This is not true.
The city of St. Pete Beach, Florida learned this the hard way. In 2006, St. Pete Beach adopted Amendment 4 - style land use regulations that require all comprehensive plans and all comprehensive plan changes to be put on the ballot. St. Pete Beach's regulations and Amendment 4 are functionally identical because both require a referendum vote of the people before approval of all comprehensive plans and comprehensive plan changes.
St. Pete Beach residents soon learned that Amendment 4 - style rules DO require special elections, even though the literal language of such regulations does not appear to require them.
How is this possible?
The answer is simple. If a city's next regularly-scheduled election has no contested candidate races, then, as a result of Amendment 4, the only item that would be placed on the ballot would be the comp plan/amendment.
Ordinarily, if a city has no contested candidate races, the city saves money because it doesn't have to hold an election. Under Amendment 4, if a city has no contested candidate races, but if it does have a comp plan or comp plan amendment, then the city is forced to make a choice: either it refuses to put the comp plan/amendment on the ballot, (thus waiting for the next regularly scheduled election in hopes that there will be a contested candidate race), or the city must hold a special election in which the only item on the ballot is the comp plan/amendment.
St. Pete Beach has learned this is not a remote, rare or unique possibility because it has had no contested candidate races in 2009 and 2010, BOTH of its past TWO "regularly scheduled" elections. Like most cities, the cost of an election is significant: in St. Pete Beach an election costs roughly $20,000. County-wide elections can cost $1.0 million.
If St. Pete Beach had had a comp plan/amendment in late 2008 or early 2009, it would have had to either pay to hold a special election to put it on the ballot, or defer to the next "regularly scheduled" election, hoping that the next election would have a contested candidate race that would require holding an election. If St. Pete Beach had waited until 2010, it would have faced the same problem again, since the 2010 election was also uncontested. Thus, the only way to avoid the continual delays would be for the city to pay to hold the "functional equivalent" of a special election.
Fortunately for St. Pete Beach, we did not have a comp plan/amendment to put on the ballot, but if we did, our Amendment 4-style rules would have forced us to pay to hold a special election. In fact, in March, 2010, St. Pete Beach did hold an election in which the only item on the ballot was a change to the city's community redevelopment plan.
Of course, the alternative to paying to hold a special election is to simply do nothing...to let comp plans/amendments sit, to subject them to continual delay. A cynical observer might well wonder whether this is a result that would actually please the anti-development folks, but I choose not to view this debate through such a tainted lens.
Instead, I simply want all Floridians to realize that they should not take at face value the claims of Amendment 4 supporters who are assuring Floridians that their proposed constitutional amendment will not cause their cities to incur the cost of special elections, because, as St. Pete Beach learned, that claim is simply not true.
Click Here to read more analysis of the flaws in Amendment 4, including "Why Comp Plans Should Not be put on the Ballot" and "Amendment 4 Threatens to Undermined Beach Preservation Efforts in St. Pete Beach."
Absolutely untrue.
ReplyDeleteIn St. Pete Beach the referenda were placed on ballots before the land use changes went through the public hearing process and were voted on by the city commission.
No matter how many times you keep repeating this lie, it will not become the truth.
Jill:
ReplyDeleteThanks for commenting, but I don't think your point is addressing what I'm talking about.
Regarding the point you are talking about, it is my understanding that the DCA has held that the SPB plan is in full compliance. It's also my understanding that, in the litigation, the judge has held that the timing of the SPB ballots, (the fact that the referenda happened early) did not violate Florida law. I'm glad that you do raise the point, however, because, like St. Pete Beach many many Florida cities have similar provisions in their city charters that allow citizens to petition to put something to a referendum vote, which, possibly, could include a comprehensive plan/amendment. Unless other cities amend their charters to deprive their citizens of their right to petition to have a vote, then other cities could find themselves in a similar position that St. Pete Beach found itself.
It is true that the version of these regs that SPB adopted did not specifically provide that the referenda must be held at the END of the entire process (that is something that A4 does provide), but that does not mean that the SPB situation has absolutely nothing to do with Amendment 4, and it does not negate the fact that, like SPB, all Florida cities will have to summarize their comp plans/amendments in 75-word ballot summaries if A4 passes in November.
What I was talking about in this post is the claim by Hometown Democracy that Amendment 4 does not require special elections.
My post was simply raising the fact that if a city's next regularly-scheduled election has no contested candidate races, then ordinarily there would be no need for the city to pay to hold an election...unless, of course, Amendment 4 requires the city to put a comp plan/amendment on the ballot also.
In St. Pete Beach our past few elections have been uncontested when it came to our candidates, so I think it is true to say that under Amendment 4, we would have had to pay for an election where the only thing on the ballot would have been a comp plan/change...which seems to me to be what were are talking about when we talk about special elections.
If you have other information, please let me know. All I'm hoping to do here is have a respectful, informed discussion about the strengths and weaknesses of Amendment 4!
And thanks again for commenting. It's nice to know someone is reading the blog! :)
Jill:
ReplyDeleteReading over my original post, I'm wondering if what you are responding to is my statement that "St. Pete Beach's regulations and Amendment 4 are functionally identical because both require a referendum vote of the people before approval of all comprehensive plans and comprehensive plan changes."
Again, it is true that A4 specifically requires that a referendum must be held at the end of the process, and it is true that the version adopted by SPB did not have this requirement. I think my statement is accurate in that both SPB and A4 require a referendum before a comp plan/change can be enacted. It is my understanding that SPB complied with all of the notice and hearing requirements prior to the final enactment of the plan.
It seems that the critical distinction you are focusing on is the timing of when the referendum was put on the ballot. When I say that SPB and A4 are functionally identical, I'm talking about the requirement of putting the comp plan on a ballot and subjecting the comp plan approval process to a referendum vote.
To my thinking, the timing of when that referendum occurs is irrelevant, because whether the vote happens before city commission approval (as happened in SPB) or after (as required by Amendment 4), the result is the same: in order to comply with Florida law, the city must summarize its 150-200 page comp plan/amendment in a 75-word ballot summary, which in turn raises the problems and unintended consequences that I discussed in other blogposts.
The fact that some of the SPB litigation focused on the timing issue does not negate this argument, since attorney Weiss has stated that the critical aspect of the litigation has been the ballot language challenges/issue.
Hmmm...this point is complex and interesting enough (and this response may be a bit too rambling) to merit a separate blogpost. Jill, I hope you'll stay tuned and reply to the new post when I put it up since I want to make sure we are talking about the same thing here.