Is This Your Tallahassee Government at Work Behind Close Doors ?

Even if you think FHD is the worst idea ever conceived, the enemy of the enemy doesn’t make him your friend.   Next time, that enemy may be aiming at you.

“The business community has discovered (revocation) is the best tool ... to defeat a constitutional amendment that starts via the citizen initiative route,” boasts Barney T. Bishop, president of Associated Industries of Florida and chairman of a group calling itself “Save Our Constitution.”

Using language embedded in a 2007 “reform” bill that created the Jan. 29 presidential primary, Bishop & Co., ramped up Florida’s first statewide revocation campaign.  With some $700,000 from corporate contributors ranging from Realtors to builders to Wal-Mart, Save Our Constitution began mailing filled-out revocation forms to voters who had signed the growth-referendum petitions.

The number of revocations was small compared to the volume of FHD petitions signed — less than 2 percent — but Bishop’s group could target its fire.   Because petition drives must hit specific thresholds in each congressional district, revokers can pick their battles.

After FHD fell short, Bishop crowed that revocation efforts in Broward County ’s 20th Congressional District derailed FHD there.   Sure enough, the Division of Elections reported that 3,128 revocations had been filed.   That would have been enough to kill the referendum.

Yet last Friday, the election agency updated its Web site to report just 303 valid revocations in Broward.   The radically revised tally two full weeks after the submission deadline raises one of many red flags about the entire process, including possible manipulation of the state’s counting apparatus.

While Broward didn’t singularly knock out FHD, revocation could conceivably tip the balance in future close contests.   So what’s wrong with that?   Several things:

• Special interests gain an edge.   Few, if any, grass-roots groups can cover with the $59-per-petition expense of running a revocation drive like SOC’s.   In a confidential memo last July, Bishop solicited corporate support through his company with this bodacious pledge: “Make a contribution, in any amount. Your contribution will never become public.”   According to the memo, the direct-mail effort was led by Randy Nielsen and Rich Johnson of Public Concepts in West Palm Beach, which has been active and, at times, controversial in sleazy Treasure Coast election campaigns.

• Muddying the waters. SOC mailings, under the letterhead of “The Honorable John Thrasher,” a former Florida House speaker, were larded with unsubstantiated allegations and outright fabrications.   Among the whoppers: “(FHD) will likely result in huge property tax increases,” “(FHD) would allow big developers and special interests to plunder and profit from destroying Florida ’s scenic beauty” and, ironically, “Deceptive tactics were used to get people to sign this petition.”

• A constitutional question.    Buried in an 80-page omnibus bill (HB537), revocation has a direct bearing on the voter-petition process.    Because this process is, by definition, a constitutional matter, changes to that process ought to be handled through constitutional amendments (as was done in 2006 when voters were asked to raise the threshold for passage to 60 percent).

 • More constitutional questions.    By an unprecedented administrative order, state officials dictated that revocation would apply retroactively.    This meant that signatures collected on petitions prior to enactment of HB537 also could be revoked.

Additionally, the statute directs that revocation petitions be counted before all other petitions, regardless of submittal date, and that the state furnish names and addresses of every petition signer to revocation campaigns.    Both constitute unique and special privileges.

In fact, revocation creates yet another cottage industry of big-spending special interests that spread misinformation, clog the system and further frustrate grass-roots democracy.

And for all their rhetoric about electoral integrity, revocation specialists have nothing to say about the 80 percent of constitutional amendments that are placed directly on the ballot by the Legislature or unelected groups like the state Taxation and Budget Reform Commission.