Florida voters adopted the current state Constitution in 1968 to create a modern democracy. Nothing lasts forever.

It brought self-governing home rule to cities and counties, which were mere puppets of a backward, rural-dominated Legislature that met every other year. It required population-based redistricting every 10 years, which the so-called Pork Chop Gang — the rural North Florida Democrats who ruled Tallahassee in those days — had scoffed at until the U.S. Supreme Court threw them out of power.

The new Constitution also meant that the Legislature would never again be able to block constitutional reforms as the pork choppers had. There would be an appointed revision commission every 20 years. Most importantly, voters could put their own amendments directly on the ballot through petition gathering, as 22 other states had done.

“We have made it a real People’s Constitution and we can sell the whole package for that reason,” wrote Chesterfield Smith, a Florida legal giant who chaired an advisory commission that wrote the first draft.

Power to the people

Thirty-one successful initiatives brought changes that, like them or not, legislators and their lobbyist friends would never have done — a code of ethics, term limits, medical marijuana, a state minimum wage, anti-gerrymandering rules, voting rights for ex-felons and smoke-free workplaces. The lottery was an initiative, and so was the limit on homestead tax assessment increases.

An assault weapons ban likely would have passed too, but then-Attorney General Ashley Moody coaxed the Florida Supreme Court to keep it off the ballot.

Power to the people is poison to the powerful. The Legislature has intentionally made it much harder and expensive to get initiatives on the ballot.

A second well-financed attempt at recreational marijuana was questionably deemed too short of verified signatures at the Feb. 1 deadline.

A 60% supermajority threshold for voter approval of constitutional amendments, instigated in 2006 by development and business lobbies, doomed a sorely needed election reform in 2020 and the abortion rights and recreational marijuana amendments in 2024. Each won better than 55% — considered a landslide for candidates.

Land and water at risk

Home rule is eviscerated. No legislative session concludes without new lobbyist-inspired restrictions on what cities and counties can do to protect land and water or their residents. They can’t enact even the mildest gun restrictions. An astonishing 134 preemptions have become law since 2013, according to the Florida Association of Counties.

A notorious law passed a year ago under the guise of hurricane recovery (SB 180) blocks land-use regulation. A truly evil preemption ordered up by building and agriculture lobbies forbids local heat protections for outdoor workers, as Miami-Dade attempted.

In this session, the heavily lobbied HB 399 specifically overrides county charters to enable developers to change land-use plans by majority votes of local boards rather than existing supermajorities.

Among 16 other preemption bills, HB 299 would give developers of large projects virtual free rein to do what they please, no matter what the local residents and leaders want. It purports to be a conservation measure.

The governor’s demand to eliminate property taxes on homesteads is the most existential threat ever against local government in Florida, especially in 29 largely rural counties with limited tax bases.

Cater to special interests

Conservatives used to profess that closer-to-home local government was best, but it has been abandoned across the nation. That trend coincides with an increasingly powerful presidency and a Supreme Court majority that encouraged it.

The Legislature acts as if public opinion were irrelevant. Cosseted by favorable districts and incumbent fundraising advantages, the majority caters mostly to pressure groups — especially socially conservative ones — that influence Republican primaries.

When 26 people, ranging from medical experts to PTAs to individual families, asked a Senate committee to defeat a bill allowing parents virtually any reason to exempt their children from school vaccine requirements, only one witness supported the so-called medical freedom bill. She spoke for the Christian Family Coalition.

The committee voted 6-4 for the bill (SB 1756) despite a poll showing that 79% of likely voters favor current law, allowing only medical and religious exemptions. That viewpoint crossed geographic and partisan lines.

In 2024, the initiative to restore abortion rights and override the Legislature’s near-total ban won 57.2% of the vote and prevailed in 44 of 67 counties. Despite that, anti-abortion legislators are pushing a bill (HB 289) to further inhibit abortions by allowing damage suits for the wrongful death of a fetus.

The House passed it on a partisan 76-34 vote over Democratic objections that it’s aimed at abortion providers and might even entitle a rapist to sue for aborting his victim’s fetus.

More than a decade ago, Diane Roberts, an author, FSU English professor and National Public Radio commentator, was kicked off the university’s public radio station for saying that while democracy was dead in Florida, it was still alive in Georgia.

We don’t know about Georgia these days, but it’s still dead in Florida.

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The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.

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