Posted: 3:33 p.m. Wednesday, March 25, 2015
If you were one of the 4,238,739 Floridians who
voted for an environmental protection measure four months ago, I have news for
you.
You don’t matter. Your vote was meaningless.
It’s not supposed be that way, but welcome to
Florida.
The vote on Amendment 1, the Florida Water and
Land Conservation Initiative, was the biggest vote-getter on Florida’s ballot
in November, with a 74.9 percent approval rate.
It was 1.3 million voters more popular than Gov.
Rick Scott, who was re-elected on the same ballot.
But Scott, the state’s big business interests
and the state legislature had nothing to do with Amendment 1, and in many cases
actively opposed it.
Amendment 1 was on the ballot because Florida’s
leaders had all but abandoned Florida Forever, a $300 million-per-year state
program to purchase environmentally sensitive land.
The program started by Gov. Jeb Bush was nearly
wiped out under Scott and state legislators. So environmentalists brought the
land preservation issue directly to voters through a ballot referendum.
Florida’s Water and Land Legacy, an
environmental group drawing members from the 1000 Friends of Florida, Audubon
Florida, Defenders of Wildlife, Everglades Foundation, Florida Conservation
Coalition, Florida Land Trust Alliance, Sierra Club and other state
environmental groups, collected over 1 million signatures to get the amendment
on the ballot.
The ballot question asked voters whether they
were in favor of funding the Land Acquisition Trust Fund to “acquire, restore,
improve and manage conservation lands including wetlands and forests; fish and
wildlife habitat; lands protecting water resources and drinking water sources,
including the Everglades, and the water quality of rivers, lakes, and streams;
beaches and shores; outdoor recreation lands; working farms and ranches; and
historic or geologic sites.”
The funding source for this wouldn’t be a new
tax, but a dedication of 33 percent of the net revenues from an existing excise
tax on real estate deed and loan documents, commonly known as doc stamps. These
doc stamps are a huge source of state revenue, bringing in about $2 billion a
year.
So the voter-approved Amendment 1 made close to
$700 million available each year for the acquisition and protection of
environmentally sensitive land in the state.
Theoretically. That’s because the buying and
protecting is still in the hands of the people who gutted Florida Forever to
start with, and have little to no interest in protecting environmentally
sensitive land from business development.
And there’s the rub, as Shakespeare would say.
Despite the windfall of money available to
preserve this land, Scott put $100 million for Florida Forever in his budget
this year — $200 million shy of the traditional level.
But his intent to shortchange the will of the
voters is minor compared to the Florida Senate’s budget, which includes just
$22 million in environmental land acquisition, with $20 million of that money
going to Kissimmee River restoration land and $2 million going to Florida
Forever.
So to recap, to restore the previous $300
million-a-year program to buy environmentally sensitive land in Florida, voters
approved a measure freeing up an estimated $700 million a year for that
purpose.
And despite this vote, the most popular
vote-getter on the ballot, Florida lawmakers are doing other things with the
money and proposing to spend a measly $2 million on Florida Forever this year.
“There’s no way that anyone could have read the
amendment and consider this budget to be adequate,” said Aliki Moncrief, the
executive director of Florida’s Water and Land Legacy.
But it gets worse. The Associated Industries of
Florida has begun a radio and television campaign to give lawmakers cover by
trying to persuade voters that Amendment 1 was not about buying environmentally
sensitive land, but about protecting existing water supplies.
“Lawmakers are now deciding how to spend
Amendment 1 money,” the ad said. “And special-interest groups want the lion’s
share for their pet projects.”
So the 14-year-old Florida Forever program has
become a “pet project” and you have become a special-interest group.
All 4,238,739 of you.
You’re a bothersome distraction from the
sideline, one that must be ignored by the Floridians who really matter.
So stop getting in the way of the real business
of lawmakers, which is finding a way to serve the Associated Industries of Florida
and any other business group that might want to, as Joni Mitchell once sang,
“pave paradise and put up a parking lot.”
