Ryan Houck, who is leading the fight against the proposed Amendment 4 to the Florida constitution, is very adamant that the measure would create lengthy ballots.
Houck called me after last week's blog about an e-mail sent by his political action committee, Vote No on 4. The e-mail described a 47-page sample ballot that was given to voters outside some polling places to show how Amendment 4 could create ballots that are filled with the minutiae of land use decisions.
See the sample ballot here.
Bett Willett, South Florida coordinator for Hometown Democracy, disagreed with Houck and said in a phone interview that if a city revises an entire comprehensive plan with one vote, "that's the same thing we would vote on. We would not vote on all 816 items."
Interest in the Amendment 4 debate seems to be growing. Bob Norman of the Broward-Palm Beach New Times wrote on Saturday about $7 million raised to fight Amendment 4.
Norman, who has written extensively about public corruption, wrote that Amendment 4 would give a lot of power back to voters.
I asked Houck whether the corruption issue was resonating as much in other parts of Florida as it was down here. He politely declined to say whether South Florida is more corrupt than other areas.
However, he did admit it's part of the debate.
“If you are yes on 4, you don't want this to be a referendum on Amendment 4, you want it to be a referendum on a lot of different issues," he said.
Money in politics is one of the biggest rallying cries, he said.
He rhetorically asked: "So, the answer is to make sure we have more money in politics by making every planning decision into a high-priced political campaign?"
In other words, developers and their opponents could end up spending a lot of money trying to convince voters of their viewpoint if Amendment 4 passes.
Houck said there is no doubt Floridians, and Americans in general, are frustrated with politicians, but said of Amendment 4: "Does it address those concerns? No."
The process would remain the same, except elected officials then get to punt to the ballot box, rather than being held accountable, he said.
Houck said he appreciates the role of the media in giving both sides of the issue, but said there's little doubt that precedent and case law is on his side.
I invited him to send some substantiating documentation, and he replied in an e-mail. Here's what he had to say:
“The courts have routinely upheld the doctrine of ‘single-subject’ and prohibited the practice of ‘logrolling’ (combining multiple proposals into a single ballot question). In particular, Fine v. Firestone, a 1984 Florida Supreme Court decision dealing with statewide measures, provides insight into the commonsense reasoning behind single-subject. The court points out that voters cannot be forced to support a measure they don’t want (let’s use an Amendment 4 example, like a drainage issue) in order to obtain a change they do want (for example, a change in traffic signalization). Specifically, here’s what the court had to say in Fine:
The purpose of the single-subject requirement is to allow the citizens to vote on singular changes in our government that are identified in the proposal and to avoid voters having to accept part of a proposal which they oppose in order to obtain a change which they support.
Ultimately, there are three reasons that Amendment 4 would lead to ballots littered with dozens and potentially hundreds of plan revisions:
Court precedent
Court precedent on single-subject is fairly abundant and quite clear. Florida Supreme Court rulings have strictly enforced “single-subject” when it comes to statewide amendment proposals. The sound, commonsense reasoning behind these decisions make as much (if not more), sense for local planning proposals (which deal with multiple, individual applicants) as for statewide initiatives (which only deal with one sponsor). In fact, many county charters contain single-subject rules for local measures that are similar to Article XI, Section 3 of the Florida Constitution, which contains the single-subject rule for statewide amendments.
Political pressure
Bundling charter amendments on the timing of county commission meetings with a question of whether the city attorney should be on staff or retainer is one thing; but voting on separate and distinct planning proposals originating from multiple applicants, affecting dozens of planning elements and altering distinct land uses on numerous parcels of land is quite another. There will be tremendous political pressure from plan amendment applicants to break up proposed comprehensive plan amendments into their constituent parts. For example, the applicant for a residential community is unlikely to wish for their proposal to be rolled into the same ballot question as the applicant for a new jail. And, the reverse is problematic, as well – it’s one of the reasons the court has been so strict on single-subject. As the Florida Supreme Court wrote in Fine v. Firestone:
… the purpose of the single-subject requirement is to prevent logrolling, pairing a popular measure with an unpopular one in order to enhance the likelihood of passing the less-favored measure.
Threat of litigation
The threat of litigation would strongly encourage elected officials to break up proposed plan amendments and place them on the ballot separately. If the applicant for a residential community loses because his/her proposal was tied to the proposal for a new jail, it opens the floodgates for litigation on multiple grounds. In order to guard against such litigation, many elected officials have already signaled that they would ensure proposals are voted on individually, even if they had the option of logrolling (and it doesn’t seem that they would).
And, practically speaking, it’s virtually impossible to accurately condense a 900-page comprehensive plan – or even a 100-page plan amendment – into a 75-word ballot summary (including maps, traffic patterns, density graphs, etc.). Attempting to do so would invite litigation from the side that loses the referendum (on the grounds that the ballot language was “unclear”), which, not coincidentally, is exactly what happened in St. Pete Beach, where the town has now been stuck with roughly $750,000 in legal bills, courtesy of the same lawyer who co-authored Amendment 4.
I think the preponderance of evidence is clear that Amendment 4 will lead to ballots littered with seemingly endless technical planning provisions – whether it’s due to precedent, political pressure or the threat of litigation. However, if, in spite of the evidence, Amendment 4 ends up condensing hundreds of distinct planning proposals ranging from schools to hospitals to capital improvements to intergovernmental coordination to scenic beauty to drainage to sewage management to jails to landfills to EAR [evaluation and appraisal report] amendments into one or two giant ballot measures, then Amendment 4 is as much a reckless, ruinous and costly proposal as ever. Transforming 900-page comprehensive plans into 30-second sound bites may be a stimulus package for special interest lawyers, but it’s a terrible disservice to Florida’s taxpayers, voters and communities.
The bottom line is this: The sample ballots look ridiculous because Amendment 4 is ridiculous. It is poorly written, badly worded and prone to litigation – as the people of St. Pete Beach can attest. Any way you slice it, it’s utterly unworkable. The litigation that has resulted from Amendment 4 experiments in St. Pete Beach is not surprising. This measure was written by the very lawyers who stand to benefit so richly should this measure pass.”
