The Seijas effect: rotted democracy, by gimleteye

Natacha Seijas, the de facto chair of the county commission, will be showing her sensitive and caring side tomorrow, at the public hearing over applications to move the Urban Development Boundary in Florida's most populous and politically influential county, Miami-Dade.

Changes to the UDB are the kinds of decisions that would be put to a popular vote, if the measure proposed by Florida Hometown Democracy gains enough signatures across the state to qualify for the state-wide 2008 election.

And what an election it would be, if the Growth Machine--as represented by applications to move the UDB in Miami-Dade County--had to explain why over-development is something that voters should approve. But first, enough signatures need to be collected to qualify for a state-wide referendum-- and here is where Natacha Seijas and her anti-democratic tendencies come to play.

During the drive earlier this year to recall her from office, Seijas lashed out at petition signature gatherers. The Miami-Dade Charter provides for recall of a sitting commissioner, if a certain threshold of signatures from eligible voters can be obtained.

Seijas reportedly berated the Hialeah Publix store manager who had allowed signature gatherers to collect petitions against her.

At that time, it was legal and a full democratic right. But Seijas' complaint was eagerly received by the Florida Chamber of Commerce.

In the recent session of the Florida legislature, a new bill was passed that gives private businesses the right to stop signature collection even when it occurs outside their places of business.

The Orlando Sentinel reports ("Groups shift petition-drive efforts into high gear", November 23, 2007) on the difficulty citizen ballot initiatives are encountering today:

"Business groups such as the Florida Chamber of Commerce, which pushed heavily for all those changes, have sent out notices reminding their corporate members that they can legally force petition-gatherers off their premises."

In other words, the new toxic law is exactly as citizens had expected. Instead of protecting citizen access to the state constitution, new barriers make it virtually impossible to mount a state-wide signature campaign. In suburbia, where else can you collect signatures except in the places that act as magnets for cars and people: ie. shopping centers.

An elected official like Seijas can now call the Publix corporate office in Podunk, Iowa or wherever it is, and suggest that signature gatherers in Hialeah are unfriendly to business relations. And what does the guy in Podunk care about Hialeah? All he wants is his Christmas bonus.

"A lot of people think this should be a land of entitlements, not opportunities," said Sen. Bill Posey, R-Rockledge, who has led the charge for years in the Legislature to crack down on paid-petition groups."

But if the Florida legislature did its job, citizens wouldn't be forced to mount expensive state-wide referendum. Consider, for instance, how in 1996 Floridians voted by an overwhelming majority on a ballot referendum to require Big Sugar to be predominantly responsible for paying for the costs of cleaning up its pollution of the Everglades.

Unlike the Florida Hometown Democracy proposal, which requires no further legislation, Representative Posey and his comrades have never put new laws to the people's will, as expressed in that election.

"... Angelo Paparella, who runs a California-based paid petition-gathering group working for Hometown Democracy, said the changes are killing the citizen-petition process.

He estimates the new public premises law has cut the number of signatures collected by 30 percent or more.
"Do we really want to get to the point where we just have political discourse on the television?" Paparella said. "There's a balance that we've had for years that is under attack."

Let me tell you about the "balance": it doesn't exist in any kind of debate with the Growth Machine, and there is less chance of it existing under the current law giving corporations the right to bar signature collection for the purpose of qualifying for a ballot referendum.

And there is more. In so far as the media is concerned, there has been virtually no coverage on local land use issues like the applications to move the Urban Development Boundary. Public discourse? It's only what civic groups can gin up, or on the blogs, or email.

Otherwise, the media is absent. Nada. Niente. There is no public discourse, to speak of, at a time when the collapse of housing markets should be igniting a debate on what kinds of growth and development patterns should be encouraged, instead of the suburban sprawl--as represented by the applications to bust through the Urban Development Boundary-- that mars the Florida landscape and imposes enormous deficits on Floridians and real costs to families.

Hindering signature collection for ballot referenda, or making it obscenely expensive, is anathema to democracy.

Thanks, Commissioner Seijas, for that. And because of Commissioner Seijas' example, citizens should rush to sign the petition by Florida Hometown Democracy that would subject land use changes like the UDB to popular vote. (A copy of the petition can be downloaded, under the link to Florida Hometown Democracy.)