Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
JONI JAMESIf the House approves, the ballot questions would give voters the opportunity to curtail their own ability to amend the state Constitution.
TALLAHASSEE - Florida voters should consider a trio of ballot questions come August designed to make it harder for them to amend the state Constitution, the state Senate agreed Thursday.
Under the Senate plan, which still needs House approval, voters would be asked at the Aug. 31 primary election to:
Require a 60 percent vote to approve an amendment.
Force citizen initiatives to be filed by eight months before a general election, compared with 91 days now.
Give the Florida Supreme Court broader authority over citizen initiatives. The court could strike any measure that did not address current constitutional issues, government structure or basic rights.
The measures, which would be presented to voters in the form of proposed constitutional amendments, passed by wide margins, with just four or fewer negative votes in the 40-member chamber. The changes are one of Senate President Jim King's top priorities.
"That was a far more cohesive vote than anyone expected when we started," King, R-Jacksonville, told senators. "Congratulations."
But the Senate still must reach an agreement with the House, where the leadership wants citizen petitions to identify a taxing source for any amendment that has a fiscal impact. It also wants to limit the 60 percent approval requirement to measures proposed by citizens, not legislators. It's also unclear whether the House will have the votes to put the questions on the Aug. 31 primary ballot, which requires more than putting them on the Nov. 2 ballot.
The two chambers also don't agree on when the changes should take effect. The House proposes Jan. 1 and the Senate wants them to apply to initiatives filed after July 16, about two weeks before the deadline to get on November's ballot.
Whatever gets on the ballot, it's far from clear how voters will react.
A recent St. Petersburg Times poll found strong support for requiring 60 percent approval.
But earlier this week, a coalition of groups, including the Florida League of Women Voters, Common Cause and the American Civil Liberties Union, announced they would work together as the Florida Initiative League to oppose the changes. They said they would not support any restrictions when lawmakers were not providing an alternative, such as statutory initiatives.
"No one even brought up a statutory process today," Susie Caplowe, lobbyist for Florida Consumer Action Network and the Sierra Club, said after Thursday's vote. "The legislators were just terrific at rationalizing away the citizens' right to generate public policy."
The ballot questions would mark the first time in more than 30 years that Florida voters have significantly addressed changing how they amend the Constitution. Citizens now can put a referendum on the ballot if they gather 488,000 signatures and write a ballot question that the state Supreme Court says is clear and limited to one subject.
The state's business community is campaigning for restrictions after the success of some recent citizen initiatives, such as restricting smoking in restaurants and protection of pregnant pigs.
Initiatives that would have failed if they had required 60 percent approval: class size reduction, high-speed rail, universal prekindergarten and a cap on property tax assessment increases.
It was less clear which past citizens' initiatives might have been affected by the proposed new standards for the Supreme Court. "When we looked at this, the Universal Pre-K measure would have passed this filter because it addressed education; class size would have met this filter. We haven't been able to find anyone who would think pregnant pigs did," said Sen. Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach.