St. Pete Beach Proves Flaws in Amendment 4 / Hometown Democracy

In his May 23rd story "Hometown Democracy Has Its Flaws, But So Does Sprawl", St. Petersburg Times columnist Dan DeWitt was dead wrong to discredit the relevance of St. Pete Beach's costly, tangled morass of lawsuits as an example of the flaws of Amendment 4 / Hometown Democracy. St. Pete Beach's toxic brew of divisive political action committees, warring citizenry and seemingly endless litigation is a direct result of my city's misguided attempt to implement Amendment 4-style land use regulations, and all Floridians should know that similar problems will threaten their cities if Amendment 4 passes in November.

The strongest proof of this comes from Ken Weiss, the attorney whose clients have been suing St. Pete Beach. Weiss recently wrote that the "central issue" in the St. Pete Beach litigation "has been the assertion by my clients that there must be full disclosure in the ballot summaries that the voters are approving the threefold increase in height and density." The ballot summary issue is so important to Weiss' clients that Weiss recently stated that all of the pending lawsuits would be dropped if the city of St. Pete Beach would agree to hold a new election using ballot language of their choosing.

What Weiss refers to is the fact that when St. Pete Beach adopted its local version of Amendment 4 and began putting its comprehensive plans and amendments on the ballot, it was forced under Florida law to summarize those complex, 150-200 page documents in 75-word ballot summaries (a hopelessly impossible task that all Florida cities will be forced to undertake on a regular basis if Amendment 4 passes in November).

When St. Pete Beach put a comprehensive plan on the ballot in 2008, Weiss's clients sued to overturn the election, contending that the 75-word ballot summaries were deceptively unclear. This reveals why comprehensive plans should never be put on the ballot: special interest groups unhappy with the election results can promptly sue, alleging ballot summary deficiencies that cannot possibly be addressed in 75 words or less.  To my knowledge, the Weiss plaintiffs themselves have not put forth their own suggested ballot summaries, and their description in their legal papers of what is missing from the City's 75-word summaries far exceeds 75 words!

This problem is not unique to St. Pete Beach. It is an inherent flaw in Amendment 4 that would impact all of Florida's cities, and this is why Mr. DeWitt is wrong to diminish the relevance of St. Pete Beach to the Amendment 4 debate.

Sadly, lawyers will be the true beneficiaries of Amendment 4-induced litigation. St. Pete Beach's 2010 litigation budget is depleted, even more trials are coming in August and beyond, yet the courts have already rejected many of the plaintiffs' numerous claims that St. Pete Beach's procedures circumvented/violated Florida law.

St. Pete Beach is unique in one respect: when we finally realized how overbroad, costly and unworkable our Hometown Democracy-style system was, we repealed it by an overwhelming majority vote of the people. Unfortunately, if Amendment 4 passes, it will be virtually impossible to repeal. Unlike the people of St. Pete Beach, the people of Florida will not be able to fix their mistake. DeWitt fails to grasp this critical distinction.

In fairness, DeWitt is not the only St. Petersburg Times columnist who has missed the point: Howard Troxler and Politifact have also mistakenly discredited the full relevance of St. Pete Beach to the Amendment 4 debate.

Fortunately, there is time for the Times to take a fresh look at the facts. I hope it does, because Florida deserves to hear the whole truth.

Click Here to read more analysis of the flaws in Amendment 4, including "Why Amendment 4 Does Require Special Elections" and "Amendment 4 Threatens  to Undermine Beach Preservation Efforts in St. Pete Beach."