The Winter Springs Commission Goes to Tallahassee to  BEG  

For the Opposition on The Pending Property Tax Issue

Currently Under Consideration by the State.

            The bills would place time limits on turning in signatures, and allow people who have signed petitions to remove their names.

            Opponents of the measure told the Senate Committee on Ethics and Elections that the proposal would hamper efforts by grassroots organizations on shoestring budgets.   An amendment backed by big business last year requires future proposed amendments to garner 60 percent of the vote, not just a majority.

            ''We see this contributing to a larger trend, a door that is creaking shut on the initiative process,'' said Brad Ashwell, an advocate with Florida Public Interest Research Group.

            Corporate interests spent at least $58 million and as much as $100 million to lobby the Florida Legislature in the past year.

            ''The effort to restrict the initiative effort is coming from the biggest special interests in the state,'' said Ben Wilcox, executive director of Common Cause Florida.

            Nonsense, said the bill's sponsor, Republican Sen. Bill Posey of Rockledge.   He said the measure would prevent aggressive petition gatherers from taking advantage of voters.

            ''Every constitutional amendment that passes takes rights away from someone or takes money away from someone,'' he said.

            The Senate committee passed the bill 6-3.   The House Economic Expansion and Infrastructure Council approved a similar measure 11-2.

            Another measure making it harder to run petitions passed the House Ethics and Elections committee.   The bill, pushed by Publix Supermarkets and other business groups, would allow stores to kick signature gatherers off their property.   It comes on the heels of a Tallahassee court decision that said the grocery chain can bar advocates of petitions to legalize marijuana.

GOP SENATOR GETS APPROVAL TO MAKE PETITIONING FOR BALLOT INITIATIVES TOUGHER
Tallahassee Democrat -- March 8, 2007
by Bill Cotterell

            A Space Coast legislator won party-line approval Thursday for a package to tighten restrictions on gathering petitions for issues going on the Florida ballot.

            Several civic organizations - including the League of Women Voters, People for the American Way and Common Cause of Florida - warned that the plan by Sen. Bill Posey, R-Rockledge, would put the public-initiative process out of reach of truly grassroots organizations.

            But business interests, including the Florida Chamber of Commerce and Associated Industries of Florida, said Posey's bill would help root out fraud, forgery and misrepresentation in the petition method of amending the constitution.

            Posey's bill (SB 900) would require professional canvassers to wear identifying badges so that voters would know whether a petition was pushed by civic-minded volunteers or professional political consultants.   All petitions would be stamped with the names and addresses of the persons gathering them, whether they are unpaid volunteers or employees getting paid by the signature.

            And voters would be able to revoke their signatures if they learn more about an issue and regret helping to place it on the ballot. Posey said that is important because people sometimes fall for a nice-sounding title on an initiative but later find out they signed for something else entirely.

            Posey's interest goes back decades.

            In the 1970s, he said, canvassers seeking a public referendum falsely told his mother that he was on their side.   He declined to identify the issue or the organization pushing it but said ''they were just trying to get in my face'' by claiming that his mother endorsed their petition.

            ''My mother - who, unlike me, is a very unassuming and kind-hearted person - had no way to remove her name from that petition,'' said Posey.

            Common Cause lobbyist Ben Wilcox and attorney Mark Herron, a prominent elections law practitioner in the Capitol, warned that the signature revocation provision would start a whole new ''cottage industry'' of canvassing companies that torpedo petition campaigns.

            Several consultants specialize in rounding up the 611,009 petition cards needed to put a constitutional amendment on Florida's ballot.    Herron and Wilcox said allowing revocation would create a new line of work for them, tracking people down and getting them to take back their signatures.

            Only rich and powerful industries - not true grassroots civic organizations - could afford that, they said.

            ''This is a solution in search of a problem,'' said Wilcox.   ''The real beneficiary of this bill would be the petition-gathering companies themselves.''

            But Posey said that in one Santa Rosa County case, petition gatherers were charged with 40 violations of canvassing laws.   In another case, he said, a county elections supervisor was surprised to find his own name - which he hadn't signed - on a petition for a referendum.

            All three Democrats on the Ethics & Elections Committee, Sens. Gwen Margolis of North Miami Beach, Charlie Justice of St. Petersburg and Nan Rich of Sunrise, voted against Posey's plan.   The proposal now goes to the Judiciary Committee for debate.

    http://www.tallahassee.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070309/CAPITOLNEWS/703090347/1010/NEWS01

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