Make your phone calls today, to your state senators: stop Senate Bill 800 and Senate Bill 900 by gimleteye

Right now find your state senator here and make your phone calls to ask them to reject the worst bills rising from the Florida legislature this session: SB 800 and SB 900.

Why the mainstream media isn’t also highlighting their awful stench is a mystery, or, is it? Both have connections to Miami-Dade development interests. It’s not the first time we’ve noticed how the state of Florida suffers for what happens in Miami-Dade County. But first, re-wind the story to 2006.

Last year, county commissioner Natacha Seijas faced a recall election campaign from citizens she angered for many reasons, but especially her promotion of efforts to move the Urban Development Boundary on behalf of powerful campaign contributors.

She was furious that signature gatherers, some of whom were paid by the signature, at the temerity to collect petitions against her in Hialeah of all places, political Bethlehem for Cuban American developers who live in wealthy gated communities in Coral Gables, South Miami, and Pinecrest.

On one miserable occasion, Seijas berated a store manager at a local Publix and demanded that he throw the signature gatherers off the store property and even compelled the Hialeah police to falsely arrest them. The Miami Herald scarcely covered the story.

The signature gatherers were within their rights to collect signatures in spaces deemed to be public.

The worst bill in the legislature this session, SB 900, is meant to make sure that stops: SB 900 allows owners to decide who can collect petition signatures outside strip malls and stores.

(The text of any state legislation can be found on the state website, here.)

What this means, practically speaking, is that lobbyists and political interests will now be able to pressure corporations with stores throughout Florida and snuff out civic participation with one well-placed phone call to corporate headquarters.

Senate Bill 900 goes even further: it prohibits organizations from paying petition gatherers indirectly or directly by the signature. By providing for “revoking” signatures, the bill would create a whole new class of civic intimidation.

Like Amendment 3, on last year’s ballot, this one has a greater purpose in mind: the effort to sharply limit the chances that Florida citizens will be able to access reform of the Florida Constitution through petition by state-wide ballot referendum.

It is meant to box-out two ballot initiatives: the first is Florida Hometown Democracy, which faces a terrible struggle to gain access to a state-wide referendum through signature collection by the end of this year. The FHD measure would force local governments to first ask citizens before their own votes on measures to change the comprehensive development plans in their jurisdictions, like moving the Urban Development Boundary.

The second referendum, for which signature gatherers will be needed, is redistricting. We have also blogged on this subject of massive importance to Florida politics.

Call your state senators today and urge them to vote no on SB 900.

House Bill 7203/ Senate Bill 800 is a series of backward steps in planning that ends up creating the infrastructure nightmares you are familiar with: overcrowded roads, inadequate schools, and a declining quality of life: a statewide ten-year increase in the length of time to completion for development agreements.

It authorizes local government throughout the state to allow developers to avoid investments required by state concurrency for transportation under certain conditions. It will exempt local government from required DCA plan amendment reviews for three years “in recognition of 2007 real estate market conditions”.

In 2006, the only application to pass the Urban Development Boundary threshold was Hialeah’s, which passed because it met the insistence of the state of Florida to the issues of traffic concurrency and water (the applicant, including the developer of Armando Codina, pledged to “improve” roadways and provide for water re-use on the six hundred acre site.)

Suddenly, developers are faced with a deep housing and construction bust that they helped to create through liar loans, mortgage fraud, and the incestuous relationship between banks and builders and they are looking for help.

Now they want more time before agreements with the state elapse to allow market conditions to “correct” before investing in completion of their financial commitments that underlay massive developments, as though it were the public obligation to provide insurance for a market rebound. That's the "free" market?

In other words, a bail-out for developers and land speculators who are convinced that the excess of the building boom was a public benefit and not an affliction the entire state has suffered.

It is a terrible idea, and should be stopped in its tracks. Once again, please make that call to your state senator today.

There are some other awful bills, having to do with agricultural and development interests wanting to “pre-empt” any local measures to restrict the use of fertilizer, that is wrecking Florida water quality, and also, to “pre-empt” federal regulation of wetlands in small-scale developments: all examples how money runs politics in Florida today. That's also the "free" market at work.

Too bad you haven't read about these awful bills in the Miami Herald. Today's paper lauded the Miami-Dade delegation who have brought back millions to local projects, including some with dubious provenance.

In failing to identify these bad bills as they have emerged in this session of the Florida legislature, the mainstream media helps to build the separate reality between citizens and their government. That separate reality accounts in large part for the disinterest and apathy toward government that is badly eroding our democracy. Every time you hear about our government wanting to spread "democracy" to other parts of the world, just think what a job it is doing here.