Legislative
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Click on No On 4 Above for more information
http://www.boma.org/Advocacy/RealeState/Pages/FloridaAmendment4.aspx
WHAT THE TRUTH ABOUT ST. PETE.
In November, Florida voters will decide the fate of Amendment 4, a proposal to change our state constitution. A little more than three years ago, my town - St. Pete Beach - narrowly adopted a local version of this idea. It has been an unqualified disaster.
Our experiment in Amendment 4 failed to promote wiser growth management, as its supporters promised. Instead, it crippled our economy, chased away business and opened the floodgates for a nonstop series of special-interest lawsuits, at taxpayer expense.
Although they originally promoted St. Pete Beach as a success story, the proponents of Amendment 4 are now frantically claiming that St. Pete Beach is not a fair example. These claims are false, desperate and insulting to the residents of our community, who have frequently spoken against the Amendment 4-style experiment.
To support their claim that the St. Pete Beach comparison is unfair, Amendment 4 supporters have said their process was not followed when the voters of our town approved a series of comprehensive-plan changes at the ballot box, rather than submitting them to the City Commission first.
Coming from the same folks who routinely hurl accusations against local elected officials, their calls to respect the decision-making of those same officials seem disingenuous. Are we to believe that Amendment 4 proponents are suing the taxpayers of St. Pete Beach, to overturn an election they lost, simply because they wanted to give everyone a civics lesson?
After all, Amendment 4 is supposed to be simple. According to supporters, it just gives the people a say on growth.
But the voters of St. Pete Beach exercised their say on growth in 2008. If Amendment 4 was about giving us a say on growth, they would have let the election stand. Instead, they are wasting hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars in lawsuits designed to stop progress, even though the voters approved it. Amendment 4 supporters also blame the problems in St. Pete Beach on developers. This tired argument falls flat in St. Pete Beach, where that mantra has been used to justify unending litigation at the expense of our town's local business climate and quality of life. Indeed, developers are using the Amendment 4-style process in St. Pete Beach to their advantage. So are the anti-growth activists who oppose them.
In fact, special interests of every description - led by lawyers and political consultants - are taking advantage of a major flaw in Amendment 4: It allows those with the deepest pockets to have even greater influence over the planning process.
They're blaming the symptom (special-interest influence) rather than the cause (Amendment 4).
The problem in St. Pete Beach isn't just one special-interest group or another, but rather, the fatally flawed Amendment 4-style process that amplifies special-interest influence by transforming even minor land-planning issues into high-priced political campaigns. This problem is inherent in the concept behind Amendment 4.
Some of the lawyers who worked to impose a local version of Amendment 4 on St. Pete Beach are now promising that the endless litigation will not spread to other communities, if the measure is taken statewide. These promises come from the same lawyers who stand to profit so richly should their promises prove false - as they did in St. Pete Beach.
In truth, the lawsuits in St. Pete Beach would become commonplace in every Florida town; under Amendment 4, many of these legal challenges - such as those dealing with the clarity of the ballot language - would quickly become "copy and paste" lawsuits, readily available to any disgruntled special-interest group on the losing end of a land-planning referendum.
Our local version of Amendment 4 was so disastrous that the voters of our town chose to scale it back in 2009. Because Florida would be the national guinea pig for Amendment 4, we simply cannot afford to ignore its obvious failures, as witnessed by the first community in our state to adopt a local version of this idea: St. Pete Beach.
Ward Friszolowski is the former mayor of St. Pete Beach.
AMENDMENT 4 OPENS THE FLOODGATES FOR SPECIAL INTEREST LAWSUITS
By Ryan Houck
This November, voters will be faced with a number of tough decisions at the ballot box. Fortunately, one of the most important decisions should also be the easiest. Amendment 4, a “Vote on Everything” proposal, would kill jobs, raise taxes, and lead to endless litigation at taxpayer expense.
Amendment 4 has been referred to as a ‘stimulus package for special interest lawyers’. And for good reason; this proposal would add costly new layers of bureaucratic red-tape to an already complicated planning process. It would be virtually impossible to condense thousands of pages of technical planning data into the 75 word ballot summaries that are required by law. Inevitably, disagreements – and lawsuits – would ensue. Amendment 4 encourages the special interests that lose at the ballot box to take their case to court, at taxpayer expense.
That is exactly what happened to the small town of St. Pete Beach, which implemented a local version of Amendment 4 in 2006. The measure has decimated their economy and created chaos at the polls. To date, the citizens of St. Pete Beach have seen nearly a dozen lawsuits that have cost local taxpayers more than three-quarters of a million dollars in legal fees. When St. Pete Beach voters approved four pro-economy changes to their comprehensive plan in 2008, Amendment 4 lawyers sued to overturn the results of the election. Nearly two years later, the people of St. Pete Beach are still defending their vote in court. Ward Friszolowski, the former Mayor of St. Pete Beach wrote “Our experiment in Amendment 4 has turned St. Pete Beach into a battleground for special interests.” The same “copy and paste” lawsuits that plague St. Pete Beach would soon spread to every Florida town.
Moreover, under Amendment 4, residents most impacted by local planning decisions will lose influence in a process that inherently favors deep-pocketed special interests. This measure would turn the growth management debate into a political spectacle. Neighborhoods would lose representation in the public planning process, as communities across town make decisions about schools, hospitals, jails, and landfills in your backyard.
Worse still, Amendment 4 will introduce new delays into the planning process. This measure is so extreme that it does not even contain exceptions for vital community projects like hospitals, schools, police stations or fire trucks. Consequently, even important and uncontroversial community projects will likely experience paralyzing delays.
As Florida attempts to recover from this devastating recession, the last thing we need is Amendment 4, a proposal that would empower special interest lawyers to raid taxpayer’s pockets in order to finance special interest lawsuits. This November, VOTE NO on Amendment 4!
AMENDMENT 4 WILL HURT TAXPAYERS
By Ryan Houck
As our state’s economy continues to buckle under the strain of the Great Recession, Floridians have been forced to tighten their belts. However, even as many working families and small businesses struggle to make ends meet, a handful of well-funded lawyers and special interest groups are trying to pass an irresponsible amendment to our state constitution that would lead to painful property tax increases. The authors and proponents of Amendment 4 have spent several years and millions of dollars placing their reckless measure on the ballot. However, Amendment 4 is particularly alarming given Florida’s struggling economy and depressed fiscal environment.
Even as city budgets decline and local government services are cut to accommodate drastic reductions in revenue, Amendment 4 would require Florida’s taxpayers to fund hundreds of costly referenda each year. In the last four years alone, this amendment would have required an average of over 10,599 additional local votes per year in Florida. In larger counties, special elections can cost millions of dollars each and even if amendments were rolled onto existing ballots, the costs would quickly spiral out of control. According to the Orlando Sentinel, “The cost to local governments of including the land-use amendments on ballots would soar into the millions.”
The result, according to a Washington Economics Group study released in January, would be to “force local and state governments to either raise taxes or cut services.” Ultimately, the study notes, “Public schools, public safety and local health care services would suffer from both the direct impact of Amendment 4 (delay construction until the next election) and the indirect impact of fewer tax revenues from which to fund needed operations and capital investments.”
And that is exactly what happened in one small, Florida town. St. Pete Beach was forced to raise property tax rates after adopting a local version of Amendment 4 in 2006. Their economy, hindered by an impossible growth management process, has suffered greatly. Furthermore, when St. Pete Beach voters approved four pro-growth changes to their comprehensive land use plan in 2008, Amendment 4 lawyers sued to overturn the results of the election. To date, the taxpayers of St. Pete Beach have shouldered over half-a-million dollars in legal fees tied to their local version of Amendment 4; they are still defending their vote in court. However, the costs to St. Pete Beach—a small town of only 10,000 residents—would pale in comparison to the cost of imposing this measure upon every community in Florida.
Now, more than ever, we need to avoid the kind of short-sighted, anti-jobs thinking that is exemplified by Amendment 4. With Florida’s economy struggling, the last thing we need is an amendment that will impede, rather than promote, progress. We must not let Amendment 4 and its supporters erect a roadblock to economic recovery. For more information on Amendment 4 or Citizens for Lower Taxes and A Stronger Economy, please visit www.florida2010.org.
RYAN HOUCK is the Executive Director of Citizens for Lower Taxes and A Stronger Economy.
Amendment 4 is a reckless, short-sighted proposal which would undermine efforts to diversify Florida's economy by creating unpredictable and chaotic business conditions. And while Amendment 4 is a bad idea in any economy, the current recession would make it nothing short of catastrophic. For more information on Amendment 4 or Citizens for Lower Taxes and A Stronger Economy, please visit www.florida2010.org
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