h/t to my friend Gale Sylvester for forwarding this story on to me.
Despite this truly crappy legislative session were going through right now, there is one small ray of hope coming from our state’s still somewhat sane judiciary:
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — People cannot take back their support once they sign petitions to get citizen initiatives on a ballot, an appeals court ruled Wednesday in a case over whether voters should have a say in changing infrastructure and development plans. (…)
The appeals court’s seven-page ruling said revoking signatures burdens the initiative process with requirements not found in the Florida Constitution. Instead, the constitution gives citizens the right to propose amendments without legislative assistance.
“The court got it right,” said Ross Burnaman, co-founder of the Hometown Democracy political action committee.
Yes they did. As you can probably infer from just the quote above, this fight was between Hometown Democracy amendment backers and their detractors (in this case the Associated Industries of Florida.) Democracy finally won (albeit a small battle) in Florida.
As a side note, I’ll admit I haven’t been fully convinced on the merits of Hometown Democracy, but if the vote was held today I’d probably vote for it just out of my own anger with the way the Chamber of Commerce and its allies have opposed the bill – through lies, and probably downright intimidation.
In my view, there’s still a better way of getting a handle on growth – reform the county commissions. The first obvious reform would be to outlaw campaign contributions from individuals and companies that do business before county commissions. This would be similar legislation to that used in other states to ban contractors that do business with state government from giving campaign contributions to state-level candidates (legislative, gubernatorial, etc…) A second step would be to introduce clean election laws at (first) the municipal level, which is already being done places like Albuquerque and Portland, and (secondly) at the county level. The bottom line is I would much rather get rid of the corroding influence of money at the county (and eventually state) level.
