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Letter to the editor

Stop using our money to sway our vote

By Howard Troxler, Times Staff Writer
Published March 13, 2008

Here is something that ought to be a law in Florida, but isn't.

Local governments should not be able to take sides in their elections.

What could be more basic? The government is the servant of the taxpayers, not their master.

And yet increasingly, Florida cities, counties and school boards spend public dollars to try to sway election results.

Maybe the government is supporting a tax, such as the Penny for Pinellas, or Pasco County's local school tax.

Maybe the local government has a strong opinion in favor of or against a particular amendment or measure on the ballot.

That's what happened in Pinellas, where cities and the county government spent tax dollars fighting each other over amendments to the County Charter.

I remember opening my water bill, only to see that my city was telling me which way to vote on the charter amendments. Meanwhile, absentee voters received, with their ballot, a propaganda brochure from the county telling them to vote the opposite way.

More recently, St. Petersburg even wanted to hand out a letter to voters inside the polling place on Election Day, warning them that if they did not vote to re-elect a sitting City Council member, they would have to pay for an expensive second election. The city dropped that idea after complaints.

The common theme in all these examples is the itch of the government to "educate" the voters on which way they are "supposed" to vote. I guess that we have come a long way from the spirit of 1776.

This brings us to House Bill 195 and Senate Bill 532, filed in our current session of the Florida Legislature.

Both are sponsored by Pinellas County lawmakers, Janet Long in the House and Charlie Justice in the Senate.

The bills would make it illegal for local governments to spend public money in elections for any "political advertisement or electioneering communication."

Let's be crystal clear about two things.

First, the bills do not restrict the "free speech" of local politicians. They can do and say any thing they want. They can campaign all they want. They just can't spend the public's money to do it.

Second, the bills do not in any way take away the power of local governments to "educate" the voters in a truly neutral fashion.

Under these bills, local governments remain perfectly free to sent out "factual" material about upcoming elections.

I know, I know. The word "factual" could cause problems. One person's "fact" might be another person's blatant political ad.

But at least these bills would make it clear local government could no longer blatantly tell people which way it wanted them to vote.

Long and Justice filed their bills last year, too, but got a cool reception in Tallahassee. They were opposed by local governments, of course, but even some higher-up legislators didn't see the need.

This year, maybe things will be different, especially now that the Legislature has seen how local governments tried to "educate" the citizens in opposition to the Legislature's property tax cuts.

Look, we're not talking about a revolution here.

We're talking about a simple idea - in America, the government does not take sides in elections. I can't imagine a more basic protection for our freedom.

[Last modified March 12, 2008, 23:13:50]