Amendments pit builders against anti-growth activist

TALLAHASSEE — Florida voters in 2008 may face two competing changes to the state constitution - one backed by a Palm Beach attorney, the other by businesses - dealing with how much influence residents will have over growth in their communities.

The first is backed by Lesley Blackner, who has worked for more than four years to put her Hometown Democracy constitutional amendment, an initiative that gives developers the shivers, on the November 2008 ballot.

The second is builders' and businesses' attempt to thwart it.

Blackner's petition would require voters to consider all changes to comprehensive land-use plans, the growth strategies that lay out what gets built where and encompass everything from convenience stores to strip malls to mega-dwelling developments. If voters did not approve them, they could not happen.

Her proposal, still hundreds of thousands of signatures away from the number required to make it onto the 2008 ballot, has ignited builders and the business community, which together are not only trying to kill the Hometown Democracy amendment but are contradicting a long-standing opposition to citizens' initiatives by launching one of their own.

Floridians for Smarter Growth Inc., a political committee backed almost exclusively by home builders, opened a campaign account in April and already has collected more than $800,000 to get its measure on the 2008 ballot.

Its amendment would keep the status quo system for changes in land-use plan changes and would let residents vote on a change only if 10 percent or more of the communities' registered voters sign a petition at the local supervisor of elections office.

"They're desperate hypocrites," Blackner said in a telephone interview.

Not so, argued Michael Caputo, who has managed GOP campaigns and petition drives in four countries and works for Floridians for Smarter Growth.

Caputo said Blackner and Tallahassee attorney Ross Burnaman, who helped craft Blackner's amendment, want to squelch any growth in Florida, which is bad for the economy, businesses and development industries.

"This thing should have been nipped in the bud. It wasn't. Now we're faced with a campaign where we we're required to fight them on any battlefield they choose," Caputo said. "If the chamber has to hold its nose in order to kill this idea, they've come to terms with that."

The Florida Chamber of Commerce backed an amendment passed in 2006 that made it more difficult to pass changes to the constitution by requiring approval by at least 60 percent of voters. And it backed a state law passed this year that allows petition signers to take back their support.

"We're not opposed to constitutional amendments," said Adam Babington, who heads the chamber's constitutional amendments efforts. "We're opposed to bad ideas in the constitution. And we're opposed to special interests buying their way onto the ballot and into the constitution."

The chamber's support of the new initiative is aimed at befuddling voters, Burnaman said.

"Ours is a legitimate citizens' initiative effort. Theirs is a Trojan horse designed to confuse voters and derail our amendment," he said.

Blackner has spent more than $435,000 of her own money, nearly half the total collected by Hometown Democracy thus far, over the past four years to back the effort, according to campaign reports.

The owner of Tampa's Mons Venus strip club contributed more than $27,000 and the Sierra Club Florida Chapter has given more than $100,000 over three years.

On the other side, Floridians for Smarter Growth collected $841,000, including $550,000 from the National Association of Homebuilders, in just three months. Caputo said Floridians for Smarter Growth and its backers are willing to spend "as much as it takes to defeat this proposal."

The Florida Supreme Court has approved the ballot language for Blackner's amendment, and she has about 278,797 of the 611,009 signatures she needs by the Feb. 1 deadline, according to the state Division of Elections.

The builders first need 61,113 signatures just to get the Supreme Court to consider their amendment language, and the state elections Web site shows they have not yet reported any signatures.

In case both amendments make it on the ballot and pass, the builders have included a clause in theirs that says theirs would take precedence.

Caputo said Blackner's proposal would be unworkable because it would require hundreds of votes a year for changes to local comp plans now approved by city and county commissions.

But Blackner argued that state lawmakers approved the growth management act in the 1980s anticipating that it would make land-use changes more difficult and result in fewer changes to comp plans.

Over time, so many exemptions have been added to growth management laws that commissioners are "handing (comp plan amendments) out like candy," she said.

She also pointed to Palm Beach County scandals involving former County Commissioners Tony Masilotti and Warren Newell and former West Palm Beach City Commissioners Ray Liberti and Jim Exline.

That they are out of office because of votes tied to development illustrates why the changes are necessary, Blackner said.

"The public interest has been hijacked and redefined in Florida to mean keeping the development industry going," she said. "The whole question is, who does government serve?"

Email Dara Kam at dara_kam@pbpost.com.