(return to media page)Palm Beach Daily News , September 30, 2007
Land-use initiatives may vie for votersPalm Beacher's quest to force more citizen oversight of local governments' power meets developers' counterproposal.
By WILLIAM KELLY
Palm Beach lawyer Lesley Blackner sees Florida as a paradise rapidly disappearing before developers' insatiable appetite for land and money.
As Blackner sees it, poorly managed, unbridled growth has and continues to flourish beyond the oversight of Florida residents, even though their lives are diminished by it.
Blackner wants to amend the state Constitution to prevent local governments from making land-use decisions without the direct approval of voters.
Her ballot initiative has pitted her against developers and business interests who say her plan would ruin the state's economy. They hope to offer voters an alternative constitutional amendment that would allow voters a say in land-use decisions only if 10 percent of registered voters demand a referendum.
Blackner also faces opposition from the Florida Chamber of Commerce and Gov. Charlie Crist.
Blackner, 47, is an environmental attorney from Jacksonville who earned a law degree from the University of Florida. She has lived in Palm Beach since 1996 with her husband, Richard Stone, an adjunct professor of securities law at Florida State University. The couple's two children, Clayton, 11, and Bennett, 3, go to school at Palm Beach Day Academy.
Blackner co-founded Florida Hometown Democracy with Tallahassee environmental lawyer Ross Burnaman.
She has worked for more than four years gathering signatures needed to put her proposed Hometown Democracy amendment on the November 2008 ballot.
So far, she has collected about 330,000 of the 611,009 signatures Florida law requires her to obtain by a Feb. 1 deadline.
Funding from diverse sources
She said she has poured more than $100,000 of her own money into the project, which she said has developed into a personal obsession and full-time volunteer occupation.
Other contributors include the Sierra Club Florida Chapter, which has given more than $100,000, and Tampa's Mons Venus strip club, which has given more than $27,000.
Her amendment would give voters more control over growth in their communities by requiring that voters approve all changes to comprehensive land use plans.
The state requires all municipalities and counties to keep and regularly update land-use plans. The plans are a growth blueprint that determines who can build what and where. They are updated and amended in a semi-annual process overseen by local planning agencies and governing bodies.
Blackner said Friday she started her petition drive because she couldn't stand the mindless development that has overtaken the state in the past 20 years.
"I think it looks like hell," she said. "These developers are like a horde of locusts across the landscape. They don't care about anything but making money."
Politicians have sold out to the developers, so the only way to restore control to the public is to put land-use decisions in the hands of voters, she said.
Palm Beach is fully developed, and redevelopment in the town is closely watched by a well-educated and civic-minded population, she said.
But Palm Beach is unique: Just across the Intracoastal Waterway in West Palm Beach there are residential high-rises sitting empty because developers built them, with government approval, even though the public didn't need them, she said.
Blackner cited the corruption cases of former Palm Beach County Commission Chairman Tony Masilotti and former Commissioner Warren Newell as evidence that the public interest has been hijacked to keep developers happy.
"There is so much money at stake, and the good-old-boy system is so strong here in Florida," she said. "The developers are never satisfied. They want it all. And these commissions hand out plan changes like candy."
Blackner's initiative has alarmed home builders and other powerful business interests. They have responded by forming a political action committee named Floridians for Smarter Growth, with the aim of getting a countermeasure on the ballot, also in November 2008.
In just three months, it has collected more than $841,000 — $550,000 of which came from its largest contributor, the National Association of Home Builders, according to the state Division of Elections. Other contributors include U.S. Sugar, Lykes Bros. and Barron Collier.
But the group lags in the number of signatures collected, executive director Michael Caputo said. He wouldn't say how many signatures Floridians for Smarter Growth has collected.
Its business-friendly amendment would make land-use changes subject to voter approval only if 10 percent or more of an affected community's registered voters sign a petition at the local supervisor of elections office.
At odds over practicality
Caputo said Blackner's amendment would imperil Florida's prosperity and is impractical because it would require people to vote 200 or 300 times a year to approve even the tiniest changes. "It's a Draconian, meat-cleaver approach to planning, assuming that what is good for Palm Beach is good for the Panhandle," he said.
Caputo called Blackner a special interest. He praised her for fueling debate on an important issue, but said her uncompromising zeal leaves her on the sidelines of any serious debate about reform.
If her amendment had been in effect in 2006, for example, Jupiter voters would have been called upon to approve more than 300 land-use changes in their town, not counting land-use amendments in the county, he said.
Blackner countered that the large number of growth plan amendments underscores her point that politicians casually change the rules to suit developers.
Hometown democracy is working in parts of England and California, and has been twice affirmed as constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, she said. It can work in Florida, too, she said — once people realize their government is supposed to work for them.
"We have got 50 years of brainwashing to undo," she said. "We have a sick, corrupt system."
COMPETING INITIATIVES
Florida Hometown Democracy ballot summary: Establishes that before a local government may adopt a new comprehensive land-use plan, or amend a comprehensive land-use plan, the proposed plan or amendment shall be subject to vote of the electors of the local government by referendum, following preparation by the local planning agency, consideration by the governing body and notice.
Floridians for Smarter Growth ballot summary: Allow Floridians to call for voter approval of changes to local growth management plans through a citizen petition. Voter approval of growth management plan changes will be required if 10 percent of the voters in the city or county sign a petition calling for such a referendum.