Though Florida has some of the nation's best growth management laws, Florida still overbuilt for decades because politics trumped those laws. Under the guise of recovering from the housing crash caused by overbuilding, legislators have worked to make construction even easier.
For a group of disgruntled state residents led by Palm Beach lawyer Lesley Blackner, the solution is Amendment 4 - Florida Hometown Democracy. This constitutional change would require public votes on changes to comprehensive plans, the growth blueprints for every county and town in Florida. It sounds good: With political corruption rampant, put the people in charge of development. But the amendment is overreaching and dangerously vague. Supporters have no credible rebuttal to the argument that the proposal would force an endless series of public votes on jargon-laden government minutiae. The Post recommends a NO vote. The issue of just what Amendment 4 would cover is critical and disputed. If it gets at least 60 percent of the vote, a requirement the Legislature put on the 2006 ballot specifically to thwart Hometown Democracy but applicable to all amendments, a court fight would follow. Supporters, responding to criticism that local ballots would be filled with hundreds of referendum questions, argue that Amendment 4's language limits votes to matters that change a city or county land-use map. That would have the effect, they argue, of forcing votes only on major growth proposals. In fact, the ballot language does not say that. It makes no distinction among the many categories of land-use changes, which numbered 25,000 last year. In 2005, the Florida Supreme Court found that Amendment 4 covered a broad range of all comprehensive plan amendments and would result in "a substantial number of referenda each year." Realtors, developers and business groups have united to block the proposal. They tried a competing amendment that never made the ballot. They tried a law rejected by the Supreme Court to allow petition-signers to revoke their signature. They fear that Amendment 4 would raise the price of construction because of costly campaigns, drive industry from Florida and eliminate jobs. Supporters claim that referendums would be held during regularly scheduled elections. If that happened, routine growth-plan changes would be unnecessarily delayed. Builders could sue to force earlier special elections. They would demand that the public pay. If Amendment 4 passed, developers might persuade legislators to weaken growth regulations to nullify Amendment 4. That would leave the public with even fewer protections. Amendment 4 is a call for direct democracy. Representative government can be frustrating but when voters disagree with their representatives' decisions, they can remove them. Some voters may be able to pick through technical staff reports and analyze complex development issues. Most would not. Amendment 4 would harm Florida's economy as the state is trying to recover. There's a problem with growth management in Florida, but Amendment 4 is not the solution
