, they are asking Florida voters to buy into wishful thinking supported by wild speculation.   In fact, communities across Florida will have an incentive to hold costly and uncertain special elections simply to remain in compliance with state growth management laws, or to keep up with vital community projects like schools, hospitals and police stations.

 

But even if we accept their unfounded interpretation and assume that Amendment 4 will simply delay all projects until the next regularly scheduled election, the result for Florida's working families and small businesses would be nothing short of catastrophic.

 

If Amendment 4 delays referenda until the regularly scheduled election, then vital community projects like new schools, hospitals, and police stations would often be delayed until the next General Election.  And while some large companies may still be able to finance the extreme delays and extraordinary uncertainty that accompanies Amendment 4, most small businesses cannot.  The result will be a series of direct, indirect and induced impacts that will cost Florida's economy billions.

 

Under Amendment 4, it will be harder to build new schools.  So existing schools will become even more overcrowded.  It will be harder to build roads.  So traffic will worsen.  It will be harder to add police and fire services to areas that need it.  So public safety needs may go unmet for years.

 

These are just a few of the reasons that Amendment 4 is too broad, over-reaching and unworkable.  An idea this fatally flawed does not belong in Florida's constitution.

 

THEY SAY: "If your local commission adopts, for instance, three local comprehensive land use plan changes in a year, then you'll vote on three. If they adopt one, you'll vote on one."

 

IN REALITY:  Nice try, but no one is buying it.  The Florida Supreme Court has already dispelled this convenient myth, too. In a 1984 decision (See Fine v. Firestone) that rejected the process of "logrolling," the court clearly stated that amendments must adhere to "single subject" rules, meaning that multiple ballot issues (e.g. multiple comprehensive plan amendments) could not be rolled into a single, all-encompassing ballot question.

 

Moreover, in order to reduce the risk of litigation--which would already be high under Amendment 4--local governments will be inclined to break down plan amendments into their basic parts and vote on them piecemeal. That's because interest groups on the losing end of an Amendment 4-style referendum are more likely to sue if their plan amendment is wrapped in with a series of unpopular proposals.  Similarly, unpopular proposals rolled in with new schools, hospitals and police stations, could torpedo these vital community projects.

 

THEY SAY: "On average, Florida commissions vote to approve three or four local comprehensive land use plan ordinances per year."

 

IN REALITY: Then why do we need Amendment 4?  The Amendment 4 campaign is so fond of saying that comprehensive plan changes are "handed out like Halloween candy."  Now, they're saying that local commissions only approve "three or four" plan amendments each year.

 

The Amendment 4 campaign may not bother to check its facts, but facts are stubborn things.  According to the Department of Community Affairs Sunset Review, there were nearly 6,500 changes to local comprehensive plans in fiscal year 2006-2007 (page 72).  Amendment 4 does not contain any limiting language and there are no exceptions for state-mandated amendments.  The result: Thousands of minor, technical plan amendments would appear on the ballot individually.

 

THEY SAY: "The crux of the matter is that there is already enough land approved for development in Florida's local comprehensive plans to accommodate 80 to 100 million residents - about five times more people than we have living here now."

 

IN REALITY: That's a great reason to oppose Amendment 4.  Without changes to local comprehensive plans, the existing pattern of development remains one of sprawl.  Amendment 4 makes it so difficult to change a comprehensive plan that many planning groups fear it may lock in place the bad decisions of the past.  1000 Friends of Florida--one of our state's leading growth management groups--raised a number of concerns about Amendment 4, including the fear that it would "limit efforts to pass plan amendments intended to lessen sprawling patterns of development."

 

When comprehensive planning was adopted in the 1980s, some communities had the resources to create sophisticated plans.  But some communities--usually smaller ones--did the best that they could with limited time and resources.  The result: Many comprehensive plans simply formalized the existing land use patterns--namely, sprawl.

 

By crippling the planning process, Amendment 4 may very well encourage bad development by limiting efforts to curb sprawl by improving our comprehensive plans.