Originally Published 12 August 2007
Orlando Sentinel
Go to the Web site http://floridahometowndemocracy.com.
There you will find a petition. Print several copies. Pass them around.
This has to do with the future of Florida. Here is the deal: Counties and cities draw up growth management plans on large poster boards. As soon as they are done, developers ask for changes allowing 2,983 homes in that cattle pasture down in the bottom left corner.
These are people who have long contributed to political campaigns.
Their voice is heard in City Hall. Residents object to the sprawl the development will cause. The developer compromises by cutting the project to 2,982 homes. Approved!
The next year, since there already are 2,982 homes way out in the cow pastures, why not let this other guy add another 1,342. And before you know it, you have Alafaya Trail.
A group called Florida Hometown Democracy wants to put a referendum on the 2008 ballot that would require voter approval of growth plans.
If Orlando wanted to put a Wal-Mart where it doesn't belong, the people of Orlando would have to agree.
Your signature on the above petition is required to accomplish that.
This is a bombshell in the good-old-boy system by which Florida is being paved. The notion that developers and political leaders would have to justify their dealings to the public has panicked the entire Growth Industrial Complex in Florida.
Their business model is based on growth plans that are drawn in invisible ink. And so the Florida Chamber of Commerce, the home builders and the sugar growers are all lined up to nip this in the bud.
Knowing they can't win on the merits of their past actions, they have resorted to their bag of dirty tricks.
The Florida Chamber of Commerce refers to disruption, disorder and astronomical costs the amendment would cause. People would be forced to vote all the time on stuff they're too stupid to understand.
My gosh, the entire state would implode. And all of this is the doing of "extreme special interests."
Meet them yourself. They are Ross Burnaman and Lesley Blackner, two small-time lawyers on a Don Quixote mission to save the state of their birth.
Ross once worked for the Department of Community Affairs, the state's planning agency. He is the rare attorney who put his government experience to work protecting Florida rather than getting rich helping developers bulldoze it.
"We are two homegrown Floridians who see the way things work, and have watched the state go down the tubes," he says. "I grew up in Winter Park. I cry when I go back there."
They don't have a dime in their election war chest to go up against the millions the other side has pledged it will spend squashing them.
"The only deep pocket we've had so far is me," says Lesley.
She has spent almost a half-million dollars of her money on the effort. Ross can't afford that. He spends his time, which for a lawyer is the same as money.
They aren't getting much help. Most of Florida's mainstream environmental groups, like Florida Audubon, are sitting this out.
"They have been co-opted into the status quo," says Ross. "They are part of the problem."
The groups have their reasons, chief among them is that even if the amendment passes, the developers and their lackeys in the Legislature will find ways around it.
Download the petition anyway. Make sure you send it in. It makes a statement if nothing else.
"I'm determined to get this on the ballot," says Lesley. "But people have to take the time to be citizens."
Mike Thomas can be reached at 407-420-5525 or mthomas@orlandosentinel.com. His blog is OrlandoSentinel.com/mikethomas
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