Good news for schools, dogs, bad news for counties, courts
The Florida Supreme Court got two right and two wrong when it decided last week which of four contested constitutional amendments should appear on the Nov. 6 ballot. Although a .500 average is good in baseball, it falls flat in something as serious as the foundations of Florida’s government. In these cases, the Constitution Revision Commission snuck a couple of fast curves past the justices. Here’s hoping the voters will be more alert.
The court was emphatically correct in keeping Amendment 8, a battering ram for charter schools, off the ballot. The title failed to fairly inform voters what was at stake. That was the crux of Tallahassee Circuit Judge John Cooper’s order to remove the amendment from the ballot. Although the revision commission’s debate had focused on charter schools, they went unmentioned in the ballot language—the only explanation voters would see. They would have been left to figure out what was meant by language to permit “the state to operate, control, and supervise public schools not established by the school board.” This would have dismantled the existing constitutional requirement for a “uniform” system of free public schools.
“The failure to use the term voters would understand, ‘charter schools,’ as well as the use of a phrase that has no established meaning under Florida law, fails to inform voters of the chief purpose and effect of this proposal,” Cooper had ruled.
It’s disconcerting, however, that the Supreme Court upheld his ruling by only a 4-3 vote. The majority and minority’s reasons may be explained in an opinion to be issued later.
The court was correct also in its 6-1 vote to restore to the ballot Amendment 13, the ban on commercial greyhound racing in Florida. Another circuit court judge had accepted hyper-technical
arguments against it.
But it’s hard to reconcile the vote on Amendment 8 with the court’s 4-3 decision to restore Amendment 6, an excessively detailed victims’ rights proposal, or with its unanimous decision to allow Amendment 10, which essentially overturns home rule for Florida counties. That was one of the few great reforms in Florida’s 1968 Constitution.
Amendment 6, better known as “Marsy’s Law,” sold to the revision commission by a California billionaire whose sister was murdered, suffered from the same vague ballot description. As Cooper had ruled in that case, it failed to disclose that its “chief purpose…is to take away or reduce the protection” Florida presently affords criminal defendants. Among other things, it would entitle victims to demand speedy trials on impossibly short notice. No one has a clue as to what it might cost to implement.
Amendment 10 is another proposal with hidden consequences. It “ensures” the election of sheriffs, property appraisers, supervisors of elections, tax collectors and clerks of court in all counties,” but it fails to tell voters of Broward, Miami-Dade and six other counties that it would likely repeal parts of their existing county charters. Miami-Dade, for example, switched to an appointed sheriff many years ago because of endemic corruption in that office. Broward voters abolished the tax collector’s office, transferring the duty to the county’s finance department. This featherbedding amendment owes its existence to insider lobbying by a circuit court clerk and sheriff who were members of the revision commission.
The Supreme Court ducked the potential undisclosed harm to eight counties by saying the question of retroactivity “should be resolved in a post-election action.” That’s grossly unfair to the citizens of those eight counties who should be entitled to know before they vote what the consequences will be.
None of these outcomes settled what was most wrong with the revision commission’s record: A series of amendments in which controversial issues were “bundled” with other presumably popular but functionally unrelated proposals. Amendment 8, for example, sugar-coated the charter school issue with term limits for school board members and a requirement that the schools teach “civic literacy.”
Amendment 10 mixes the sneak attack on county home rule with a noncontroversial change in the Legislature’s meeting dates and an obviously appealing requirement for an office of domestic security and counter-terrorism in the Department of Law Enforcement. That’s not only unnecessary, as the department already has one, but also unwise. The Constitution should not be cluttered with organizational details best left to the Legislature.
The commission defended this mischief on the grounds that its predecessor 20 years ago combined subjects. On that occasion, though, the groupings were rational and noncontroversial, and the ones that were contentious were left to stand alone. Voters weren’t forced to accept proposals they disliked in order to approve those they favored.
For now, it appears that only four of the commission’s eight amendments deserve to be ratified in November. That’s not a good average either. We’ll have more to say about this as the election draws near.