Posted on 02/22/2004 6:15:16 AM PST by StilettoRaksha
TALLAHASSEE -- They would force lawmakers to substitute teach and usher 16-year-olds into the voting booth. They would dash the budget-busting dream of high-speed rail and force every driver and passenger to buckle up. They would legalize marijuana and close the peephole into bedrooms.
This year's dizzying collage of 52 citizen initiatives, ranging from pie-in-the-sky universal health care to humdrum insurance rates, will be watched more closely than any in decades.
History suggests that only a fraction will reach the 488,722-signature threshold to even become an issue on Election Day. Fewer still can expect to land in the constitution.
But each is serving as ready ammunition for legislative and business leaders determined to combat what they see as a dangerously rising tide of direct democracy and a threat to their influence and authority. Their response: Make it even harder for ordinary citizens to mount a successful constitutional amendment drive.
A Senate Select Committee on Constitutional Amendment Reform -- which sprung up earlier this year after Senate President Jim King warned about the dire consequences of the flood of petition drives -- last week agreed to a proposal that would require constitutional amendments to muster a 60 percent majority of the vote on Election Day to pass, as opposed to the simple majority that they now need.
Other proposals before the Senate committee but not yet approved would:
• Reduce the time frame for getting enough signatures on a petition from four years to as little as two years.
• Require initiatives to be filed as much as nine or 10 months before the November election, instead of the current 90 days.
• Give the Florida Supreme Court greater power to review initiatives and decide whether they are fit for the constitution, before the amendments reach the ballot.
King has said that passing some type of constitutional amendment reform is one of his greatest priorities for the two-month legislative session that begins March 2.
The proposals also have the backing of the Florida Chamber of Commerce and at least one academic, all warning about the potential for Florida to become another California, where voters are blamed for exacerbating a $30 billion budget shortfall with demands for lower taxes and increased services.
"Citizen madness can infect the constitution," said Bruce Rogow, a Fort Lauderdale attorney and constitutional scholar. "There's an answer for that. If citizens want to, they can band together through the electoral process and remove the legislators who aren't listening to them."
But changing the rules won't be easy, even for powerful legislators. They must first convince three-fifths of their colleagues in both chambers and then let the voters decide -- with a mere majority of the vote -- in a statewide election.
To make the new rules apply to this year's pack of petition drives, some legislators want to put the rule changes to voters during the Aug. 30 primary, before the Nov. 2 general election.
King, a business-friendly Republican from Jacksonville, says only the amendment requiring a 60 percent vote for approval should go to vote in August. If the legislature tried to apply the limits on petitions to current petition drives, he said he believes the limits would be successfully challenged in court.
But, he said, "I think the changes that we are suggesting be made are viable and defensible and logical. Rest assured, if the citizens of this state want to keep status quo, all they've got to do is vote 'no' on everything we're sending to them."
McKay backing tax vote
One of the proposals of concern to the chamber would require local governments to put zoning changes up for a public vote.
Another would force the legislature to begin reviewing, and potentially closing, billions of dollars in sales tax loopholes. It's the brainchild of King's predecessor as Senate president, John McKay, a Bradenton Republican who retired in 2002.
McKay decided to go to the voters with his sales tax review initiative after Gov. Jeb Bush, conservative House leaders and business lobbyists blocked him from passing a tax reform proposal in 2002 that he claims would have prevented steep social service cuts.
He only laughs when asked whether it's too easy to change the state constitution. So far, McKay's "Floridians Against Inequities in Rates," a political action committee, has raised slightly more than $109,000 and spent slightly more than $81,000. Using a combination of paid and volunteer signature gatherers, supporters claim a little more than 100,000 signatures.
"I think people are entitled to another means of accomplishing their objectives if the legislature turns a deaf ear," McKay said. "I don't have any problem with the status quo."
Purity vs. pig protection
King and others also argue about the notion of constitutional "purity." They say the framing document should not be littered with complicated formulas for fishing net sizes or instructions for the living conditions of pregnant pigs, a measure that also passed in 2002.
"Honest to God, tell me why we need pregnant pigs in the constitution?" King asks.
McKay retorts, "Constitutional purity? It's much more a working document, a manual, than an ideological masterpiece."
The Florida Constitution already sets salaries and the ground rules for collective bargaining, McKay says. It's different from the more staid U.S. Constitution.
Backers of the pig amendment also point out they previously tried to introduce a bill banning gestation crates in the House, but the House Agricultural Committee refused to give it a hearing. They raise the specter of special interests, saying that if legislators responded more to people rather than the lobbyists representing special interests, then people would not have to resort to amending the constitution.
King also worries about special interests, but he says it's because citizen initiatives can hijack the legislature.
Doctors and lawyers, two of the most powerful lobbying forces in Tallahassee, for example, are sponsoring a spate of competing initiatives that would either make it harder or easier to sue for malpractice or nursing home abuse, depending on the sponsor. The powerful gambling industry is back with a proposal to approve more slot machines.
Bush unsuccessfully fought the teachers unions -- as well as many parents -- in their drive for a constitutional amendment limiting class sizes in 2002. Bush asked legislators last year to put an amendment on the ballot that would repeal it, but they declined. And this year, Sen. Burt Saunders, R-Naples, announced in February that he was abandoning his petition drive for a class-size repeal proposal, in part, because he didn't want President Bush to share the ballot with a Republican-backed measure that could anger the electorate.
"I've tried to balance the need for the citizens to have access to the constitution against the fact that I don't want them to be able to do it at the snap of a finger, or have special interest groups to make the decision that it's cheaper to go a constitutional amendment than it is to try to fight through legislation," King said.
Lawmakers still tops
But McKay warns that erecting barriers will instead eliminate the people who can't afford paid signature gatherers or television advertising campaigns, not the special interests.
And history shows that more successful amendments have been proposed by the legislature and constitutional revision commissions than citizen petition drives.
More than 200 petition drives have been filed since 1972, but only 21 made it to the ballot. Of the 21, voters approved 16. During the same period, lawmakers and revision commissions placed more than 100 proposed amendments on the ballot.
One reason, defenders of the system say, is that it's already far from easy for citizen initiatives to reach the ballot. Before they do, they must be reviewed by the Florida Supreme Court to make sure they cover only a single subject and that the ballot description is not misleading. Lawmakers and revision committees can bypass state supreme court review.
Supervisors of elections also have to verify signatures for authenticity. Besides having to meet a threshold of nearly 500,000 signatures, supporters must make sure the signatures are geographically diverse.
Indeed, based on the historic ratio of 1 in 10 initiatives making it onto the ballot during the past 32 years, those limits alone could mean voters will be voting on only about five of the 52 citizen proposals come Nov. 2.
By Jim Ash, Palm Beach Post Capital Bureau Sunday, February 22, 2004
TALLAHASSEE -- Of the 52 constitutional petition drives listed as active with the Florida Secretary of State's Office, seven are based in or have strong connections to Palm Beach County:
• Additional homestead tax exemption: Would increase the homestead exemption from $25,000 to $50,000. Sponsor: Families for Lower Property Taxes, of West Palm Beach, chaired by Jeffrey Saull.
• Lower voting age: Would give 16-year-old and 17-year-old residents of Florida the right to vote. Also provides for a lower age to pre-register to vote. Sponsor: Vote At 16, chaired by Steven Rosenberg of West Palm Beach.
• Replacing district school boards with parental governing councils: Would establish parental governing councils that would have full authority in organizing their schools, subject to state and federal laws. Councils would set the rate of school district taxes, while the state board of education would be required to operate, control and supervise all public schools. Sponsor: Save Our Schools, of West Palm Beach, chaired by Elliot Shaw.
• Repealing the high-speed rail amendment: Would repeal the amendment that mandates the development and operation of a high-speed ground transportation system in the state, and would instead leave decisions about state transportation systems to the legislature. Sponsor: Derail the Bullet Train (DEBT), chaired by David Goodstein of Boca Raton.
• Restoring voting rights: Would restore voting rights to a felon upon completion of sentence. Sponsor: Committee to Restore Voter Dignity, chaired by Sen. Mandy Dawson, D-Fort Lauderdale, whose district includes Palm Beach County.
• Personal Sexual Privacy Initiative: Would guarantee the right that no act of sexual intimacy committed in private between consenting adults is prohibited by law. Would not repeal laws regulating sexual acts for economic compensation. Sponsor: Personal Sexual Privacy Initiative, of Fort Lauderdale. Its treasurer is Felecia Hudson Shaw of West Palm Beach.
• Primary enforcement of Florida's safety belt law: Would require the legislature to enact legislation providing for enforcement of Florida's safety belt law to the same extent as other traffic laws of this state. Sponsor: Dori Slosberg Safety Belt Law Committee, chaired by her father, Rep. Irv Slosberg, D-Boca Raton.
The pregnant pig amendment was downright offensive. If we would just devote 10% of the energy we throw at our favorite candidates, we could succeed in halting the abuses to our constitution.
Constitutional amendments, on the other hand, should be more sharply limited. Their ratification should require the approval of 2/3 of the voters - not only 2/3 of those who vote yes or no, but 2/3 of all those who show up to vote that day at all, for anything. Hence, no vote would count the same as a "no" vote.
I spent an extraordinary amount of time educating several elderly Florida voters about each of them in 2002. For goodness sakes, one of the amendments was 2/3 page long in small print. It was fraught with legalese babble, including about 6 sets of double negatives.
Guessing by your screen name that you are a "Cornhusker," and if so, having lived in your state before moving to CA, I suggest you read the CA state constitution. It has become an abomination, yeah verily, even an abortion!!!
It is so conflicted and confused with not only ballot measure baloney injected into a document already rife with legislatively passed "amendments" that it is practically incomprehensible gibberish!!!
On our CA state flag it says "CALIFORNIA REPUBLIC" and like our whole nation was supposed to be a representative republic, utilizing a democratic process until some Republican Governor instituted the "direct democracy" concept from the old country that we all were supposed to have left behind as unacceptable.
It has turned CA into the mob rule of "group think" that is direct democracy and made it ungovernable, even for a lunk-head celebrity from Austria (again, the old country!)
Many here have suggested we'd do better with a unicameral legislature like your Nebraska has. That it would eliminate the so-called "gridlock!" Thank God for gridlock!!!
If we had a one-house legislature (as we almost have anyway with Demonicrat domination) we would be taxed out of existance and the world's 6th largest economy would grind to a halt under the burden!!!
Be very careful what you wish for, as we've already gotten it and it don't work!!!
Thanks fer the compliment! Comin frum yew, I reely preciated it! (toothless CA redneck grin)
And you don't really sound like them because you made sense. Most of their rants don't, which is why they've never attracted much support.
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