The chair of Florida’s Constitutional Revision Commission received applause from Sarasota Tiger Bay Club members Thursday after highlighting two proposed constitutional amendments that have a good chance of making it on the ballot this year: A ban on oil drilling off Florida’s coast and a measure that would automatically restoring voting rights for certain felons who have completed their sentences.
Commission Chair Carlos Beruff also faced a number of pointed questions from Tiger Bay members concerned about various proposals winding their way through the CRC process, including an effort to restrict cities and counties from regulating businesses and a proposal that critics worry would make it easier to adopt abortion restrictions.
Beruff, a Manatee County developer appointed by Gov. Rick Scott to lead the CRC, defended Proposal 95 targeting local business regulations, saying it would save companies that operate statewide from having to contend with myriad local rules.
“Publix operates in every county in Florida and you get a county or municipality saying we don’t want you putting our your groceries in plastic bags, well that’s a problem,” Beruff said.
The proposal was criticized by Sarasota Vice Mayor Liz Alpert, who worried that it would “totally preempt local government” and create one set of rules for local businesses and another for companies with a wider reach.
“I know everybody doesn’t like” the proposal Beruff said, but he worried that local governments are adopting rules that present “a very significant risk financially” for some companies. And he noted that the proposed constitutional amendment still allows cities and counties to regulate business activity that takes place entirely within their boundaries.
“So if it’s inside the city of Sarasota and has no affect outside the city of Sarasota you guys can do whatever you want,” he said.
Mary Adkins, a University of Florida professor who participated in the Tiger Bay panel Thursday at Michael's On East, noted that before 1968 Florida did not delegate “home rule” authority to cities and counties so municipalities had to submit so-called “local bills” to the Legislature to adopt ordinances.
The Legislature “was choked with local bills and they couldn’t get state business done very much because local governments couldn’t do anything without the ok of the Legislature,” she said.
Adkins argued that the proposal to restrict municipalities from regulating businesses “is a step backward…and might become untenable.”
The CRC – a body that meets every 20 years and has the ability to place constitutional amendments directly on the ballot - is in the midst of debating dozens of proposed revisions to the Florida constitution.
Committees are advancing various proposals, some submitted by the public, others by the 37 commissioners appointed by the governor, state Senate president, state House speaker and chief justice of the state Supreme Court. The commission has 33 Republican members and four Democratic members.
Adkins said the partisan makeup of the current CRC is the reverse of the first one convened in 1978, a time when Democrats controlled the governor’s mansion and the Legislature.
With Republicans in control of the CRC, some of the proposed amendments have a more conservative bent, such as proposal 22. It would change the state’s existing right to privacy, which guarantees Florida residents the right “to be let alone and free from government instruction into the person’s private life.” Critics say the proposed change would make it easier to impose restrictions on abortion.
“How can this commission justify an attack on women’s reproductive rights?” asked a member of the audience.
Beruff’s response: “I’m not going to opine on what’s going on in Tallahassee as we speak.”
Proposal 22 was up for consideration by the CRC’s Judiciary Committee Thursday afternoon.
The CRC is set to wrap up its work in the spring. The package of constitutional amendments will go before voters on the November ballot.
“Pay attention,” Sarasota County Tax Collector Barbara Ford-Coates told the crowd.
Ford-Coates served on the CRC in 1998.
“Whatever’s on the ballot is important and deserves each one of us taking the time to read and decide whether we want to vote for it,” she said.