Charlotte Sun (Port Charlotte, FL) - Tuesday, June 16, 2009
OUR POSITION: The Hometown Democracy initiative takes a broad, heavy-handed and ultimately unworkable approach to growth management issues.
We may find out soon whether the long-simmering Hometown Democracy growth-control amendment finally makes it to a statewide ballot.
The people who have spent years on a statewide petition drive announced last week the state Division of Elections had certified enough signatures to place it on the November 2010 ballot. But first it must survive a challenge in the state Supreme Court, which will rule on whether a state law passed last year -- pushed by the state's development and business interests -- would disqualify enough signatures to keep the measure off the ballot again.
It 's was easy enough to see why the Florida Hometown Democracy movement could flower during the boom time of recent years, as growing numbers of Floridians groped for controls on explosive development. Florida's checkered reputation as a swamp of political shenanigans also didn't help.
Then, there's the very law tying up the ballot measure in court. It smacked of heavy-handed, big-money politics, the very thing Hometown Democracy purports to counteract.
Add to that the Legislature's recent easing of the state's growth management process and you can see why voters develop a gut-level distrust of the process. It all adds fuel to the flames of populist resentment.
Take, for instance, this comment from Palm Beach lawyer Lesley Blackner, who heads Florida Hometown Democracy. Blackner told the Palm Beach Post last week the passage of that law "just goes to show that (developers) always get what they want. This is the same group that basically destroyed our economy with overbuilding, and their solution is to dismantle growth management and build more."
You can see where this is going.
We had problems with the Legislature's change in the growth-management law. We also believe Florida needs steady, regulated growth to prosper.
The problem with the Hometown Democracy amendment is that it is a simplistic, ham-handed overreaction . This "solution" will create more problems than it solves.
If passed, the constitutional amendment would require a referendum on all changes to county comprehensive plans. Annual votes would be costly, the ballots long. In any "typical" year, there may be dozens, both big and small. Most are complicated, technical changes that the average voter would have little interest in. The entire system would be impractical.
It also would turn technical land-use questions into political questions, subject to political campaigns. We can only imagine the high-financed, sound-bite-driven advertising campaigns, on either side, that would naturally result. Is that progress?
Above all, in our system we elect city or county commissioners to study and weigh things like comp plan changes. The rest of us participate as much as we wish, but we expect our elected officials to put in the long hours of study and deliberation, then vote on these matters. It happens with local budgets, comp plans, policies and regulations.
What's needed is smarter, steadier, targeted growth. A public referendum system would add another clumsy, costly hurdle, which may be what supporters really want in the long run.
