Bills could limit ballot questions

One proposal caps person’s spending on potential measures

Over the past decade, Florida voters approved changes to the state Constitution that legalized medical marijuana, restored felons’ voting rights and directed more money to land and water conservation.

But a pair of proposals approved Monday by a House committee would make it harder for organizations to get future constitutional amendments on the ballot — and to pass them.

The proposals, approved by the House Public Integrity and Elections Committee, are the latest attempts in years of efforts by Republican lawmakers to clamp down on the ballot initiative process.

One of the measures (HB

699) approved Monday would impose a $3,000 cap on campaign contributions to political committees sponsoring proposed constitutional amendments. The cap would be lifted after the secretary of state certifies that the committees have received a requisite number of petition signatures to put proposed amendments on the ballot.

But the petition-gathering process is expensive, and the proposal comes after wealthy people spent millions of dollars in recent years to support proposed constitutional amendments that passed despite opposition from Republican state leaders and influential groups such as the Florida Chamber of Commerce.

For example, Orlando trial attorney John Morgan contributed more than

$6 million to a 2020 ballot initiative to gradually raise Florida’s minimum wage to

$15 an hour and also largely bankrolled a 2016 amendment that broadly legalized medical marijuana. Voters approved both measures.

“It is aimed at subverting our democracy and giving power to a few, not all the people,” Morgan told the Orlando Sentinel when asked about what some critics were calling the “antiJohn Morgan law.’ “They are erecting impossible barriers to deny the purest and most direct form of democracy. Here and across the country, we are looking at the deconstruction of what made us great: democracy.”

Glenn Burhans, an attorney who has worked on numerous ballot initiatives, told The News Service of Florida that the proposed contribution caps would “kill thecitizens’initiativeprocess in the cradle.”

“There’s simply no way that anybody can raise the types of funds necessary to mount a multimillion-dollar signature-gathering campaign,” Burhans said. “And the Legislature knows that, and that’s why they want to pass it.”

But bill sponsor Bobby Payne, R-Palatka, said the measure would impose the same contribution cap currently in place for statewide candidates.

“It eliminates those that have over-influence and who can influence these ballot initiatives through their dollars,” Payne said.

The other proposal (HJR 61) approved by the committee Monday would require two-thirds of voters to approve constitutional amendments, up from the current 60%. Sponsor Rick Roth, R-West Palm Beach, has been unable to get lawmakers to approve the proposal in the past, but he told the House committee on Monday that the measure’s time has come.

The Republican-controlled House committee approved both measures in party-line votes. Roth’s measure would have to be approved by voters in 2022 because it would involve changing the Constitution.Butlawmakerscouldmake the changes in Payne’s bill.