“I feel a compelling duty to protect Florida,” Gov. Charlie Crist said at a press conference moments ago.

Crist said he will call lawmakers back from July 20-23 to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot to ban drilling in state waters. There is an Aug. 4 deadline to put questions on the ballot.

There will be no other issues in the special session.

Crist said he expects Sen. Alex Villalobos, R-Miami, to sponsor the resolution in the Senate. But he has received opposition from Republican legislators the House, where leaders have opposed a special session. They note state law already bans drilling in state waters and accuse Crist of political grandstanding.

Crist said he has tried to reach out to House Speaker Larry Cretul and incoming House Speaker Dean Cannon, both Republicans who have been openly critical of Crist’s previous suggestions for a special session.

“Politics has nothing to do with this,” Crist said. “This has everything to do with doing what’s right for a place that I love.”

“I know that it’s already barred statutorily. But I also know that just a year ago they tried to change that statute and drill holes three miles off the coast of Florida.”

Of course, Crist supported that bill “just a year ago,” too.

We’ll post reactions as they come in here.

From Gary Fineout:

Judge Shelfer says amendment 7 could have wiped out other standards inc one that requires connected districts

Judge Shelfer says it took him 3 days and loads of case law to understand Amend 7. Doubts voter could figure it out.

State lawmakers — Republicans and some black Democrats — added Amendment 7 to the ballot to let lawmakers to maintain “communities of interest” when they draw new political boundaries. The NAACP and Women’s League of Voters sued to block it.

The amendment was in response to a pair of citizen initiatives (Amendments 5 and 6) that would aimed at overhauling how legislative boundaries are drawn. U.S. Reps. Corrine Brown, D-Jacksonville, and Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Miami, have sued to block Amendment 6.

A measure in the Florida constitution that has funneled nearly $22 million in taxpayer money to statewide political candidates in the past 10 years is the target of a lawsuit from Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott.

Scott is asking a federal judge to throw out Florida’s public financing law, saying it has “significantly chilled” his First Amendment rights.

Scott has spent $21 million on his campaign since April 9, which means he’s drawing perilously close to the $24.9 million trigger on the state’s so-called Millionaire’s Amendment. Scott’s political opponents will be eligible for a dollar-for-dollar match from the state for whatever Scott spends beyond that limit.

Republican lawmakers support repealing the measure. Sen. Mike Haridopolos, who is supporting Scott’s primary opponent, Bill McCollum, helped write the constitutional amendment on the November ballot (Amendment 1) that asks voters to reverse their 1998 decision to put it into the state constitution.

(more…)

Two Palm Beach County lawmakers hoping to springboard into statewide office are in very different positions, according to a new Mason Dixon poll released this morning.

Senate President Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, is up 33 percent to 26 percent over former state Rep. Loranne Ausley, D-Tallahassee, in the likely match up of state chief financial officer candidates.

Technically, Atwater still has a primary opponent in Rep. Pat Patterson of DeLand. But Atwater holds a 30-to-1 fundraising advantage and Patterson has said he will not use Atwater’s support for Senate Bill 6 in the race. Patterson voted against it, but said the education issue wouldn’t be appropriate in a CFO race.

Meanwhile, the poll shows state Sen. Dave Aronberg of Greenacres locked in a dogfight with fellow Sen. Dan Gelber of Miami Beach in the Democratic primary for attorney general . The poll, which has a 4 percent margin of error showed Gelber with 15 percent, Aronberg with 12 percent and undecided with 73 percent.

Other results from the poll:

(more…)

Some believe the state should only spend upwards of $40,000 per day in a special session addressing a constitutional amendment if Florida has a constitutional crisis.

Gov. Charlie Crist says lawmakers should put an amendment on the November ballot in the wake of an environmental crisis.

The proposal from House and Senate Democrats would ban future drilling within 10 miles of Florida’s coast. But it would not address the oil flooding the Gulf of Mexico and threatening Florida beaches.

More from Crist this morning:

(more…)

Gov. Charlie Crist and state CFO Alex Sink as support a constitutional ban. Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson is against it.

Attorney General Bill McCollum is somewhere in the middle. He says he would “never” support offshore drilling, but in the same sentence says he wants a caveat in an amendment to allow for “new developments in science.”

Gov. Charlie Crist said he didn’t know much about a proposal to do away with the separation of church and state in the Florida constitution passed by committees in the House and Senate yesterday.

But, he said, “On the face of it, it doesn’t sound like a good idea.”

The proposed “Religious Freedom” constitutional amendment could appear on the ballot in November and would set the stage for the resurrection of Gov. Jeb Bush’s school voucher program, struck down by courts two years ago.

The measure is one of several proposals backed by social conservatives that may have more traction this year because of a more right-leaning Senate that in the past was a hurdle for the conservative agenda.

Read more here.

The separation of church and state has been in Florida’s constitution for more than a century.

But that might this fall under a proposal approved by a Senate committee this morning that could go before voters on the November ballot.

The “Religious Freedom” amendment would delete the 125-year-old provision in the constitution prohibiting state money from being spent directly or indirectly to aid any church, sect or religious denomination. And it would open the door to former Gov. Jeb Bush’s school voucher program allowing public school students to use state money to pay for religious school tuition that the Florida Supreme Court struck down.

Also known as the “Blaine Amendment,” the separation of church and state restriction was an anti-Catholic, anti-immigration measure aimed at keeping Catholics from obtaining government funding for their schools.

(more…)

Florida House lawmakers just approved a measure for the November statewide ballot that asks voters to loosen the state’s strict class size caps.

The proposed constitutional amendment needs 60 percent support from voters. It won 62 percent from the House (77-41) and 68 percent from the Senate (26-12).

(more…)

If you count Florida’s Bill McCollum (and we always do), three of the 12 Republican attorneys general who say they’re suing over the Democratic health care reform bill are also running for governor of their respective state next year (Michigan’s Mike Cox and South Carolina’s Henry McMaster are the others).

Of the remaining nine, five are seeking re-election in 2010 and four don’t have to run again for two more years.

McCollum, whose gubernatorial platform to lower health care costs is to limit lawsuits, said his lawsuit is not political. Perhaps he should remind his campaign, which has sent seven press releases about health care reform in the past seven days.

Story here.

Health Care for America Now, the liberal activist group affiliated with ACORN and several labor unions, announced a round of television ads today thanking 13 of the 219 Democrats who supported the health care reform bill that passed the U.S. House last night.

In Florida, that means free publicity for Suzanne Kosmas of New Smyrna Beach and Allen Boyd of Monticello, both
facing tough re-election campaigns this year. The two changed positions after citing a government report showing the plan would cut the deficit by $1.2 trillion over 10 years.

Other fallout in Florida today:

(more…)

UPDATED: Story reflects version published in the Feb. 18 print edition of The Palm Beach Post.

Locally affected special districts:

South Florida Water Management District
Health Care District of Palm Beach County
Children’s Services Council of Palm Beach County
Children’s Services Council of Martin County
St. Lucie County Fire District
Source: Florida Community Affairs Department

TALLAHASSEE — The power to raise property taxes would rest solely with elected officials under a constitutional amendment proposed for the November ballot.

The amendment would revamp the supervision of hospital and children’s services districts across the state and make the South Florida Water Management District, which covers 16 counties and includes about 7 million people, the biggest voting district in the state and among the largest in the country, according to the National Association of Election Officials.

“It’s something called ‘no taxation without representation,” said state Rep. Carl Domino, a Jupiter Republican sponsoring the amendment (HJR 493) discussed Wednesday in the House Governmental Affairs Committee.

Objections were raised Wednesday by the special district officials who argued the districts were created — in most cases voter-approved — specifically to avoid electoral politics.

“You will change fundamentally how these water management districts operate,” Audubon of Florida’s Eric Draper told the committee.

Draper reminded the House panel that another Palm Beach County lawmaker, former Senate President Phil Lewis, D-Riviera Beach, led an “extraordinarily thoughtful legislative process” that asked voters to approve water districts along hydrological lines instead of political boundaries.

(more…)

State Sen. Dan Gelber is pushing a constitutional amendment aimed at cracking down on the kind of secret budget deals that got former House Speaker Ray Sansom in trouble.

Gelber, who is running against Sen. Dave Aronberg of Greenacres in a Democratic primary for state attorney general, and Rep. Keith Fitzgerald, D-Sarasota, want lawmakers to put the constitutional amendment on next year’s November ballot.

The amendment would require that appropriations bills be written in plain language and that all budget conference meetings between two or more lawmakers be conducted in a publicly noticed meeting.

The state budget is usually crafted in a much different manner, going through a series of conference committees until the Senate President and the House Speaker ultimately resolve their differences behind closed doors.

In Sansom’s case, he was the House budget chairman when he slipped in a $6 million item to build an airport at a college where he later became a high-paid executive on the day he was annointed Speaker.

Sansom, Okaloosa County developer Jay Odom and former Northwest Florida State College President Bob Richburg have been indicted on official misconduct charges regarding the airport.

Sansom and Richburg each face an additional perjury charge for allegedly lying to a Leon County grand jury. They are scheduled to stand trial at the end of this month. (more…)

It’s taken seven years and as many court challenges, but the Florida Supreme Court today cleared the way for the Hometown Democracy proposed constitutional amendment to be on next year’s November ballot.

The court at last accepted that the cost of the citizens initiative, the brainchild of West Palm Beach land use lawyer Lesley Blackner and Tallahassee lawyer Ross Burnaman, is “indeterminate.”

The proposal would require that citizens approve changes to local comprehensive growth management plans before they can go into effect.

Two previous financial estimates conducted by state economists predicted the change would cost “millions of dollars” statewide, a premise the court rejected because that assumed that local governments would schedule special elections for the comp plans referenda.

Critics, including the Florida Chamber of Commerce and business-backed associations, of the Hometown Democracy initiative charge that the proposal will effectively halt growth around the state. They’ve got their own ballot initiative that would require allow voters to challenge comp plan amendments – but only if 10 percent of affected voters sign petitions at the local supervisors of elections office within 60 days of the changes being approved by local governments.

That proposal is still hundreds of thousands signatures short of the required 676,811 needed by Feb. 1 to get on the ballot.

A West Palm Beach lawyer who was repeatedly raped by a neighbor when he was 7 years old and the mother of a man who committed suicide 20 years after he was sexually molested by his Boca Raton karate teacher are desperate.

After five years, they’ve given up trying to get legislators to do away with the statute of limitations on civil and criminal punishment for child molesters that are now protected by time in Florida state law.

Their chief opponent, they say? The Catholic Church.

Now West Palm Beach Lawyer Michael Dolce is trying to get voters to do what lawmakers would not. He’s launched a petition drive to get a ballot initiative on next year’s November ballot.

Lantana resident Patti Robinson, whose only child Jeff Smith killed himself on Christmas morning in 2001, is tapping her grief to help Dolce get the law changed.

“I felt this would be the best way that I could memorialize him so we would maybe save somebody else from having to go through the pain and suffering he did,” Robinson said.

Read the full story here.

Florida voters will probably face a major decision in 2010 about future development now that backers of a proposed constitutional amendment have won a major court victory.

But the battle over growth, whether at the ballot or in the courts, is far from over.

The Florida Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down a law that let residents revoke their signatures on constitutional amendment ballot petitions. The ruling clears the way for the Hometown Democracy initiative to get on the ballot next year.

The amendment would require that all changes to a city or county long-term growth plan be approved by voters.

“I personally don’t think it’s that radical, but it does go to the heart of the developer power which has the ability to get what they want from city and county commissions,” said Palm Beach lawyer Lesley Blackner, co-author of the proposal. She has spent almost six years and nearly $1 million of her own money to get the initiative on the ballot.

Opponents, including the Florida Chamber of Commerce, persuaded the legislature to pass the signature-revocation law specifically to try to thwart Hometown Democracy. They warn that the amendment would cause a permanent recession by halting development.

The high court has not yet issued a written opinion outlining the reasons for its 4-2 decision. But it upheld an appellate court ruling that found the signature-revocation law unconstitutional.

Now, voters may face a virtual Pandora’s box of ballot proposals for 2010.

Floridians for Smarter Growth, backed by the Florida Chamber of Commerce, is considering a counter-initiative. It would let residents vote on a growth-plan change only if 10 percent or more of a community’s registered voters signed a petition.

Meanwhile, the business-backed group Save Our Constitution, funded mainly by Associated Industries of Florida, wants to get an amendment on the ballot that would allow voters to put signature revocation into the constitution.

The competing ballot items are likely to yield one of the nastiest constitutional amendment showdowns in recent history.

“Hometown Democracy is essentially a proposal to freeze the status quo in place. … To say this is an economic catastrophe is probably a gross understatement,” said Ryan Houck, executive director of Floridians for Smarter Growth. “We believe this proposal is so bad for Florida’s economy that we will run a full-on campaign to defeat it at the polls.”

Associated Industries CEO and President Barney Bishop said his group is awaiting the Supreme Court’s formal opinion before deciding whether to ask for a rehearing.

Blackner and her supporters “were unabashed in their willingness to do anything and everything to get this on the ballot,” Bishop said. “But just be prepared. We’re going to use the same tactics they did. So better sleep with one eye open. ‘Cause we’re coming at you.”