Hometown Democracy movement not mainstream environmentalism

By MICHAEL R. CAPUTO

michaelrcaputo@gmail.com

On April 23, a state appeals court ruled unconstitutional a law allowing Floridians who have signed an initiative petition to change their mind and revoke their signature. The decision, the result of a challenge by Hometown Democracy organizers, is a disappointment for Florida's business and community leaders who supported the new law to keep bad ideas out of Florida's Constitution.

The ruling now goes to the Florida Supreme Court, but even if it stands the decision changes nothing about the 2008 Florida ballot. Even if the revoked signatures are restored, Hometown Democracy supporters still missed their mark by a mile.

Why has Hometown Democracy failed to make the ballot three times? Because the amendment has no grass-roots support, and mainstream green donors refuse to fund it. The environmental community is deeply divided over the proposal, part of a broader split illustrated by the national Sierra Club's recent sacking of its entire Florida leadership.

The 116-year-old national conservation group had never in its history fired chapter officers, and Florida members are reeling after being fully suspended from the club for four years. Backstabbing and board brawling tore the Florida chapter apart. At the core of the fight: the growing trend of environmental groups to engage businesses for lasting change. Mainstream green groups view a working relationship with the business community as key to protecting our environment. But those who seized control of the Florida Sierra Club chapter believe working with business betrays the cause.

This group helped foist Hometown Democracy on Floridians, a proposed constitutional amendment that would require local residents to vote on hundreds of land-use amendments every year while creating a planning and economic train wreck. Florida Sierra leadership helped bankroll a strategy to have paid petitioners collect signatures.

When 1,000 Friends of Florida announced its opposition to the amendment, Hometown backers pilloried the state's most respected growth watchdog as a tool of Big Business. But opinion leaders recognized the Friends stand as courageous. Newspapers editorialized against Hometown, fewer Floridians agreed to sign the petition, money dried up and the amendment went down in defeat again.

Today, policymakers can take heart knowing Hometown Democracy is not a true grass-roots movement and certainly not a popular uprising. It is nothing more than a carnival-bus style paid petitioning effort enabled not by activists, but by big money. In fact, without the checkbooks of two or three people, Hometown Democracy would have died of natural causes years ago, along with dozens of obscure constitutional amendments filed every year that never go anywhere.

Hometown's collapse is remarkable because its supporters took an issue of abiding concern to Floridians -- growth management -- and thrice failed to put their idea on the ballot. Meanwhile issues with narrower public appeal -- like pregnant pigs -- make it to the ballot almost entirely through volunteer efforts. This illustrates the truly radical nature of Hometown Democracy.

Without mainstream financial support, Hometown's backers reached further into Florida's fringe. Joe Redner, owner of Tampa's notorious Mons Venus strip club, is one of Hometown's biggest donors and most interesting public speakers. Similarly, in Daytona Beach, strip-club interests have bankrolled a local version of Hometown Democracy.

Why are strip club owners so supportive of this idea? According to a Casselberry city commissioner, strip club owners don't want local officials to use current land-use laws to reign in smut -- as was successfully done in his city.

Florida is a beautiful and wonderful state; Floridians enjoy a unique quality of life. Everyone who lives here, native or transplant, wants to protect that for ourselves and future generations. The vast majority of us, green or not, also know complex challenges are best solved by people willing to work together for the long-term common good despite disparate immediate goals.

Florida's future would be better served by such a citizens' coalition than by the Hometown Democracy approach of everyone backing into their own corners, waging war and fighting to the death.

Miami resident Michael Caputo is the writer behind ReasonableShadeofGreen.com and was the founding director of Floridians for Smarter Growth, the statewide campaign to defeat the proposed Hometown Democracy amendment.