Where We Stand:

Voters should get to decide whether a proposal to ban near-shore drilling should be added to the Constitution.

Now that the state commission considering changes to the Florida Constitution has advanced more than two dozen proposals for final consideration, it’s hard to keep track of all the details. So we’ll cut to the core of one of them — a proposal that would ban drilling for oil and natural gas in Florida waters — and why it deserves ultimate approval from the commission.

First, here’s what Proposal 91 wouldn’t do: exempt Florida from the Trump administration’s plan to expand drilling in federal waters. A few days after the plan was announced in January, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said Florida was off the table, which would leave intact a drilling buffer of at least 125 miles off the state’s Gulf of Mexico coastline. But Zinke and other Interior Department officials have made conflicting statements since then.

Proposal 91 would apply just to Florida waters, which extend about nine miles from the state’s Gulf coastline and three miles from the Atlantic coastline. Florida law currently bars drilling in those state waters until 2022.

If Proposal 91 wouldn’t get Florida off the hook from any plans on the national level to expand drilling in federal waters, and a state ban on drilling in Florida waters remains in place for now, does that make this amendment superfluous? Recent history says definitely not.

In 2009, then-state Rep. Dean Cannon, a Winter Park Republican, won approval in the House late in that year’s legislative session for a bill that would have lifted the state ban on drilling in Florida waters. The measure would have empowered the Florida Cabinet to approve proposals for near-shore oil and gas drilling. Fortunately, the bill died in the Senate.

A year later, Cannon tried again. Again, Senate opposition killed the bill, but it was widely expected to make a comeback in 2011 with the support of incoming Senate President Mike Haridopolos, an Indialantic Republican — until the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in federal waters off the Louisiana coast triggered the nation’s worst-ever oil spill.

The Deepwater disaster followed years of assurances from the oil industry and its supporters in both Washington, D.C., and Tallahassee that offshore drilling was safe. By the time the spill was capped almost three months later, it had dumped millions of gallons of crude into the Gulf, fouling beaches as far away as the Florida Panhandle.

But the Trump administration’s recent plan to expand drilling in federal waters — and another reckless proposal from the administration last year to weaken safety rules imposed after the Deepwater explosion and spill — confirms that memories are often short among politicians.

In 2009, Cannon pitched his bill to open state waters to drilling as a way to lift sagging tax revenues and recover jobs lost in the wake of the Great Recession. It’s not hard to imagine a similar appeal gaining traction among legislators after another sharp economic downturn in the future.

Floridians would be foolish to count on their leaders to be forever opposed to near-shore drilling. Only a constitutional amendment would provide that certainty. Unlike some other proposals, this one wouldn’t be out of place in the constitution. Florida’s governing document already declares: “It shall be the policy of the state to conserve and protect its natural resources and scenic beauty.”

Opening the door to drilling within a few miles of Florida’s shores would threaten the state’s tourism economy, now worth more than $100 billion a year, as well as its priceless environment. Proposal 91 would give Florida voters the chance to protect their state permanently from serious economic and environmental risks. The commission should make sure they get that chance.