BlogWood: MT Archives

Senate President hates democracy

Florida Senate President Jim King has made it a priority this year to weaken the power of citizens to participate in the democratic process. Both houses of the Legislature are debating bills that would make it much much harder for a citizens initiative to get on the ballot.

In Florida, citizens have the right to gather signatures and place proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot for a vote. A simple majority of votes passes the amendment and places it into the state constitution.

Right now, Jeb! and the Leg. are incensed over the High Speed Rail amendment, passed in 2000, and the Classroom Size Amendment, passed in 2002. The people spoke, and instructed the Governor and Legislature to act to follow these amendments. But Jeb! and the Leg. just hate it when actual people ask them to do something. They are whining about costs (meaning that they want the money for their own pet projects) and threatening to introduce bills to overturn these two popular amendments.

But the absolute worse thing they are considering is the weakening of the rights of ordinary citizens to get any amendment on the ballot and to have a majority of the voters decide its fate. Our arrogant rulers do not like to hear from the people:

People who want to change the state Constitution by petition drive could be limited to issues dealing with the structure of government or individual rights under a recommendation approved Monday by a House panel.

The Select Committee on Constitutional Amendments voted to recommend that sponsors of citizen initiatives be required to identify how their proposal would be funded and to get 60 percent of the vote to win ultimate passage.

Voters' approval of two potentially expensive petition initiatives - mandatory public school class size reduction in 2002 and a high-speed train project in 2000 - have spurred politicans to push to make it more difficult to use petitions to change the Constitution.

Both of those projects reached the ballot after petition drives that collected nearly 500,000 validated signatures.
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Senate President Jim King, R-Jacksonville, has made the issue his top priority this year. He and House Speaker Johnnie Byrd, R-Plant City, appointed special committees to hold public hearings around the state and recommend changes.

Don’t be fooled by the “pregnant pigs” argument. 2 years ago, an amendment was passed by the voters that deals with the confinement of pregnant pigs on corporate factory farms. Since then, the amendment has been ridiculed by those who hold it up as an example of why the citizen initiative process should be restricted.

If the real worry is that the initiative process clutters up the state constitution with silly laws, then the Leg. should provide citizens with a way to enact change without amending the constitution. A citizen’s initiative on pregnant pigs could simply mandate a change in law or regulation to fulfill its requirements.

Right now, though, the amendment option is the only one available to the people. If the Leg. is not listening, the citizen initiative is the only way to enact change. Now the Leg. is whining about having to listen to the people. Don’t buy into that specious argument. Demand more rights to petition, not less.