Originally Published 8 August 2007
Talahassee.com
Businesses and developers have already poured money this summer into fighting the Florida Hometown Democracy group that wants to stop local governments from rubber-stamping development.
Now they have a new weapon.
Buried in a sweeping elections bill lawmakers passed last spring is a change that gives voters the right to revoke signatures they've given to petition-gathering groups trying to amend Florida's Constitution.
And several business-backed groups are already organizing to use the new tactic to open a new front against Hometown Democracy.
''We're going to use every tool available to ensure this bad policy does not make it into Florida's Constitution,'' says David Daniel, vice president with the Florida Chamber of Commerce, which helped organize one such group this summer, called Floridians for Smarter Growth.
The group raised $841,000 between April and June from companies like U.S. Sugar, the National Association of Home Builders and developers Lykes Bros. and Barron Collier.
Their main aim: put another, more business-friendly alternative to Hometown Democracy on the November 2008 ballot.
But the group will also try to get Hometown signatures thrown out to keep the group from meeting the Feb. 1 deadline for collecting the 611,000 signatures needed to qualify the ballot.
The new law requires that anyone trying to revoke signatures register with the state as a political committee. Then, the group can look at any initiative group's submitted signatures and target voters who signed with direct-mail or phone banks to coax them into changing their minds.
''It's traditional mail outreach, and the reason it's so attractive is the numbers are much more manageable in terms of direct outreach,'' said Michael Caputo, a longtime signature-gathering specialist fronting for Floridians for Smarter Growth.
Still, he called the tactic ''untried and untested.''
''While we'll probably experiment in that arena, it won't be a central focus,'' he said.
Another political hand taking an interest is veteran elections lawyer John French. He has filed corporate documents for a group called Save Our Constitution that lists its directors as Barney Bishop, the president of Associated Industries of Florida; former House Speaker John Thrasher, now a lobbyist with Southern Strategy Group; and former state GOP chairman Al Cardenas.
While it's still organizing, French said his committee aimed to ''do some revocations.''
''Hometown would be our primary interest here,'' French said without offering specifics.
French and two Florida Chamber officials convinced the Florida Division of Elections last month to change its emergency rule so Hometown Democracy signatures gathered as early as last March could be challenged.
The law gives voters 150 days after signing a petition to revoke support.
The agency had drafted a version of its rule making the change that would have exempted any signatures gathered earlier than the Aug. 1 effective date of the law.
But French and two chamber officials argued at a July 23 workshop that if the law took effect Aug 1, any signatures gathered 150 days before then should be fair game.
When the state issued the emergency rule last week, the division's elections lawyer had agreed and changed it.
Spokesman Sterling Ivey said the reversal wasn't ''in direct relation to anything that Hometown Democracy was doing.''
But Hometown Democracy organizers are irate and say they're considering a lawsuit.
''That was just outrageous. They changed it because the chamber asked them to,'' said Hometown co-founder Lesley Blackner, a Palm Beach County lawyer.
Blackner said her group had been told ahead of the hearing that their signatures submitted before Aug. 1 would be un-revocable under the new law.
''That was the state position until the chamber got a hold of them and worked their magic,'' she said.
Tallahassee lawyer Ross Burnaman, another co-founder, said it was obvious the business groups had lobbied for the retroactive application so they could go after more Hometown signatures.
''I'm disappointed, but not surprised,'' Burnaman said. ''I don't have any doubt in my mind they'll attack. The question is when.''
Although he plans to work against Hometown Democracy this fall, French said he was offering the Division of Elections a straight legal reading of what lawmakers passed.
''They have a right to be wrong,'' French said. The new law requires that anyone trying to revoke signatures register with the state as a political committee. Then, the group can look at any initiative group's submitted signatures and target voters who signed with direct-mail or phone banks to coax them into changing their minds.
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