A speaker urges chamber of commerce members to vote for an amendment to make citizen initiatives more difficult.
By JENNIFER LIBERTO
Published October 28, 2004
SPRING HILL - The Greater Hernando County Chamber of Commerce urged its members Wednesday to make it more difficult for special interest groups to buy their way onto the state Constitution.
But to do so, members would have to vote for an amendment, which has cost a special interest group linked to the statewide Florida Chamber of Commerce more than $317,861.
More than a hundred business and political leaders listened to the local chamber's government liaison, Len Tria, talk about the constitutional amendment process at the chamber's monthly breakfast meeting on Wednesday at the Silverthorn clubhouse.
Tria spent nearly an the hour touting the platform of Vote Smart Florida, a nonpartisan group staffed by the statewide Florida chamber.
Vote Smart Florida's members include a slew of local chambers of commerce and associations representing big statewide industries, such as Florida Farm Bureau, Florida Retail Federation and Florida Bankers Association.
"If we don't pay attention, any special interest with a fat checkbook can buy an amendment on to the Constitution," said Tria, who repeatedly pointed to the amendment that voters passed in 2002 that protects pregnant pigs from being contained in anything smaller than a crate. "How does protecting pigs' rights belong in a document to protect people's rights?"
Tria said chamber members should vote to make Amendment Two part of constitution, because it was proposed by the Legislature, not a citizens' group.
Legislative leaders, tired of grappling with expensive citizen initiatives including class size reduction and the bullet train, had planned to ask voters to overhaul the entire citizen-backed initiative process this year.
But they only got to part of it during the session.
Voters will decide on Tuesday whether to move up the qualification deadline for submitting signatures for citizen-proposed constitutional amendments. The date would be moved up to Feb. 1, instead of 91 days before a general election.
Opponents of the amendment say the Florida Chamber is trying to keep lawmakers in the pockets of big business. Through campaign contributions and paid lobbyists, such businesses already have an impact on the Legislative process, said Damien Filer, spokesman for Hands Off Florida, a Tallahassee coalition of citizens groups.
"The Florida Chamber's sole purpose is to ensure that the big business lobby has the same stranglehold on the citizen initiative process that they do on the Legislature," Filer said. "This is not an issue you can divide along partisan lines, it's the big guy versus the little guy."
With $3,400, Hands Off has only raised a fraction of the $572,000 VoteSmart Florida has raised in contributions for its cause. Hands Off members include American Civil Liberties Union, American Lung Association of America Inc., Sierra Club and the Libertarian Party of Florida.
But Chamber spokesman Mark Wilson said VoteSmart Florida is also using its half-million in contributions to educate voters about all sides of each proposed constitutional amendments.
"The more information voters have, the better off we're all going to be," said Wilson, who pointed out that the VoteSmart Florida Web site no longer specifically asks voters to vote yes on Amendment Two in its voter guide.
Yet, at the chamber meeting on Wednesday, Tria urged members to vote in favor of the two amendments endorsed by the Florida Chamber this year, which includes repealing a high speed rail amendment that voters approved in 2000. He also spoke against the initiative to raise the minimum wage.
Several people attending the breakfast , including both candidates for County Commission District Five, Republican Janey Baldwin and Democrat Chris Kingsley, said they agreed the Constitution should be harder to amend.
"I believe (the process) needs to be tightened up a little bit," Baldwin said.
