Also, I noticed in your blogpost that you mentioned that you had heard the arguments made by Bett Willett. I urge you to do a careful factcheck of everything that Ms. Willett says, because many of her “facts” are inaccurate at best. In particular, its likely that anything she said about St. Pete Beach is just plain wrong. I’d appreciate if if you would take a look at one of my recent blogposts where I explain in detail why virtually everything that Ms. Willet says about St. Pete Beach is completely wrong:

July 25, 2010
Hometown Democracy Throws Truth Under the Bus in Televised Amendment 4 Debate.
http://stpetebeachandhometowndemocracy.blogspot.com/2010/07/hometown-democracy-throws-truth-under.html

I agree with you that critical thinking is required when looking at Amendment 4. Unfortunately, in order to engage in effective critical thinking, you need to see the facts. I’ve been blogging about this since May, and the Hometown Democracy folks have never presented any facts that correct or rebut anything I’ve raised. Take a look at my findings, and take a look at Ms Willett’s responses…I think you’ll find the exchange very enlightening.

If you can convince Ms. Willett to answer my questions, I’d be very grateful to you, and you’d be doing the votes of Florida a great service. Unfortunately, all I’ve been able to get from them is personal attacks.

I invite you to contact me at my email address if you have any questions or would like additional information.

Florida Amendment 4 may seem like a good idea to folks who are frustrated with sprawl and overdevelopment, but voting for it is like bringing a piece of furniture into your home that looks nice but is infested with bedbugs…it’s full of hidden dangers that can make your home and town unlivable and are very difficult to exterminate once in place.

Amendment 4′s biggest (and most hidden) flaw is that by requiring all comprehensive plan changes to go on the ballot, Florida election law requires that those comp plan changes (which often involve hundreds of pages of complex land use language) must be summarized in a ballot summary that is 75 words or less, which exposes cities to massive litigation costs due to ballot language challenges.

Why is trying to create a 75 word ballot summary of a comprehensive plan change such a problem? What’s the big deal?

The problem is that it is impossible to adequately summarize hundreds of pages of land use changes into a 75 word ballot summary, and if Florida’s cities are forced to undertake this impossible task, they will be vulnerable to costly lawsuits challenging those summaries as deceptive and incomplete…which is precisely what happened in St. Pete Beach.

In 2008, St. Pete Beach put proposed comprehensive plan changes on the ballot. We did this because in 2006, we made changes to our city charter which (like Amendment 4) required that future changes to our comprehensive plan must be approved by a vote of the citizens. So when we put our comprehensive plan changes on the ballot in 2008, Florida election law forced the city to summarize the 150 pages of changes into a 75 word ballot summary.

On Election Day, 2008, our comp plan was approved by the voters of St. Pete Beach by an overwhelming majority vote. Happy Day, right? Wrong! After the comp plan was approved by the voters, St. Pete Beach was promptly sued by a resident who alleged that the city’s 75 word ballot summaries were “rife with deceptive and misleading statements” and that they omitted “material facts.” Ironically, the plaintiff alleges that the city’s 75 words were deficient, but in his complaint he cannot even describe what is missing from the city’s ballot summaries in less than 75 words!

The litigation that started in 2008 is still ongoing, and in 2010 alone St. Pete Beach has incurred over $200,000 in legal fees defending the vote of the people. By comparison, St. Pete Beach spent only $33,000 on litigation in 2001. Similar problems threaten all Florida cities if Amendment 4 passes, since all Florida cities will also be forced to undertake the impossible task of crafting 75 word ballot summaries of comprehensive plan changes that involve hundreds of pages of complex land use changes.

The problem with summarizing comprehensive plans in 75 words under Amendment 4 is that you just can’t fit everything that everyone cares about into those 75 words. No matter how hard you try, there will always be someone who can file a lawsuit alleging that what is most important to THEM was left out, and that the ballot language was “misleading” or “deceptive” or “incomplete.” And like a swarm of bedbugs, land use lawyers thrive by feeding on these legal vulnerabilities…with all Floridians suffering for it.

So why will fixing the problems caused by Amendment 4 be as difficult as exterminating a house full of bedbugs? The reason is simple: Amendment 4 is a statewide constitutional amendment. Once Floridians figure out how overbroad and damaging Amendment 4 really is, local cities won’t have the legal authority to alter or modify the scope of Amendment 4′s rules to suit the needs and desires of the local population.

By comparison, once St. Pete Beach’s voters realized the mistake they’d made by adopting their Amendment 4-style rules, we repealed their broad scope in favor of a much more restricted set of rules…but we were able to fix our mistake because we had the power to undo the changes we’d made to our local city charter. But since Amendment 4 is a constitutional amendment, no Florida city will have the power to undo its requirements once it’s been approved, even if a majority of the city’s voters want to alter or repeal it.

I’ve got lot lots more info at http://www.stepetebeachandhometowndemocracy.blogspot.com

Oh, and I’m not a developer. I’m not a politician. I’ve never taken a dime from a developer. I am a democrat. I am a beach preservation activist. I’m none of the terrible things that Hometown Democracy operatives accuse folks who oppose Amendment 4. I’m just a resident of St. Pete Beach who doesn’t want the entire state of Florida to suffer what we suffered when we tried to implement Hometown Democracy-style rules.

What sways me toward at least considering supporting this amendment is the idea that the measures that make it to the ballot will already have been filtered through the relevant planning boards. The arguments for and against ought to be fairly clear by that point, enough so that newspaper editorial boards and bloggers ought to be able to help us as voters sort through the issues. The public vote would merely serve as final check on the process, making it impossible to sneak a big change through in the middle of the night. Yes, developers could fund campaigns in favor of these changes and probably out-gun opponents in terms of ad dollars spent. But at least they would have to make the effort to convince the communities to be affected by a given change.

On the other hand, even if it does pass, this measure won’t prevent developers from getting approval on plans that fit with a community’s existing land use plan. So it may not put the brakes on development as much as some environmentalists and not in my backyard activists might like.

I haven’t actually made up my mind at this point and still want to make sure I get the facts straight before I decide how to vote. I will be interested to see if any more objective assessments emerge on the real practical, environmental and economic impacts if it should pass.

Any thoughts on this?

Thanks -
Maggie Macaulay