5 more amendments need to be cut

One of the Florida Constitution Revision Commission’s worst flim-flams got what it deserved Monday when a circuit judge in Tallahassee struck Amendment 8 from the Nov. 6 ballot. Let’s hope it’s gone for good — and that a batch of similarly misleading amendments also get the boot.

Amendment 8 represents a drastic attack on the uniform system of free public schools required by the Florida Constitution. But this proposal comes sugar-coated with the requirement that public schools teach “civic literacy” and that school board members face term limits. To ratify these feel-good propoals, however, voters would have to dismember public education.

The amendment’s poison pill would limit local school boards to supervising only those schools they establish. Left unsaid was that local boards now oversee all public charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately run, often by for-profit companies.

Also unexplained was the amendment’s purpose, gleaned by the judge from the commission’s transcripts. That is to let Florida’s pliable Legislature give charter school lobbyists an entirely new system to feed at the public trough — one thrown open by Tallahassee bureaucats, not constrained by local school boards.

Whether that would be good or bad wasn’t the issue before Circuit Judge John Cooper. At issue was the underhanded method the revision commission used to try to create such major change.

By failing to mention charter schools, “the term voters would understand,” Cooper wrote, Amendment 8 “fails to inform voters of the chief purpose and effect of this proposal.”

He also objected to bundling the three unrelated issues under a “misleading” summary. Thanks are due the League of Women Voters of Florida for filing the case.

Bundling is the major issue in five other constitutional amendments also awaiting attention by the Florida Supreme Court. Since Cooper’s ruling is sure to be appealed, the court ought to go ahead and hear them all.

It also should act quickly on Amendment 13, a ban on greyhound racing, which was tossed for misleading ballot language. The deadline to print ballots for voters overseas is only days away.

Plaintiffs in the larger case — challenging amendments 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11 — are Harry Anstead, a former Supreme Court justice, and Robert Barnas, a former High Springs city commissioner.

Attorney General Pam Bondi, who helped to make the mess as a member of the revision commission, predictably filed a technical objection to their petition. But the issues are too important — and the time until the November election too short — for the court to let a technicality delay a decision on the merits.

Bondi also claims there is an “entirely rational basis” for the commission to have packaged 25 separate proposals into eight ballot amendments. She said studies show that voters are confused by overly long ballots. But that begs the question of why the commission ran so wild in the first place, adopting unneeded provisions to cloak drastic changes to the constitution.

The commission’s bundling tactic is the seamiest election trick since the 1957 Legislature tried to sell voters an entirely new constitution, through a so-called “daisy chain” referendum in which the defeat of any one of 17 amendments would doom them all. The Supreme Court threw it off the ballot.

The Anstead petition says bundling unrelated proposals may force voters to approve something they dislike to get something they like. “This is logrolling and a form of issue gerrymandering that violates the First Amendment right of the voter to vote for or against specific independent and unrelated proposals to amend the constitution.”

Moreover, the suit says, the amendments violate the requirement that their chief purpose be explained on the ballot.

These are the other amendments in question:

— Amendment 6. It packages a list of rights for crime victims with a proposal to raise the retirement age for judges and change how appeals are considered from state agencies. It fails to tell voters that the amendment curtails the constitutional rights of defendants.

— Amendment 7 requires university and college boards to approve any fee increase by a supermajority vote. It’s bundled with proposals calling for a single system of community and state colleges, and for providing death benefits for the survivors of first responders and military personnel. Both are covered by existing law. Neither needs to be in the Constitution.

— Amendment 9. A prohibition on offshore oil drilling — but not on pipelines or ships transporting oil — is packaged with a ban on using smokeless cigarettes in indoor workplaces.

— Amendment 10 disguises a serious assault on home rule in Broward and seven other counties within a package of proposals to create new state agencies, and set the months when the Legislature meets.

— Amendment 11 bundles the elimination of obsolete constitutional language with a significant proposal that would bar the Legislature from halting prosecutions for crimes committed before the repeal of a law.

As matters stand, there are only two revision commission products that deserve to be on the November ballot: Amendment 12, which creates a stronger ethics code for public officials; and Amendment 13, which bans greyhound racing in Florida. We disagree with the trial judge’s decision to toss the latter from the ballot. The amendment’s thrust is quite clear, no matter that it doesn’t prohibit betting on dog races in other states.

There is no longer a specific requirement for separate amendments, but it is very much the law that voters should not be misled about what they’re deciding. The Florida Supreme Court has the power, and the duty, to make it so.

We call on the court to hear these challenges, then strike these bundled messes from the November ballot.