(return to media page)Panama City News Herald, January 15, 2008
Hometown Democracy proposal lacking key support BY Jeremy Morrison
The Florida Division of Elections’ revised count on Monday listed the unofficial tally for the petition at 501,530. In order to be placed on the November general election ballot, 611,009 signatures are required.
“They could still do it,” said Bay County Supervisor of Elections Mark Andersen.
Secretary of State Kurt Browning ordered the recount last week after abandoning an electronic system for reporting signature verifications because of glitches that included duplicating petitions. She directed county election officials to go back to paper.
Champions of the initiative, tagged Florida Hometown Democracy, argue that the amendment will give voters more power in land-use decisions.
Currently, comprehensive land-use plans are revised every 10 years after a series of public hearings, with elected officials charged with deciding upon any changes in the interim.
Under the proposed amendment, all land-use changes would go to a referendum.
Bay County community activist and local Hometown-Democracy footsoldier Diane Brown said she believes a power shift is needed in such instances. The authority on land-use changes, she said, should fall to the voters.
“They will be able to decide, ‘Is it a good thing?’” Brown said. “Our commissioners have not been making the right decisions for us.”
Brown said she views the initiative as a tool for voters to control environmental impacts as well as government spending.
Local officials, business and development interests disagree.
“I think it would be catastrophic,” said Bay County Commission Chairman Jerry Girvin.
If placed on November’s ballot and passed, Girvin said the measure would clog the wheels of local government, delaying progress and adding costs. In addition to those concerns, he said, that’s not how our system of government is designed.
“Contrary to popular belief, we’re not a democracy, we’re a republic,” Girvin said, noting that citizens elect officials to conduct their collective business. “I believe we do more than an adequate job of regulating growth in the community and looking ahead to what’s going to happen.”
Suggestions that officials kowtow to development interests do not hold water for Girvin.
“That’s hogwash,” he said. “We’ve had a number of people come to us with development issues that were patently bad things, and we reject them.”
During 2006 and 2007, Bay County received 17 large-scale comprehensive plan change applications. Five have been approved, two were withdrawn and one was tabled for further consideration. The others have not been considered.
Thirty small-scale plan changes were applied for during that same time period. Half have been approved, 11 are waiting for consideration, one was withdrawn and three were denied.
Large-scale amendments involve 10 or more acres.
Bay County spokeswoman Valerie Lovett said the county is approached often regarding plan changes, but many of the would-be applicants quickly realize their requests would hit a brick wall and never engage the process.
As for cost, Andersen said even if land-use issues were held until regular elections, the ballot-expenses alone would add up.
Currently, the county spends about $27,000 for ballots per election.
“Basically, it’d double the cost on the paper ballots,” he said. “Do that times 60,000 ballots, it’s thousands of dollars. It will effect this office’s budget. There’s no way around that.”
The Bay County Chamber of Commerce, in line with the state chamber, is adamantly opposed to the initiative. Carol Roberts, president of the local chamber, said she doesn’t even like the Hometown-Democracy name.
“The name of it in itself is really confusing to the public. The name gives you warm-fuzzies,” Roberts said, adding that the measure actually would saddle under-informed voters with too great of a task. “That’s why we have elected officials. We need to leave it in the hands of the professionals.”
Andersen agrees that the task could overwhelm voters.
“They’ve already done studies on these things,” he said. “It’s called voter fatigue.”
Other citizen initiatives are short on signatures, too.
Sponsors of the single-gender marriage prohibition announced a month ago that they had met the 611,009 signature requirement, but updated numbers issued by the state show the proposed amendment to the Florida Constitution still is 21,989 signatures short.
Also, a proposal that would require doctors to charge the same fee for the same service to all patients has less than half of the signatures needed.
Neither of two competing stem cell proposals are anywhere near reaching their ballot. A proposed ban on state funding of embryonic stem cell research has 78,773 signatures. A measure that would require the state to pay $20 million a year for such research has 73,404 signatures.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.