Politicians try to thwart activism

Maxwell: Florida legislators fight petition efforts of citizens.

For the last two decades, the Florida Legislature has consistently refused to provide what citizens wanted.

Smaller class sizes.

A protected environment. Medical marijuana.

An end to gerrymandered districts.

Voting rights for former felons. These were all basic concepts that citizens — and sometimes courts — told legislators this state needed; things that leaders in other states provided.

But Florida legislators refused. Every single time.

So, in all of these instances, citizens took democracy into their own hands. A majority of you voted to change the laws yourselves to support basic principles — be it cleaner water or better public education — for the people who live here.

It was citizen empowerment … and it infuriated Florida legislators.

See, politicians hate it when you empower yourselves. They like to be the gatekeepers.

So over and over, Republican legislators have tried to make it more difficult for citizens to petition the state to amend the Florida Constitution.

Keep in mind: These same legislators have tried to amend the constitution far more often than you — proposing nearly three times as many amendments as citizens. They’re tried it more than 100 times in the last 50 years. But whenever citizens try to do the same, legislators begin yapping about what a “sacred” document the constitution is and how it shouldn’t be “tinkered with” … the way they try far more often.

And now GOP legislators are at it again — only this time they have found new and creative obstacles.

They want to make it tougher for citizens and groups to collect signatures. They want to threaten petition-organizers with jail time.

And they want to make your already lengthy and complicated ballots even more lengthy and

more complicated by adding legal mumbo-jumbo to every item you propose — but to of the amendments propose.

It’s that last part that lays bare their motives.

See, legislators have proposed a whole raft of measures they claim will promote transparency and accountability.

But they haven’t proposed applying any of those new laws to themselves.

If you want to gather petitions, you’ll be threatened with arrest if you pay your petition-gatherers by the signature.

If they want to qualify to run for office using the petition method, they are free to pay signature collectors however they choose.

If you manage to get a

proposed amendment on the ballot, they want to require the ballot to contain language that tells voters how it might impact “state and local economies.”

But if they propose an amendment, they don’t want the ballot to tell you squat about its financial impact.

I’ll argue that these proposals aren’t really about transparency or accountability at all. They’re simply an attempt to make it harder for citizens to get and pass issues — something already extremely difficult.

But let’s say the legislators are right. Let’s say that all of these new measures are precisely the kind of good-government, anti-fraud regulations Florida needs. Then why on earth wouldn’t we need it for proposed amendments?

It is naked hypocrisy.

I’m actually fine with amendments telling voters about the cost to government. But guess what? They already do — for citizen-sponsored initiatives anyway.

Current statutes say citizen-proposed amendments must tell voters “the financial impact” of any amendment on state and local governments.

Legislators have however, placed the same requirement on their own amendment proposals.

So if any changes are needed, it’s for the legislators to follow the transparency requirements demanded of you.

Instead, this year’s proposal (SB 7096) keeps allowing them to propose amendments without cost estimates — while forcing citizen initiatives to add

ballot language to not only calculate the financial impact on state and local governments, but also state and local “economies.”

I’m not even sure how they’d calculate that. But I’m darn sure that, if legislators think that information is vital to voters, they should provide it for all the amendments propose as well.

“This is an obvious double standard,” I told state Sen. David Simmons, a veteran and normally sensible GOP legislator from Seminole County who has been championing these so-called “reforms.”

At the end of a spirited exchange, Simmons said he agreed — and vowed to place any new restrictions on legislators as well as citizens.

But here’s the thing: He didn’t.

It wasn’t in the original proposal. It still wasn’t as of Friday morning.

Simmons can say he hopes to amend the bill. But there’s no guarantee his colleagues — who have so far advanced this hypocritical mess along party lines — will agree with him. More important:

And there are only two possible explanations for that:

1) I am much smarter than the entire Florida Legislature in my ability to spot glaring inconsistencies; or

2) They knew damn well what they were doing — and they simply didn’t care.

Either excuse is pathetic. And I think the legislators would be the first to tell you it’s not No. 1.