Editorial: Amendment 4 Gives Taxpayers the Final Say

2010 is a banner year for referendum voting. Depending on who you ask, that is either a very good or a very bad thing. Public officials on the whole seem to utterly despise the idea of direct democracy and I guess I understand their contempt. It undermines the process that they oversee, limiting their control and influence. However, the democratic process is undermined much more dramatically by the persistent and detrimental influence of heavily-moneyed special interests that continue to trump citizen participation.

Of all of the proposed amendments, none have been more heavily targeted by its opponents as Amendment 4, because it seeks to install a permanent backstop of direct democracy in the process of making the largest changes to our communities. It is a shame that the issue has been denied an honest debate and instead been relegated to a campaign of deliberate misinformation intended to convince voters that the measure itself is something quite different than what it actually is. It's a shame, not only because citizens deserve better, but also because it is a fundamentally interesting debate.

First, let's clarify what Amendment 4 would and wouldn't do. Amendment 4 simply requires that anytime the comprehensive land-use plan is amended, it needs to be ratified by voter referendum at the next regularly scheduled election. It has nothing to do with zoning or permitting issues and deals only with comp-plan changes that are approved by the county commission. This is historically around six or seven per year. The argument that it would cause voters to spend an hour in the voting booth is not an exaggeration – it is an outright lie! I've also heard it said that Amendment 4 would mean that if someone in Lakewood Ranch wanted to put an addition on their home, it would be voted on by the entire county, which is again utterly preposterous.

Why is there such an effort to undermine the truth? I can only speculate, but my guess is that the developers who are funding the opposition don't believe that an honest debate would yield the desired result. That being said, I'm the first to admit that when looked at honestly, it is still a complicated measure. In fact, had you asked me what I thought as a fresh out of college Government major, I believe I would have been fundamentally opposed to such a measure on the grounds that most voters would lack the requisite knowledge or posses adequate interest to cast an informed vote. Best leave it up to college-educated planning department staff and a qualified board. After all, concerned citizens can always petition those bodies and enter public comment at meetings.

Then a funny thing happened. I moved to Manatee County and began covering those very bodies. I soon learned that our sacred process had little to do with matters of urban planning and smart growth and that citizen input was little more than a block to check en route to appeasing the developers who funded the candidates and their cushy jobs that paid more than twice the average income in the county. Once you see 70 or 80 people show up en masse, carrying a petition of hundreds more, all protesting a change that even the pro-development planning commission opposed, only to see it passed with all the consideration of buttering toast – well let's just say extreme measures seem more rational.

We are living with the results of unchecked development and a lack of strategic planning with regard to growth. The empty homes and overburdened budgets continue to hamper the local economy, sapping property values and wasting resources. Still, the attitude toward development has not changed. Perhaps more frighteningly, many commissioners espouse the philosophy that more of the same will get us out of this mess, that the handful of jobs created by building more unneeded homes are worth the compounded costs of adding to the problem.

True, we can elect these officials out of office, but the deep-pocketed developers make it very difficult to defeat a trusty incumbent, and once elected commissioners are in for four years – without a viable recall process. Amendment 4 would help to ensure that developers more carefully consider planned development and demonstrate a greater level of respect for the will of the community and its long-term vision of what it should look like. Giving that power to the voters is a sledgehammer approach, but in the right hands, a sledgehammer is a useful tool – one I trust the people with over the developer-influenced boards that allowed such ramped overdevelopment in the first place.

See Also: Flood of Amendment Referendums Suggests a Failure in Government

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