The Way Things Work

Every now and then I read something new about government that just disappoints me, and reinforces my belief that government isn't what we're taught it is, isn't what we keep hearing it is, and isn't even close to what it could be.

The most current source of disappointment came from yesterday's editorial on tcpalm.com about the recent drive to revoke signatures that had been acquired to support the Hometown Democracy Amendment's inclusion on November's ballot.  Regardless of one's feelings about the proposed state amendment, the editorial pointed out, the revocation process and how it was created is just another example of the way things work in government.

Here're the basics of Revocation 101.

A problem developed for big business and the behind-the-scenes political powers when the Hometown Democracy Amendment began to gain steam.  There was a potential loss of control concerning land use issues and citizens can't be allowed that kind of power.

So hidden away inside an 80-page omnibus "reform" bill (HB537) was the new right to revoke signatures.  Follow that up with an administrative ruling that makes it retroactive and citizens initiatives get even more difficult.

Still not enough of an advantage for the political powerful?  How about making the citizen initiative process qualify in every one of Florida's Congressional Districts, which meant the folks supporting the revocation process only had to stop the process in one of them?  Especially when big money is willing to spend $59 for each revocation signature, like Save Our Constitution did when fighting Hometown Democracy?

The right of Florida citizens to initiative ballot proposals for amendments to the state constitution is precious.  Yet, when the powerful were threatened by it, government immediately became something far less than what it could and should be.  It became a tool of special interests and their lobbyists to warp, restrict and impede the rights of the very citizens government should protect.

That's the way things work in government.  But it's not the way it should.

Michael S. Mann

michaelsmann@comcast.net