Wal-Mart vs. Floridians

When Wal-Mart threatens to build a new sprawling structure within a community, we have often witnessed a hard-to-explain hopelessness amongst local citizens who have few resources to fight back.  The sprawl that Wal-Mart construction triggers often goes unchecked by those whom form the very cornerstone of democracy: the citizen. Sadly, the decision to bring a big-box retailer into one’s backyard is often left to a city planning commission, rather than the citizens who will best understand the effect of new development. 

To fight these unleashed growth trends, communities in Florida have fought back, advocating what they call “growth management.” Instead of being marginalized at the behest of developer/commissioner backroom deals, a new voter initiative entitled Florida Hometown Democracy aims to restore power back to the people.  It is, seemingly, a simple concept: allow citizens to control the destiny of their own municipality by giving them true democratic control over the growth and sprawl decisions.  Naturally, one would expect the equilibrium to reach a point of responsible growth. Yet Wal-Mart has pushed back every step of the way, pouring money into the fight against the initiative. 

Unsurprisingly, Wal-Mart would prefer planning commissions and city councils to continue rubber stamping its store projects, rather than let actual Floridians decide.

John Hendrick, one of the leaders of the campaign to pass the Florida Hometown Democracy amendment, comments on the fight:

Without Hometown Democracy, growth, sprawl will be the norm [Pensacola News Journal (Fla.)]

A federal lawsuit holds the promise of Florida Hometown Democracy qualifying for this year’s ballot. Should the court order it onto the ballot, it will validate what more than 820,000 people who have signed our petitions know: The people must have the power to make major growth decisions directly, because state and local governments can’t or won’t stand up to the development industry.

Witness what occurred this year in the Legislature. Not only did legislators not strengthen growth management, they tried to further weaken the rules that guide our state’s growth.

Luckily, many citizens stood up in a loud voice and said “no more,” and these anti-growth management bills died.

Florida Hometown Democracy is the only viable method available to citizens to rein in runaway growth and start meaningful reform of growth management.

The “professional planners” have projected that the state can “sustainably” handle another 18 million people by 2060. However, strains on infrastructure, water supplies and the environment show we can’t handle what we’ve got now!

And you don’t have viable comprehensive plans — the land-use constitutions developed in a citizen participation process — if they can be amended at the drop of a hat and amendments given out like candy by local politicians.

With FHD in place, amendments will be a lot fewer, and better serve the public interest, as they are supposed to.

Currently, these amendments end up being a “growth tax” on citizens who pay for the new roads, schools and other needs required by the increased population and commercial growth. Impact fees are either nonexistent or inadequate in nearly every local government.

Citizens also have a right to control if, how and when their community develops, not just the development industry, and the right to protect their quality of life.

Who doesn’t want the citizens to control their destiny? The National Association of Home Builders is the largest contributor to the opposition, at $1.11 million. Other large contributors are the Florida Home Builders Association, Florida Association of Realtors, National Restaurant Association, Associated Builders and Contractors, Florida Transportation Builders Association, and Wal-Mart.

They’d like business as usual to go on, unimpeded by those pesky citizens.

Those who have helped crater our economy because of their overbuilding have also caused the initiative process for everyone to become almost non-existent. Just look at this list of changes brought on just to slow down or stop FHD:

• A 60 percent vote now needed to pass a constitutional amendment.

• You can’t go onto a business property like a mall, without permission, to gather signatures.

• You must be 100 feet away from the door of a polling place to gather them.

It has taken FHD filing suit to stop some of the worst anti-petitioning measures, such as signature recision.

Hometown Democracy will not stop growth. But the public is going to have to be convinced that something is in their best interest, not just be beguiled by a developer’s song and dance — or their campaign contributions.

A salutory side benefit could be that the electoral process will be somewhat less corrupted than before, given that citizens, not elected officials, will make the major growth decisions for the community.

Florida Hometown Democracy is an idea whose time has come, and was never needed more than now.

Posted by Tony Calero on Monday, June 30, 2008