It is our goal to keep our loyal
members informed of important events that have an impact on preserving the fine
qualities of life that we all enjoy in Indian River County.
Greetings to all FHD supporters:
Folks, although disappointed that Hometown Democracy won't be on the 2008 ballot, our dedication to getting our petitioning finished up and to be certified to be on the 2010 ballot is unwavering, and still our TOP Priority!
Basically the Federal judge has ruled that the citizens' initiative process is a State right and is not subject to Federal Constitutional guarantees, and so will not compel the State to put us on the 2008 ballot. It is a disappointing ruling, but nothing else has changed.
So, simply put, we must continue our ongoing effort to get certified for 2010 by the State standards, and to do so before the 2008 election. We are very close now, even by the State's own numbers, and with the revocation issue still up on appeal, we are determined to meet the state requirement as is.
Here is our current standing by the State's calculations:
Required to have initiative on the ballot: 611,009 ** Number currently valid: 619,350 (this is what we have without the revocations) ** Number currently revoked: 13,247 ** Total number valid: 606,103
Folks, the hardest part is behind us, the MONUMENTAL task of getting over 840,000 petitions signed ! ! ! We have had more asked of us, more dirty tricks pulled on us, and more obstacles thrown in our way than any other citizen initiative ever has. And yet here we are in the final stretch - it is truly a WIN for us to have gotten where we are, and we will finish a WINNER!
We are truly appreciative for everyone's contributions of time, effort and money to the HISTORIC campaign so far, and ask that we all now turn this energy and effort to the next stage of the campaign...to educate the electorate and have them prepared to vote FOR FHD at election. We are confident that Hometown Democracy will then take its hard-earned place in the Florida Constitution!
Yours, Lesley TCPalm.com
Lesley Blackner: 'Big boys' have problems with FHD By TCPalm Staff Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Some people get paid to pick up garbage; some people get paid to spread garbage around. Ryan Houck, executive director of Floridians for Smarter Group, is paid a monthly salary to trash Florida Hometown Democracy, the statewide initiative to give voters the power to accept or reject commission-approved growth map changes.
What do you do?
Remember rule No. 1: The developer machine will say anything to get what it wants. Floridians for Smarter Growth is a political action committee cooked up by the growth machine a year ago to keep Hometown Democracy off the 2008 ballot and defeat it in 2010. In a little more than six months, the National Association of Home Builders, National Association of Realtors, Florida Chamber of Commerce, Waste Management, Florida Home Builders and U.S. Sugar (just to name a few) dumped more than $3.5 million into this endeavor.
Floridians for Smarter Growth spent most of this money last fall and winter floating a bogus petition designed to do two things: 1) suck away our paid petitioners and, 2) deluge certain county supervisors of elections so all petitions could not be timely validated. It worked.
Beginning last Jan. 2, Smarter Growth dumped more than 600,000 petitions in key counties around the state. Smarter Growth wasn't on the ballot, but neither was FHD. That was the plan.
FHD has raised and spent about $1.8 million since it started in the fall of 2003. Yes, we've paid for petition collection and volunteers have sent petitions, like just about every other initiative campaign. But we never paid anywhere near $3 per petition like Mr. Houck alleges.
Mr. Houck calls me a "wealthy extremist" because I put my money where my mouth is. Fact is, I've spent my entire life watching the state I love paved over and ruined.
I and so many others waited decades for leadership and reform. It never came. In fact, Florida 's deterioration intensified over the past 10 years because our elected officials let developers go wild. I finally decided to do something about it and am grateful to be in a position to do so. It's a tribute to the power of Hometown Democracy that the big boys are compelled to pile on against it.
Over the past decade, developers built to their heart's content, crashing our entire economy, not to mention Florida 's natural heritage. Hopefully, everybody now understands that an economy run by and for developers sinks like the Titanic.
The current meltdown is such that even Mr. Houck admits "Our growth-management system is imperfect." In reality, it works perfectly for the developer crowd. It gives them what they want: the control to build when, how and where they want. All they need is three votes out of five on the commission and they're off to the races. That's why they're so crazed over FHD.
In full spin, Mr. Houck goes further and says we need reform, just not Hometown Democracy. The developer machine's toy, the Legislature, chews new holes through our "growth management" laws every session. So don't hold your breath for "reform." And you'll never see Floridians for Smarter Growth do anything other than bash FHD.
Hometown Democracy will grant people to vote on land use changes that change the face of their community forever. It will counterbalance developer control over local government and help ensure that growth truly reflects the public interest.
The developer machine knows that Floridians want voter accountability on land use. That's why its mouthpiece, Floridians for Smarter Growth, will say and do just about anything to trash Hometown Democracy.
HELP SAVE WHAT'S LEFT OF FLORIDA... LET THE PEOPLE VOTE to control growth! www.FloridaHometownDemocracy.com PO Box 636, New Smyrna Beach, FL 32170-0636. Pd.pol.adv.by FloridaHometownDemocracy,Inc,PAC
FHD Signatures Jump to 607,000 This Week
Below
is a message from Honey Minuse who has been in contact with the
organizers of Florida Hometown Democracy (FHD). As most of you know FHD
has been trying to get an initiative in the ballot that would change
the Florida Constitution to say that the Urban Service Line cannot be
changed without being approved in a referendum in the relevant county.
If this were to get on the ballot and pass most of our growth issues in
Indian River County would be solved! The IRNA has strongly supported
FHD.
The Federal lawsuit is necessary because
Florida, in an attempt to support the growth machine, has played many
dirty tricks and patently illegal obstacles to the signature gathering
operation.
WHAT CAN YOU DO?
Sign
the petition if you have not already done so.If there are two Florida
registered voters in your household make sure both sign separate
petitions. Petition forms can be found by clicking on FHD.
Also consider making a contribution. The address for this is given by
clicking on FHD above; unlimited amounts can be given and they do not
affect any other contributions you may have or wish to give. If you
would be willing to pass petitions, contact Honey Minuse, 772-562-0144.
FHD gaining ground with much optimism for placement on the ballot this November!
Read
below - our district is coming up short. If you have contacts in
Brevard, Osceola or Polk counties please pass along this email. Honey
606,970
to be exact-this puts us within striking distance of getting both the
number of signatures needed (only 4,039 valid ones needed)(Lesley said
today there's several thousand more they also have to get processed)
and meeting the distribution requirements by the time the federal court
rules on the case.
Lesley also told me today that July 26 is
the deadline for all responses, replies, whatever to all existing
motions and the court theoretically could rule after that time but more
likely it would be sometime in August. Oral argument has not been
granted yet but still could be.
Assuming the court grants
relief, which the attorneys feel by greater than 50% will happen, it
would be ideal to walk into court and say "if the deadline date were
today, we have enough signatures and have met the distribution
requirements even by the state's problematic standards, so judge please
put us on the ballot now." And trustfully he'd (and it is a he) would
do just that.
So, first, if you have any signatures lying
around (for example, I've got over a hundred gathered within this last
week), please send them immediately to FHD.
Next, if you or people/groups you know can gather any signatures right away,please do that.
Third,
if you or other people/groups can't gather signatures right now, ask
them to send FHD a contribution to cover paid signature gatherers
(supposedly the rate now has gone back up to $3/pop-a "heat"
premium(smile)). FHD's address again is P.O. Box 636, New Smyrna Beach,
Florida 32170-0636.
Finally, if you live and/or can help in the
districts below (see data at bottom), the signatures in essence count
double because of the distribution requirement-we only need to qualify
2 of the 3 districts. District 21 (Miami/Dade and Broward) is only 310
valid signatures short. District 6 (Duval, Clay, Bradford, Alachua,
Gilcrest, Levy, Lake, Marion) is only 2,101 short. And District 15,
which the campaign has also been targeting (Brevard, Indian River,
Osceola, Polk) is 4,556 short.
Trustfully the court will not
make all we've done count for nothing for this year- we don't think it
will and anything you can do now could just guarantee that FHD will be
on the ballot this year. Thanks much for all you've been doing and
anything additional that you can and will do. More soon, John
On Tuesday, two "emergency rules" went into effect in Florida. They were invoked, the Secretary of State's Office says, due to "an immediate danger to the public health, safety or welfare."
Scary stuff? Indeed. The emergency rules - as much as the "danger" they identify - pose a threat to the health, safety and welfare of democracy in this state.
Both orders stem from Senate Bill 866, an election bill passed by the 2008 Legislature.
The first directive (1SER08-2) deletes a requirement that county supervisors of election record verified petition signatures on initiative petitions in the statewide voter registration system. The order contains a stunning admission by Secretary of State Kurt Browning:
"Discrepancies have existed in the numbers of signatures being verified in the statewide voter registration system for initiative petitions. These discrepancies seriously undermined the reliability of the number of signatures recorded. The secretary of state lacks confidence in the accuracy of signature verification numbers."
Translation: The state openly admits its procedure for verifying signatures and validating petitions is error-prone and wholly unreliable. This official acknowledgement is as damning as any complaints from Florida Hometown Democracy or other citizen groups attempting to get constitutional amendments before the voters.
"This should get us on the ballot," says Lesley Blackner, president of Hometown Democracy, which claims to have submitted 820,000 petition signatures. A total of 611,000 are needed to qualify for the November election.
At last report, the state had tallied 592,561 FHD signatures. Yet the state's numbers have been in question ever since the election division abruptly stopped posting updated figures weeks before the Feb. 1 filing deadline. Officials said their computers crashed.
Tallahassee's admission of a faulty verification system undermines the state's "official" tally and leaves everyone guessing as to what the real numbers are. Now the secretary has rushed new rules into effect by executive fiat - without hearings and without a recount.
If you think that's surreal, check out Browning's second emergency order, 1SER08-3.
Expanding the state's signature revocation law (also in SB866), the administrative order implements a new "standard" revocation form. Again, Browning determined that the "health, safety or welfare" of Floridians required immediate action.
But there's a big problem here, too. In their rush, the Legislature and the secretary failed to heed the state's 1st District Court of Appeal, which struck down the revocation process altogether - back on April 22.
In its unanimous ruling, the court declared revocation unconstitutional. The justices affirmed that the Florida Constitution gives citizens the right to propose amendments without legislative "assistance" - or interference.
By continuing to toy with the petition process and, now, blatantly flouting the law, legislators and the secretary of state exhibit what Blackner brands "incompetence and dirty tricks."
That Florida's elected and appointed officials use "emergency rules" to undermine the constitutional right to petition is bad enough. This is the dirty tricks part. Even more pernicious is the system's failure to do its job.
"The state's mechanism for handling ballot petitions clearly hasn't kept up," says Blackner, whose crew has observed chaotic counting operations at supervisors of elections offices from Miami and Pensacola. "We're still running Florida like it's a little agricultural state of 3 million people."
Amid officials' admitted confusion and their extra-legal connivance, visions of Little Haiti come to mind. And as Haitians well know, a democracy without agreed-upon rules and standards is no democracy at all.
Charlie Crist got things rolling downhill when he signed SB866. Where are you now, governor?
HOMETOWN DEMOCRACY FILES SUIT AGAINST THE STATE OF FLORIDA
ASKS FEDERAL COURT TO DIRECT STATE
TO PLACE THE HOMETOWN DEMOCRACY
AMENDMENT ON THE NOVEMBER 2008 BALLOT.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE TO ALL
MEDIA: June 14, 2008
This week, Florida Hometown Democracy,
Inc. together with individual supporters, filed suit in the Southern District
of Florida, seeking ballot placement for the Florida Hometown Democracy
citizens' initiative in the November 2008 election.
Florida Hometown Democracy is the
sponsor of a citizens' initiative to amend the Florida Constitution. The
proposed amendment will establish that changes to comprehensive land use plans
approved by city and commissions must be submitted to referendum for final
approval or rejection by voters. Hometown Democracy is a response to
decades of uncontrolled development that cares nothing for the long term health
and sustainability of communities, Florida 's unique environmental heritage or
the quality of life of Floridians. Voters must have the final say over
changes to their local growth plans because they are the ones who must live
with the consequences.
Over 820,000 Floridians signed the
Hometown Democracy petition to place the initiative on the November 2008
ballot. The Florida Division of Elections website currently posts
595,368 valid petition signatures. However, numerous actions by the
Florida Division of Elections and opponents of Hometown Democracy blocked
Hometown Democracy from having its ballot position certified, in violation of the
First and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution. The
suit asks the federal court to examine and overturn these actions, and place
Hometown Democracy on the November 2008 ballot.
The suit asserts that that the
State's recent rollback of the citizen petition filing deadline to February 1st
violates the U.S. constitution because 1) it serves no legitimate state
interest; 2) it differs from the certification deadlines imposed on other
methods for amending the Florida constitution; 3) it interferes with
Floridians' rights to associate with others for the advancement of their
political beliefs; and 4) it interferes with Floridians rights to cast their
votes effectively. The suit further asserts that the state acted
unconstitutionally because many of the state's 67 supervisors of elections used
all manner of varying petition validation criteria that depart from state law
to unlawfully reject tens of thousands of Hometown Democracy petitions.
Indeed, whether or not a petition was accepted or rejected often
depended on to which county the petition was submitted. The suit also
asserts that the state's recent adoption of an anti-initiative statute, which
gives commercial establishments the right to permit or exclude initiative petitioning
as they see fit, is patently unconstitutional.
Hometown Democracy has retained noted ballot access attorney Gary
Sinowski of New York City as its lead counsel. For about 30 years, Mr.
Sinowski has successfully challenged unconstitutional restrictions on ballot
access throughout the United States . Plaintiffs look forward to a swift
resolution of this important constitutional case.
Hometown Democracy President Lesley Blackner urged all supporters to
continue to send donations, petitions, and continue to talk with their fellow
Floridians about this important amendment. She stated, "After a
careful post mortem of what happened to Hometown Democracy, we are compelled to
take this matter to federal court. The State's constant war against the
citizens' right to amend their own constitution must stop. The way our
petitions were treated is Bush v. Gore all over again. Fortunately, we
the people have the United States Constitution on our side. We look
forward to a complete exposé of the tactics employed to deny us of our
constitutional rights and a swift vindication in court. We fully expect
to be on the November ballot."
FOR FURTHER
INFORMATION:
Lesley
Blackner: 866-779-5513
Status of the FHD Petition Drive
Several members have asked for a report on the status of the Florida Hometown Democracy petition drive. As you know, January 31, 2008, was the deadline date for submitting petitions and over 814,000 were submitted prior to that date. To qualify to go on the November 2008 ballot, 611,000 valid petitions were needed. Expecting a fall out rate of 10%-15%, the Florida Hometown Democracy seemed home.
Not to be. The State of Florida has taken the position that petitions submitted after December 31, 2007, can be counted, but legally need not be counted! The result was many petitions remained uncounted and/or rejected for reasons that have never been explained by the State. Compounding the problem was the decision by the state government to close down three weeks before January 31, the computer based petition tallying system, because of a "glitch" that had been known for months to exist. In addition to those petitions never examined and thus in effect turned down, there is only scant knowledge of the reasons for the turndown of petitions that did get examined. Some reasons reported include highly questionable reasons: middle initials rather than full middle names were used; in the Latin tradition, the month and date of birthrates were inverted; and many petitions were tossed because the addresses on petitions did not match the registration address, even though address changes are permissible on petitions. Certainly the state owes the voters of Florida an explanation why nearly 30% of the petitions submitted failed to qualify.
We know developers and the Florida Chamber of Commerce spent millions opposing the petition drive. One group that raised nearly $3 million, raised nearly 60% from national and state homebuilder associations and the rest from less than 300 donors. But that did not do the petition drive in. What did was the continuation of the Florida feudal system, where the state government in Tallahassee is ready and willing to do the bidding of the development industry and its allies. The voter’s right to chose regrettably came in a distant second.
The Florida Hometown Democracy organization has stated it intends to raise the issue again in 2010, as the petitions are valid for four years. In the meantime we must renew our local effort to require voter approval of any law change that would increase the densities or height limits presently allowed.
In
a rebuff to the Florida Legislature, and its allies at the Florida
Chamber of Commerce, the First District Court of Appeal has sided with
Hometown Democracy. The court on Wednesday ruled that the law that
created the process that allows the revocation of petition signatures
is unconstitutional and that rules used by the state to implement the
process are also not allowed.
The
ruling raises fresh questions about the decision to deny Hometown
Democracy a place on the ballot since thousands of the signatures
gathered by the group were in fact revoked. The opinion states that the
law "are unconstitutional because they do not ensure ballot integrity.
They do not serve to confirm compliance with constitutionally-specified
requirements for submission of proposed amendments through the
initiative process...Instead they serve to burden the initiative
process with requirements that are not prescribed in the constitution."
Read ruling here
Kenric Ward: Florida’s shaky democracy breaks down on Hometown
Development interests band together, defeat grass-roots effort
By Kenric Ward
Thursday, February 7, 2008
While the United States expends blood and treasure bringing democracy to Iraq, the power brokers back home keep Florida’s feudal fiefdom intact.
The killing of Florida Hometown Democracy was trumpeted by state Republican Chairman Jim Greer, who declared, “Today is a great day for Florida. By refusing to provide Hometown Democracy’s special-interest amendment the number of signatures it requires to be placed on the Florida constitution, the people of Florida prevented a scenario that would require voters to approve thousands of land-use decisions.”
Democrats weren’t gloating so much (at least not openly), but the party was MIA in this fight. Not one elected official publicly pushed for the constitutional amendment. No one, it appeared, even supported the idea of a petition drive to put the question to a vote of the people. So much for democracy.
And that’s precisely the problem growth-weary Floridians face — an entrenched two-party system that goes along to get along with a coalition of developers, builders, real estate agents, architects, engineers, appraisers, assorted contractors and taxpayer-funded “professional planners.”
In less than nine months, the Florida Chamber of Commerce cranked up two organizations to knock out Hometown Democracy. The first, Floridians for Smarter Growth, staged a rival petition drive designed to confuse the issue and jam the system. The second group, Save Our Constitution, launched an unprecedented campaign to revoke FHD signatures.
Both outfits were amply funded, of course. Smarter Growth raised $2.99 million from May to December, with $1.75 million coming from the national and state homebuilder associations. With just 277 donors, the average contribution was $10,787.
Save Our Constitution, tapping many of the same corporate coffers, spent, at last report, an astounding $41 per mailing in its revocation effort. A late flurry from Broward County sent the unofficial total of revoked petitions to 18,000 statewide.
The Chamber’s double-barreled shotgun outspent Hometown 3-to-1, but neither opposition campaign necessarily doomed the referendum. FHD President Lesley Blackner said her organization submitted 814,000 petitions — more than the 611,000 needed to qualify for the November ballot.
No, the coup de grace was delivered at the supervisor of elections’ offices, which verify and validate ballot petitions. Suffering a failure rate of 20 percent to 30 percent in some counties, FHD came up short. Or so our public servants say.
Since supervisors have almost total discretion in how they review petitions, the reasons for rejection varied widely. Observers noted these examples:
• In Martin County, a petition was thrown out because the signer used her middle initial instead of her full middle name, as it appeared on her voter registration.
• In Miami Dade, an untold number were bounced because Spanish signers inverted the month and date of their birthdates (per Spanish and European custom).
• In Volusia County, hundreds were tossed because petition addresses didn’t match registration records — even though address changes are permissible on petitions.
Technicalities or fatal flaws, such actions resurrect the dark goblins of Florida’s infamous 2000 presidential election. Because each county still sets its own counting rules and standards, confusion continues to reign.
Whatever side one took on the Ť
Gore-vs.-Bush debacle, FHD’s experience demonstrates that Florida still has a serious credibility problem with its electoral machinery. Two weeks before the submission deadline, Secretary of State Kurt Browning announced that his computer-based petition tallying system had a “glitch.” Admitting that problems had been known since last spring, he took the system down three weeks before the Feb. 1 submission deadline, leaving petitioners flying blind on their final approach.
Problems were compounded last Friday when some supervisors reported an unspecified number of petitions were never even examined. Officials said they just ran out of time. At least those hanging chads got a look eight years ago.
The Florida chapter of the Sierra Club, which raised $134,000 for FHD, called on Browning to extend the deadline to make every petition count. The argument has merit because state law is contradictory. It requires only that petitions submitted at least 30 days before the deadline be tallied. Yet thousands of petitions still came in before the deadline. Why wouldn’t they count?
Such errors and omissions cut to the very core of democracy. But, short of a successful court challenge, don’t expect the complaints to sway the state’s election bureaucracy. The corporate masters and their political poltroons got the outcome they wanted. End of story.
Meantime, the chamber’s hired guns keep their illusory, big-money game going by warning it’s a “sure thing” that FHD will make the ballot in 2010.
Any takers on that? With the forces arrayed against Hometown Democracy, there’s a better chance of peace in Iraq.
Ken.Ward@scripps.com
Over 7000 nonpartisan volunteer residents in 300 neighborhoods
throughout
Indian River County with a common vision of pro business and managed
growth to preserve Indian River County's quality of life. We have no
self interest, no land ownership or profit motives. Our solitary
purpose is to protect our community for the enjoyment of future
generations.
IRNA - Indian River Neighborhood Association Inc All Rights Reserved.
