Voter role in land use worth study

Referendum drive is notice developers need to rethink their actions

Here’s a nightmare for the development industry: local voters empowered to decide by referendum whether to make changes in the comprehensive land-use plans that govern growth in cities and counties.

In other words, voters could directly veto increases in density, in allowed uses, in building heights and in other land-use parameters. Some believe such changes are too frequently OK’d for developers by compliant elected officials under the current system.

A constitutional amendment giving local voters that power will be on the 2004 general election ballot if two environmental lawyers have their way.

Ross Burnaman of Tallahassee and Lesley Blackner of Palm Beach say of Florida localities, generally what some have said of Lee County, that comprehensive plans designed to make growth smart are promiscuously altered to make growth easy.

If Florida Hometown Democracy Inc. gets 500,000 valid signatures on petitions, voters would decide whether to amend the state constitution to require local referendums for changes in land use plans.

Opponents of the idea say that voters are ill-equipped to deal with the complexities of land-use planning, and they may be right.

But voters can see for themselves when growth is lowering the quality of their lives and raising their taxes. And in a democracy they have a right to defend themselves if their elected representatives have failed to restrain growth the way they’re supposed to under land-use plans.

Government by referendum can have all sorts of unintended and pernicious consequences.

But whose fault is that? Not the voters, but those who back the voters into a corner with excessive taxes or runaway development, from which the only apparent escape is for the people to seize the controls themselves.

The interests who fear this proposed amendment should take it as a wake-up call, although it’s doubtful they will until the movement gathers steam and becomes a real threat.

For that reason alone, the matter deserves further discussion. The class-size amendment passed by Florida voters last year was a clumsy unfunded mandate, a bad idea. But it did concentrate the minds of Florida leaders on education spending and forced amendment opponents to come up with proposals of their own.

Development interests know the current system serves them very well, despite their own complaints about over-regulation and despite the public’s concerns about runaway growth.

The industry fears that, given a chance, the public would routinely veto any increases in zoning, building height or any other intensification they could get their hands on.

And that’s because the current system has too often served special interests at the expense of the public interest.

It would be healthy for business and government leaders to really feel the pressure, to be faced with the choice of either truly controlling growth, or losing the power to do so to the people.

After all, it’s supposed to be the people’s country, and their government.

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