Yes & No on 4: Both Sides are Wrong about St. Pete Beach's Legal Fees

The truly sad thing about the Amendment 4 debate is how wrong BOTH sides/campaigns are when it comes to St. Pete Beach.  

The "Yes" campaign goes wrong by denying that St. Pete Beach has anything at all to do with the consequences of Amendment 4's "prime directive", (i.e., putting comprehensive plans on the ballot).  But the "No on 4" campaign also goes wrong, but in a different way:  the "No" campaign is wrong about St. Pete Beach because many of its claims are either broad, over-generalized statements or do not adequately sort out the complex, tangled mass of factual details and nuances that are the essence of the St. Pete Beach debacle.  In this regard, I agree with today's statement by Howard Troxler of the St. Petersburg Times that the "No on 4" campaign has made claims that are so overstated that it "hurts their own cause."

For example, the "No" campaign has stated that St. Pete Beach's enactment of Amendment 4-style regulations "decimated their economy."  The campaign's videos feature vistas of closed businesses and vacant lots, and the message is that this economic devastation was caused by St. Pete Beach's amendment of its city charter to require a vote on comprehensive plan amendments.  The truth is that St. Pete Beach is one of hundreds of Florida cities with declining property values, vacant storefronts and once-thriving businesses struggling to save their going concerns.  Florida has been hit with an economic crisis of unprecedented scope and severity, and the truth is there is just no way to really tell how much of St. Pete Beach's current woes were caused by the impact of it's Amendment 4-style rules and how much are the result of the overall, nationwide crisis.

The effectiveness of the "No on 4" campaign's argument about jobs is also also undercut because it is so overstated.   The "No" folks have cited statistics about how many jobs will be lost because of Amendment 4, but I think most Florida voters know that the construction industry was a huge factor in Florida's jobs market, and that many of the lost jobs factored in to those reports are construction jobs that probably won't be coming back any time soon regardless of whether Amendment 4 passes or not.

But for me, the campaign talking point that really sticks in my craw (do we have craws?) is about the legal fees of St. Pete Beach.  The "Yes" folks have fervently denied that the SPB legal fees have anything to do with Amendment 4, and I've blogged about why that claim is inccurate.  But the truth is that the "No on 4" campaign is also wrong.  I've seen various amounts claimed by the "No" folks about the legal fees incurred by St. Pete Beach as a result of enacting our Amendment 4-style regulations (I think $750,000 is the number most used). 

Simply put, the $750,000 in SPB legal fees asserted by the "No" folks as relevant to the Amendmnent 4 debate is just as inaccurate as the denials and $0.00 asserted by Hometown Democracy.  Like many other issues under Amendment 4, BOTH sides are overstating their case.   As I've said before, Amendment 4 supporters have a point when they say that some of the legal fees incurred by St. Pete Beach are not the sort of fees that other Florida cities would incur under Amendment 4. 

Why is this true?  Well, back in 2006, when St. Pete Beach first was considering and then passed its Amendment 4-style rules, there was litigation over whether adding a citizen referendum vote to the growth management process was kosher.   But the St. Pete Beach version of Amendment 4 failed to include Amendment 4's requirement that the vote come at the END of the process.  Whose fault was that?  Well, the blame for that lies with Citizens for Responsible Growth, the folks who drafted the language of the amendment and to got it on the ballot.  So when it was passed, then another PAC (Save Our Little Village) got signatures and got their version of a comprehensive plan on the ballot.  Was that according to Amendment 4?  No.  It was pursuant to different city charter provision that allows citizens to gather petition signatures and put initiatives on the ballot.  The result:  litigation over whether the SOLV initiative (which passed in St. Pete Beach by an overwhelming majority vote) violated growth management laws. 

With me so far?  I hope so, because this is the point of the story where BOTH campaigns drive into the ditch.  Hometown Democracy would be right if the story ended there, but unfortunately it didn't.  After the SPB election in 2008 (when the SOLV initiative won the vote of the people in St. Pete Beach), one of the CRG folks started a new round of litigation, suing the City alleging that the ballot language used to describe the comprehensive plan amendment was deceptive and misleading, and I've previously blogged about why, contrary to Hometown Democracy's claims, those litigation expenses are a valid comparison to the litigation that could threaten all Florida cities if Amendment 4 passes.

But the "No on 4" campaign also gets it wrong.  Why?  Because most of the litigation that arose prior to the 2008 ballot language challenge lawsuits doesn't relate to the causes of action that could arise under Amendment 4, and while I haven't seen a breakdown of the figures that go into the $750,000 total asserted by the "No" folks, I think it's safe to say that a good chunk of those fees relate to the lawsuits that arose before the 2008 ballot language challenges.  Those legal fees should not be included in the Amendment 4 debate.

In fairness to both of the campaigns, it is virtually impossible to get good, accurate figures regarding the St. Pete Beach litigation.  St. Pete Beach was the test case in Florida for the Hometown Democracy concept, and over a dozen separate lawsuits have been filed since 2004 alleging numerous different claims, some of which are relevant and some of which either relate to the unique circumstances of St. Pete Beach.  Often multiple lawsuits were consolidated for administrative and billing purposes, making it virtually impossible to segregate which fees are directly and generally relevant to Amendment 4 and which related to the unique circumstances of St. Pete Beach.

Under these complex circumstances, it is not surprising that both the "Yes" and "No" campaigns succumbed to the temptation to oversimplify the facts to advance their respective agendas, but both need to do a much better job of providing accurate information about what happened in St. Pete Beach.  The "Yes on 4" folks understate the legal fees incurred by St. Pete Beach that are relevant to the Amendment 4 debate.  The "No on 4" folks overstate the legal fees when they make their argument.   As with most complicated issues, the truth lies somewhere in between.