As Floridians prepare to vote on Amendment 4 this November, they may have a valid sketch of the measure in real-world application with the case of St. Pete Beach, a name that pops up among arguments from advocates on both sides of the issue.
Whether it serves as a legitimate case study, the fact remains that a direct democracy initiative giving citizens a vote over land use was put into play by its citizens in 2006, with results being mixed, at best.
The experiment in St. Pete Beach began in 2005 as city commissioners were looking to change their comprehensive land development plan to allow more hotels in the area and boost the economy. Naturally, this raised density issues and what was legally allowed at that time. A group of locals opposed to the move formed Citizens for Responsible Growth, a group which successfully petitioned for a series of charter amendments on a city ballot requiring voters to directly approve any changes to the comprehensive land-use plan.
The city then sued to quash the measures, saying they violated state land-use laws. A developer also brought suit, citing the money it was costing him in delays. Both suits failed and in November 2006, the amendments were passed by a narrow vote. At the same time, Citizens for Responsible Growth successfully elected two of its members to the City Commission, which gave them an anti-development majority on the panel.
Developers soon fired back by forming a group of their own, Save Our Little Village, and successfully petitioned to get more growth-friendly changes to the comprehensive plan on an upcoming ballot. Anti-development commissioners moved to stop the proposals, leading to another lawsuit brought by Save Our Little Village, which also resulted in the resignation of the citys attorney. The move stalled the developers initiative.
A subsequent election led to another turnover in power in the City Commission, and this time a different pro-development referendum was approved by voters. It altered the charter amendment by limiting voter oversight on land development, limiting it to only height, density and zoning changes. However, anti-development forces, led by environmental attorney Russ Burnaman, who co-authored Amendment 4 with Leslie Blackner, a fellow environmental attorney and president of Florida Hometown Democracy, an advocacy group for the proposal, sued over the changes voters had approved.
The suits continue to this day and thus far, according to city officials, $750,000 of taxpayer money has been spent on legal bills.
I wasnt in favor of (the voter initiative) in St. Pete Beach, we tried to work with it as best we could, Ward Friszolowski, the citys mayor at the time, said. He said the original initiative giving voters essentially the same control over land development as they will have under Amendment 4 was too simplistic and not well thought out. The endless litigation is one of the unintended consequences that could well occur in cities statewide if the measure is passed, he added.
Current St. Pete Beach Commissioner Allan Halpern agreed. All cities will see these kinds of legal challenges, he said, Its inevitable. He says a scaled-back version limiting voter approval to certain areas, such as the one St. Pete Beach has in place now, would be the way to go statewide. However, thats not likely to happen. Since the Hometown Democracy folks brought this forth to the state ballot by petition, legally they cant change the wording on the ballot, which means a vote on everything.
Current St. Pete Beach City Manager Mike Bonfield said the initiative only led to a lot of misunderstanding and voter fatigue from a succession of special elections, which cost taxpayer dollars. There were several state-mandated comp plan changes, all of which had to be voted on because of the initiative. Most didnt affect us directly, we adopted what the county adopted, he said. So you get a situation where youre going to the poll and if you vote no, youre not in compliance with state law. A lot of people were asking, Then why are we voting on this? Well, because the amended city charter required us to. They werent told about this by the Hometown Democracy advocates in the runup to changing the charter, just like voters statewide arent being told about it under Amendment 4, he explained.
However, according to Blackner, the problems in St. Pete Beach have nothing to do with Amendment 4. She said they arose from developers not following the proper procedure. They wanted to put high-rise condos on the beach during the height of the real estate bubble so they got the citizens to sign some petitions to take the issue directly to a ballot, she explained. Under Florida law, you cant do that. You have to hold two public hearings.
Harry Metz, former pro-growth city commissioner agreed, saying, The developer/hotelier controlled St. Pete Beach City Commission used the citys ordinance initiative process to submit changes to our city's comprehensive plan in a public referendum without going through the public hearing requirements of the State Growth Management Act. The developer/hotelier controlled City Commission ignored state law, he said.
Ryan Houck, executive director of Citizens for Lower Taxes and a Stronger Economy, the chief opposition group to Amendment 4, noted, That's not how an administrative law judge with the Department of Community Affairs sees it. Amendment 4 supporters say that they are trying to overturn the election because their process was not followed. But a judge and a state agency have already said that the law was followed. In response, Amendment 4 lawyers did what they do best: They filed another lawsuit.
More importantly, Houck added, Are we really to believe that Amendment 4 supporters spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees because they object to a minor, procedural technicality? It is clear that they never wanted to give the voters a say at all. Instead, they just want to stop growth, regardless of what the voters say. When they lost at the ballot box, they decided to take the people to court.
According to Friszolowski, Metz and Blackner dont have their facts straight. We had years of public hearings, he said. That particular rewrite of the comprehensive plan (to ease density and height requirements) was started back as early as 2002. Harry was there for a lot of those meetings, so for him to say that is simply not true.
Whats really ironic, according to Friszolowski and other anti-Amendment 4 advocates, is that proponents used to tout St. Pete Beach as evidence in favor of the measure when it was first passed in the city. Yet Amendment 4 proponents see it differently.
St. Pete Beach would be a point for our side if the Yes on 4 folks had a media budget, Greg Gimber, a pro-Amendment 4 activist said. Instead, truckloads of dollars from bailed-out speculators are being spent to rewrite history and cover the dirty deeds done by politicians in St Pete Beach.
Blackner notes that anti-Amendment 4 forces have raised $5 million since April to campaign against the measure. About $2 million of it came from publicly-traded construction companies that got billions of dollars in bailouts since the beginning of the year and another $3 million came from lobbyists who serve those entities, she said.
Houck counters that Blackner has spent nearly $1 million of her personal money to get Amendment 4 enacted.
Experts differ on whether St. Pete Beach is a valid example of Amendment 4 in action. I do not think the litigious experience in St. Pete Beach is a good indication of how Amendment 4 would work statewide, simply because in St. Pete the issue has been whether the public can override the elected officials, whereas if Amendment 4 passes, this will be a settled matter, Lance deHaven Smith, political science professor at Florida State University, said.
Mark Soskin, University of Central Florida associate professor of economics and Amendment 4 supporter called St. Pete Beach a red herring. It is only a case of opposition turning blue from holding its breath or taking its football and going home, he said.
According to Kevin Hing, chairman of the Beach Stewardship Committee of St. Pete Beach and community activist, the citys litigation exposes Amendment 4s flaws not by how the comprehensive plan changes got on the ballot, but rather the chaos that happened after those changes were put on the ballot.
Like the St. Pete Beach ordinance, Amendment 4 is fatally overbroad. Amendment 4 and the regulations adopted by St. Pete Beach share the same flaw: they require a vote on all comp plans and comp plan changes, even changes that dont concern height or density -- the prime concern of most citizens -- and technical changes required under Florida law, Hing explained. Hometown Democracy argues why not give people a vote? But St. Pete Beach proves why a constitutional amendment is a huge mistake: once adopted, it cant be repealed on the local level. Unlike St. Pete Beach, which had the power to undo its ill-advised adoption of Amendment 4-style rules, Floridians wont have the power to undo Amendment 4 once it passes.
As to whether Amendment 4 would lead to endless litigation similar to St. Pete Beach, Dan Smith, University of Florida political science professor, called it an open question. Ive seen similar examples at the state level that dont lead to more litigation. It doesnt necessarily mean thats the only path Amendment 4s passage will follow, he said.
Perhaps the St. Petersburg Times and Miami Herald put it best when they weighed in on the issue (both editorial boards came out opposed to Amendment 4) and wrote, Are the same lawsuits and political maneuvering possible? Absolutely. And maybe that's enough to make the analogy valid. But voters should be wary in blindly believing that St. Pete Beach's experiences would be duplicated statewide should Amendment 4 pass.
Steve Brown, who writes this story "Special to Sunshine State News," lives in St. Petersburg.
