St. Petersburg's Council is Doing the Right Thing regarding Amendment 4

Columnists and bloggers have been sharply critical of the St. Petersburg City Council's recent efforts to minimize the potential impact of Amendment 4 if it passes in November.  One local columnist even said recently that the City Council's actions were "morally wrong".   These folks are wrong, however, because, unlike the St. Petersburg City Council, they have failed or refused to learn from the tragedy of St. Pete Beach.


Like every city council or commission in Florida, the St. Petersburg council has a municipal duty to act in the best interest of its people.  Thankfully, most of the time that means following the polls.  Sometimes, however, doing the "right thing" means taking actions that are not favored by the people or supported by the polls.  That's precisely where the St. Petersburg Council finds itself now on Amendment 4.


Superficially, it may seem that the Council is trying to subvert the "will of the people", but that's just not the case.  The truth is that, unlike most Floridians, the St. Petersburg Council has learned from the mistakes made by the people of St. Pete Beach (population 10,000) and Yankeetown (population 700).

In 2006, the people of St. Pete Beach adopted Amendment 4-style rules by amending our city charter to require a citizen vote on comp plan changes.  It seemed like a great idea at the time.  Little did we know then how wrong we were!  In 2008 we put our new Hometown Democracy rules to the test and approved changes to our comp plan by a vote of the people.  However, the process proved so overbroad, impractical and costly that in 2009 we repealed many of those requirements by amending our local city charter by an overwhelming majority vote of the people.  Yankeetown also adopted Amendment 4-style rules, but afterwards found the rules to be overbroad, and its voters also amended their local city charter to scale back the overbroad scope of those rules.


The problem with Amendment 4 is that it has the same overbroad scope as the regulations that St. Pete Beach and Yankeetown tried to repeal.  Since Amendment 4 is a constitutional amendment, it trumps the local charters of Florida's cities and counties, and Floridians won't have the legal power to "fix" it with amendments on the local level.

Thus, voting for Amendment 4 is like getting a tattoo:  there's no changing it later, so inking yourself with words that you can't live with forever is a really bad idea.

The St Petersburg City Council sees this, and is braving the backlash from bloggers and columnists.  Are they "morally wrong" to take actions they believe will protect their city from the harm we've suffered in St. Pete Beach?  I don't think so.

If bloggers and columnists want to observe and comment on the true moral hazards of Amendment 4, they should take a closer look at St. Pete Beach, where a two-day trial attacking the will of our city's voters was prosecuted by none other than Ross Burnaman, the special interest lawyer who co-founded Amendment 4.  Luckily, Burnaman's arguments were rejected by the Judge, but his unsuccessful lawyering added to the many hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees our city has been forced to pay in defense of our disastrous experiment with Hometown Democracy.

When the people of St. Pete Beach tried to implement Hometown Democracy by giving our citizens a vote on comp plans, Hometown Democracy's founder took our city to court to challenge the will of our voters.

Now that's just wrong!

Read More about Amendment 4 Here, including Why Comp Plans Should Never Be Put on the Ballot and Why St. Pete Beach Proves the Flaws in Amendment 4
 

Hometown Democracy Throws Truth Under the Bus in Televised Amendment 4 Debate

Supporters of Amendment 4 are dead wrong when they dismiss St. Pete Beach's costly, disastrous experiment with Hometown Democracy-style referendum rules as having "absolutely nothing" to do with Amendment 4.  During a recent televised debate (See Part 1 Here, and Part 2 Here),  Hometown Democracy leader Bett Willett smeared St. Pete Beach as a "red herring", claiming that city officials "bypassed state law" by putting comprehensive plan changes on the ballot without holding public hearings or sending the changes to state growth management officials.  She even claimed that "If Amendment 4 had been in place, [St. Pete Beach] wouldn't have had any lawsuits at all."

Ms. Willett's claims are absolutely untrue.  Floridians should know that the Amendment 4 campaign has repeatedly misstated both the law of Florida and the facts.

First, St. Pete Beach did not bypass state law. 

1. In fact, St. Pete Beach held all of the hearings and followed all of the procedures required under Florida's Growth Management Act.  
2. Ms. Willett's false claim that St. Pete Beach's referenda violated state growth management laws was rejected in by the Department of Community Affairs (the growth management officials who review comp plans and who regulate Florida's growth management process) in August, 2009, when it issued its Final Order ruling that St. Pete Beach's comprehensive plan changes were "in compliance."   This ruling was not made lightly.  It was made after legal challenges by St. Pete Beach's anti-development folks and a several-day trial/hearing with Hometown Democracy's Ross Burnaman leading the legal case against St. Pete Beach.
3. The Judge in the St. Pete Beach litigation has also ruled that Florida's growth management laws did not require St. Pete Beach to hold public hearings before putting its comprehensive plan changes on the ballot.   

Ms. Willett is just plain wrong.  Florida law does not require what she says it requires, and St. Pete Beach did not violate or bypass Florida's Growth Management Act.  Read here for a more detailed discussion of why St. Pete Beach did not bypass or circumvent Florida's Growth Management laws.

Second, Ms. Willett is wrong when she says that there would have been "no lawsuits in St. Pete Beach" if it had "followed Amendment 4."  The truth is that even if St. Pete Beach had held its referenda at the end of the process (as required by Amendment 4), the city would still be mired in litigation, and a similar fate threatens all Floridians if Amendment 4 passes in November.

According to Ken Weiss (the attorney for the anti-development folks in the St. Pete Beach litigation), the "central issue" in the St. Pete Beach lawsuits is "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."  When St. Pete Beach adopted its local version of Amendment 4 in 2006 and began putting all of its plan amendments on the ballot, Florida election law forced the city to summarize those complex, 150-page documents in 75-word ballot summaries, a hopelessly impossible task.  When St. Pete Beach voters approved a comprehensive plan amendment in 2008 by an overwhelming margin, Weiss' clients sued to overturn the election, contending that the city's 75-word ballot summaries were deceptively unclear.

Contrary to Ms. Willett's false claims, the St. Pete Beach lawsuits are not about timing.  The St. Pete Beach litigation is about ballot language.  Even if St. Pete Beach had held its referenda at the end of the process (as required by Amendment 4),  St. Pete Beach's rules, Amendment 4 and Florida election law would still have required St. Pete Beach to summarize its proposed 150 page comprehensive plan changes in 75-word ballot summaries, and Weiss still would have sued the city, claiming those same summaries were deceptive.

These problems are not unique to St. Pete Beach.  They are inherent flaws in Amendment 4 that would impact all Florida cities.  No matter what Ms. Willett says, that's the plain truth.

Why does the Amendment 4 / Hometown Democracy campaign persist in making claims/statements that mis-state the facts and the law of Florida?  I have no idea, but they should know better.  After all, Hometown Democracy's key players Leslie Blackner and Ross Burnaman are both attorneys.  In fact, Mr. Burnaman was the attorney who handled the anti-development plaintiffs' attempt to oppose the DCA's eventual determination that St. Pete Beach comp plan amendments were in compliance with Florida law.  The DCA was not persuaded by Mr. Burnaman's arguments and claims, and neither should Florida voters. 

St. Pete Beach learned the hard way that Amendment 4 doesn't work.  The City has already repealed many of its overbroad Amendment 4-style regulations, and it is currently considering repealing most or all of what remains.  All Floridians should learn from our mistake.

But no matter what Floridians do, before going to the ballot box in November, they should check the facts and law for themselves rather than trust the false claims of Ms. Willett and the other operatives from Hometown Democracy.

Look Here for more information about Amendment 4, including "Why Comp Plans Should Never be Put on the Ballot" and "Why St. Pete Beach Did Not Circumvent the Growth Management Act."

Postscript:  Amendment 4 supporters who disagree with my assessment that their claims misstate the facts and the law of Florida are cordially and sincerely invited to present information that backs up their claims.  I've been asking for this for a while now.  So far, they've refused to do so, and instead have responded with sarcasm and personal attacks.  The optimist in me looks forward to the day when someone from their ranks will step up and engage in a respectful, well-informed discussion about this very important issue.

St. Pete Beach Did Not Circumvent the Growth Management Act

When Amendment 4 supporters dispute that St. Pete Beach is a good example of the flaws in Amendment 4, they often try to distinguish SPB by claiming that the city "circumvented the Growth Management Act".

Specifically, the Hometown Democracy website states:

The Hometown Democracy process requires that a referendum on a plan change shall occur only at the END of the state-mandated review and public-hearings process.  State law has long held that no land-use change can occur without two public hearings.  In St. Pete Beach, however, a developer-backed political action committee wrote up petitions to change the local comprehensive plan.  They got petitions signed and put them on the ballot.  The voters passed the petitions.  Petition opponents filed suit saying the petitions were misleading and that the petition process violates state law because no public hearings were held.  

 The problem with Hometown Democracy's arguments is that they have been repudiated by the rulings of the Judge in the St. Pete Beach litigation.  In the case of Kadoura v. Huhn, et al., (Civ.Case 08-12498-CI-19), the plaintiff made a variety of arguments, including that St. Pete Beach's election on the petition measures violated the Growth Management Act.   On April 21, 2010, the Judge entered an Order that made several findings regarding these arguments, including the following:

 "This Court finds that Section 3.15 [of the St. Pete Beach City Charter] is not ambiguous.  It does not preclude submitting the plan to the voters prior to submission to the City Commission and State growth management officials.  But it clearly does require that the voters approve the plan in its final substantive form before the City Commission adopts it."  Order, p. 4.

The Court also stated:

 "Plaintiff argues that the charter provision is preempted by the Growth Management Act.  This has essentially already been ruled on by the Second District in Citizens for Responsible Growth v. City of St. Pete Beach, 940 So.2d 1144 (Fla. 2d DCA 2006).  In that case, the court upheld three charter amendments requiring the voters to approve or, at least advise on, various provisions relating to land development and zoning against a claim of preemption.  Plaintiff suggests that the referendum must take place after consideration of the plan or amendment under the Growth Management Act.  That is not the Second District's holding.  The court recognizes that there must be a referendum in St. Pete Beach before the measures are finally adopted, but it does not preclude such a referendum before submission of the plan to growth management officials pursuant to state statute.  [emphasis added]

Thus, contrary to Hometown Democracy's claims, there was no violation of the Growth Management Act when St. Pete Beach's petition measures went on the ballot prior to the full hearing process and submission of the plan amendments to growth management officials!

Numerous lawsuits remain pending against St. Pete Beach regarding its efforts to implement its Amendment 4-style regulations (I stopped counting after 6 lawsuits, but it may be 8 or more at this point), but I am aware of no case where the Judge has ruled that St. Pete Beach's petition and election process (i.e. putting citizen-initiated comp plan changes on the ballot) circumvented or violated the Growth Management Act. 

Thus, the people of Florida should know that Amendment 4 supporters are wrong when they claim that St. Pete Beach circumvented the Growth Management Act when it put its citizen petitions on the ballot.  If the Hometown Democracy folks disagree, their legal team needs to step up and cite some facts and case law in support of their position. 

Click Here to see more analysis of the flaws in Amendment 4 / Hometown Democracy, including "Why Comp Plans Should Not be on the Ballot" and "Why Amendment 4 Does Require Special Elections."

Most City Officials Are Not Crooks --They're Heroes!

One of the favorite claims made by supporters of Florida Constitutional Amendment 4 is that local politicians / officials cannot be trusted to enact land use changes in the best interests of the people.  For example, the "Frequently Asked Questions" page on the Hometown Democracy website states:

"The amendment will clean up the corrupt local politics of growth. Developers will no longer be able to buy off a simple majority of a city or county commission with their campaign IOU's. Example: three Palm Beach county commissioners were convicted regarding their corrupt land-use votes in exchange for secret payoffs from developers. There are lots more examples, and these are just the under-the-table deals that are discovered."

It goes without saying that dissatisfaction with career politicians (congressmen and senators) is at an all-time high, but when it comes to the folks who serve on the local commissions, councils and committees of Florida's cities and towns, I believe it is both factually and morally wrong for the Hometown Democracy crew to make such sweeping and general accusations of corruption and "under the table" dealings.

I believe Ms. Blackner and Hometown Democracy are wrong because their claims are debunked by the truth of what I have seen in my own community:

1. These officials are not crooks...they are heroes!  They are hardworking folks like you and me who are volunteering their time to serve in wholly (or mostly) unpaid positions, and the the only reward for the many hundreds of hours that they spend is the knowledge that their city or town is a better place because of their efforts.  They devote more time and energy to the betterment of their community in a single month than most folks spend in a lifetime.
2. Everyone has a voice in the political process, but few are willing to spend the time and energy to actually use it.  The average city commission meeting in St. Pete Beach is no different than the average commission or planning board meeting in every other city in Florida:  when the commissioners look out into the audience, all they see are rows of empty chairs, except for the ones filled by the same ten or twelve folks who attend every meeting.  The "average citizen" has never attended a single meeting of their city commission, or of their planning board.  I don't speak these truths intending to insult or demean the "average" citizen, far from it.  But Ms. Blackner and Hometown Democracy are wrong to say that Joe Sixpack has been denied a "seat at the table' when there are, in fact, plenty of empty chairs waiting to be filled. 
3. The average citizen has also never even tried to speak with their local/city commissioner.  Until recently, I was guilty of this myself.  Before I became involved, I never dreamed that my local officials would actually answer my phone calls and listen to what I had to say, but then, I had never actually tried.  Once I started, I was amazed to learn that not only were my local officials listening to me, I actually had a disproportionately influential voice because I was one of the few in my community who even tried to speak to them. 

Anyone who finds themselves persuaded by Amendment 4's supporters that they need to vote "Yes" on Amendment 4 to "give them a voice" or to "give them a seat at the table" should take a hard look in the mirror, and ask themselves "have I ever attended a planning board or commission meeting?  Have I ever spoken with my local commissioner about land use issues?"

If your answer to these questions is "No", then you can't vote in favor of Amendment 4 based on a belief that you have no voice, or that you don't have a seat at the table, because that is simply untrue: you do have a voice and a seat at the table, but you simply haven't spent the time and energy to use them. 

At this point, the Hometown Democracy supporters who follow this blog [ Hi Jill :) whasup George! ] may fume and say "what, are you saying there isn't a problem?  What else are the people supposed to do?  Do you expect us to just give up?"   And to these questions I would say Yes, of course there is a problem, but the problem is not that folks don't have a voice, and the answer to the problem is not a constitutional amendment like Amendment 4.   Do folks need to get energized and "take control" if they don't like the direction their leaders are taking their cities?  Absolutely!  But the answer is for folks to work to elect better officials, and to be more engaged with their officials. 

Believe it or not, this is what worked in St. Pete Beach in 2006.  Anti-development folks were opposed to the comp plan that the city had approved, and they repealed it in a city referendum vote.  They also elected two commissioners to the city commission.  Of course, that was the election where they also narrowly passed the city's Amendment 4-style rules, and that's what gets most of the attention in the tale of St. Pete Beach.  But aside from the A4 measure (which was overkill), the system actually worked in St. Pete Beach because the people were able to elect officials they wanted and were able to repeal comp plan changes that they opposed...there was no need for the more sweeping A4 rules that have caused so much trouble in St. Pete Beach.

Click Here to see more analysis of the flaws in Amendment 4 / Hometown Democracy, including "Why Comp Plans Should Not be on the Ballot" and "Why Amendment 4 Does Require Special Elections."

Amendment 4 Threatens to Undermine Beach Preservation Efforts in St. Pete Beach

Here's one reason why I blog about Amendment 4:  I am a beach preservation activist, and Amendment 4 threatens to undermine the many hundreds of hours of effort I spend each year fighting to preserve and protect the beaches of St. Pete Beach, which are among Florida's most critically eroded beaches.  How is this possible? Here's how:

As reported on WMNF FM radio on July 1, 2010, last Saturday (June 26th) the Beach Stewardship Committee of St. Pete Beach held its second annual Sea Oats Planting Event, and it was a resounding success:  over 150 volunteers came to St. Pete Beach in the wee hours of the morning and worked together to plant 5,000 sea oats plants in the pristine, white, oil-free sands of Pass-a-Grille beach as part of the city's comprehensive beach preservation and erosion-control/prevention program.  As the chairman of the Committee and an organizer of the event, I was pleased to see our efforts were so richly rewarded with strong volunteer support.  

The sea oats we planted were provided by Pinellas County, and were funded by the Tourist Development Tax that is collected by the city's hotels, motels and B&Bs (commonly referred to as the "Bed Tax").  Sea oats are not the only critical beach preservation measure that is funded by Pinellas County's Bed Tax.  St. Pete Beach's beach renourishment projects (where sand is pumped onto the beach from offshore to replenish critically eroded beaches), its temporary geotube erosion control structures, and the permanent erosion control structures scheduled for installation on Upham Beach in 2012 are all dependent upon the Pinellas County Bed Tax.

I have spent countless hours as a citizen activist and as a city committee member working to ensure that these critical beach preservation projects are approved and funded by Pinellas County and the Pinellas County Bed Tax.  Yet when Robert Weintraub spoke on behalf of Hometown Democracy to the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council on April 12, 2010 and was asked to comment on the devastating effect that St. Pete Beach's Hometown Democracy-style rules have had on the efforts of our city's hotels and tourist destinations to re-develop and remain commercially viable, his response was "Well, St. Pete Beach shouldn't be encouraging large hotels.  It should be encouraging 2-story Bed & Breakfasts."

This remarkable, anti-tourism position is entirely consistent with the views expressed by the anti-development minority in St. Pete Beach, a few of whom have embroiled the city in numerous lawsuits that have cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars.  It seems that Mr. Weintraub (and Hometown Democracy) not only want to stop the hotels and resorts of St. Pete Beach from redeveloping to remain competitive, they want them to be replaced by smaller, lower-density B&Bs.   But if that were to happen, tourist density (and corresponding Tourist Development Tax revenue) would suffer a steady and significant decline.


If Mr. Weintraub's view is the official position of the Amendment 4 campaign, this is a clear acknowledgment that Hometown Democracy / Amendment 4 would have a negative impact on the viability of Florida's tourist economy, which in turn would  impact Pinellas County's Bed Tax revenue, which in turn will impact the funding that is available for sea oats, beach renourishment and beach stabilization projects that are so critical to the preservation of the beaches of St. Pete Beach and other beaches throughout Florida!

As a beach preservation activist, I have no choice...I have to blog about the flaws in Amendment 4, because if I don't, and if Amendment 4 passes, then I will have failed to do everything I can to ensure that the beaches of St. Pete Beach are protected and preserved. 

Click Here to see more analysis of the flaws in Amendment 4, including "Why Comp Plans Should Not Be Put on the Ballot" and "Why Amendment 4 Does Require Special Elections."

Why I blog about Amendment 4 and St. Pete Beach

Hometown Democracy supporters desperately want Floridians to believe that the only people opposing Amendment 4 are developers, politicians and chambers of commerce, and that Amendment 4 supporters are environmentally-conscious "good guys".

For some reason it is inconceivable to die-hard Hometown Democracy supporters that someone like me, who is not a developer or a politician, and someone who is well-informed about the facts, would be opposed to Amendment 4, let alone spend the time and energy to blog and speak about it.     I've been accused of being a liar, a "developer plant", and even that I'm not a resident of St. Pete Beach (now that is inconceivable!).  One commenter even joked about me being hit by a train (Splat!). 

I've explained time and again that my experience as a resident of St. Pete Beach is experience, qualification and motive enough to speak about the flaws in Amendment, but it still doesn't register.  So, to make it easier for both friend and foe, I thought I'd start talking about some of the many reasons why I'm doing this blog. 

Since there are so many reasons why I blog about Amendment 4, and since it will take a while to work through them all, I'll start listing them here with hyperlinks to separate blog posts for each reason.  So here goes:


Reason #1:  I am a beach preservation activist, and Amendment 4 threatens to undermine the many hundreds of hours of effort I spend each year fighting to preserve and protect the beaches of St. Pete Beach, which are among Florida's most critically eroded beaches.  


Reason #2:  Contrary to Hometown Democracy's numerous and toxic accusations, the overwhelming majority of the commissioners/councilpersons/officials who run the cities and municipalities of Florida are not crooks.  They are heroes!  They are regular people like you and me who are volunteering their time in mostly (if not entirely) unpaid positions.


Reason #3:  Amendment 4 campaign operatives dispute that St. Pete Beach's experiment with Amendment 4-style land use rules by claiming that St. Pete Beach bypassed Florida's growth management laws.  That claim is simply not true, and Floridians should not be deceived into thinking that St. Pete Beach did anything wrong when it tried to implement its Hometown Democracy-style regulations.