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Updated: Jun 19th, 2005 - 20:05:13 |
TALLAHASSEE -- As a part-timer earning $6 an hour at a Central Florida auto auction, Alice Laguerre campaigned hard last year for a constitutional amendment to raise the state's minimum wage.
But if Florida lawmakers currently pushing through changes to the state's constitutional-amendment process had their way a few years earlier, it is unlikely that the minimum-wage initiative -- approved by 7 in 10 voters -- would have made it on the ballot.
"The Legislature is trying to undermine the people of Florida," Laguerre said.
On Thursday, the House Judiciary Committee passed four bills that would make it much more difficult for citizens to directly change the constitution. If the measures had been in place during prior elections, they likely would have blocked from the ballot amendments such as the workplace smoking ban, universal pre-K classes and high-speed rail, according to committee staffers.
Rep. David Simmons, R-Orlando, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said the changes are necessary because deep-pocketed special-interest groups, not ordinary citizens, have increasingly used the process to subvert the Legislature.
"The system has been hijacked by special interests," he said.
Under current law, proposed amendments need only a simple majority statewide to pass. The changes would mandate that the amendment pass by at least 60 percent statewide, and garner 60 percent of the vote in at least 15 of the state's 25 congressional districts. Proposals with a financial impact higher than one-tenth of 1 percent of the state budget -- currently about $60 million -- would need a two-thirds majority.
Another change would limit proposed amendments to changing existing amendments and affecting basic rights and the structure of Florida government. Under those provisions, the minimum-wage amendment would not have been allowed on the ballot.
If the Legislature approves the changes, they will be put to voters. Gov. Jeb Bush and Senate President Tom Lee said Thursday that they support making the constitution harder to change.
"We have a state that is becoming increasingly ungovernable because the legislative process is being bypassed with a plethora of amendments that appropriate the resources of this Legislature out of context with the fiscal responsibilities that the public expects us to meet," Lee said.
Rep. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, tried to add an amendment Thursday that would have allowed citizens to directly change state statutes. But the committee shot it down.
"There's a whole history of big ideas that the people wanted that we didn't. Florida's history of direct democracy is being eliminated today," Gelber said. "We are creating a constitution that is no longer of the people, but of the Legislature."
Rep. J.C. Planas, R-Miami, the committee's vice chairman, said that's the way it's supposed to be.
"The Founding Fathers never intended for a direct democracy -- we are a republic," Planas said.
Seminole County Watch.com
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