It’s Your Constitution…Isn’t It?

Analysis by Rich Templin

Perhaps one of the most important questions being asked of the voters this November is the one garnering the least amount of discussion.
In 2005, the Florida Legislature approved HJR 1723 for the 2006 ballot, a proposed constitutional amendment increasing the required vote threshold for all future amendments from the current simple majority to a 60 percent supermajority vote.
 This proposal, dubbed Amendment 3, is one leg of a four-legged chair being pushed to make the citizens’ ballot initiative process far more difficult. Moves decried by many as a “death by a thousand cuts” strategy is designed to actually eliminate the process without taking the politically embarrassing and infinitely more difficult step of calling for its removal outright.

The other three legs, pushed aggressively by big business and development groups such as the Florida Chamber of Commerce and the Florida Retail Federation, have yet to pass legislative muster. These include a constitutional amendment designed to limit the subject matter of citizen’s initiatives (SJR 26, 2006), a constitutional amendment that completely re-writes the constitution with prior enacted initiatives removed (HB 7165, 2006), and probably the most egregious, a statutory change (SB 1996, 2006) designed to undermine the process by making the signature gathering impossible for grassroots organizations.

Voters adopted the citizen’s initiative process in 1968 as part of an historic constitutional overhaul and was praised at the time as one of the most progressive political developments in Florida’s history. While politicians and their special interest cronies in Tallahassee were never fond of the initiative process, they remained ambivalent until recent successful grassroots initiative campaigns changed public policy in ways they didn’t like.
Constitutional amendments to limit class sizes, force polluters to clean up the Everglades, ban indoor smoking and raise the minimum wage prompted the Florida Chamber of Commerce, powerful inside power brokers, to make undermining the people a top priority. Their allies in the Legislature followed suit. In the past three years, over 50 different bills and joint resolutions for making the process more difficult have been filed; each year garnering more support than the year before. Amendment 3 is the first to make it to the ballot and if successful, the other three legs are sure to follow. 

 The Florida Chamber of Commerce has created a new political action committee called “Protect our Constitution” to work for the passage of Amendment 3. As of September 15 the PAC has raised over $2 million from a who’s who list of Florida’s biggest developers, agribusiness and retail firms, including St. Joe Development Corporation, International Council of Shopping Centers, Progress Energy, McArthur Farms and PHARMA, the prescription drug lobbying group. The bulk of this money is already earmarked for a massive media campaign in October and November. If the past three years are any indication, this will be a massive misinformation campaign, spreading the same themes that the Chamber lobbyists have been using in the Legislature. These are based more on polling and focus group research rather than actual fact.
For example, one of the major claims the Chamber has been making is that Florida’s Constitution is the easiest to amend in the country and as such has been hijacked by special interests. This, like many claims, is false. Numerous studies by researchers at the University of California Riverside, Western Washington University and the non-partisan Initiative and Referendum Institute of ballot initiative processes prove that the process in Florida is already one of the most difficult for grassroots groups. Florida has one of the highest signature thresholds, requires that signatures be gathered from a majority of the congressional districts and has a Supreme Court review process unique to our state. 
The Chamber will also argue that citizen groups have run amok with the process, cluttering the Constitution. However, a quick visit to the Florida Department of State’s web site shows that 75 percent of the amendments since 1968 have been placed on the ballot by the legislature and the Constitutional Revision Commission, not the people.

The backers of the Protect the Constitution pack own the real power in Tallahassee. They know it, the politicians know it and more and more of the people are learning it. The only check on their power has been the initiative process and they want it eliminated.
Fortunately, a group is fighting back. A coalition of labor, environmental and social justice organizations including the Florida AFL-CIO, Sierra Club, Florida ACORN and the League of Women Voters have worked inside the halls of the Capitol to protect the initiative process for three years. Now, many have joined with groups from the other end of the political spectrum in a historic left-right coalition called Trust the Voters.
The effort, co-chaired by Senator Bob Graham, conservative activist and fundraiser Charlie Hilton, and former Republican Representative Bill Sublette, will be working in the weeks ahead to raise awareness about the issue and to counteract the spin coming from the big business lobby. The legislature wrote the ballot summary and the title, making the measure look reasonable and responsible.     
This is the beginning of a massive power grab, one that could see the end of Tallahassee’s final vestige of direct democracy, the ultimate check on an unresponsive legislature. In a state where years of rampant gerrymandering has led over 70 percent of all legislative races to be uncontested, the people need that power now more than ever before.