In Florida, is local always best?
Bottom Line: Question for you. Who do you currently approve of the most...our governor or your mayor? Who do you trust most to make policy that impacts your daily life? I’m not sure what the percentages would be if that question were asked statewide but I’m certain 81% wouldn’t answer with their mayor to both questions. I’ll come back to that point in a moment.
There’s a battle that been waged over home rule and preemption in Florida for many years. It’s often been loudest in South Florida where many local governments suggest our state government isn’t representative of our interests. I think there’s a need for pragmatism generally when it comes to this argument and it’s why I asked the opening question. An interest group looking to exacerbate the home rule/preemption debate is the Local Solutions Support Center. For an organization touting local solutions – they're actually operating out of Washington D.C. and they’re becoming active in Florida because they really care that much about your community, or that’s what they’d have you have think. Anyway, polling they did in our state gained some attention.
They posed this question: Should (local governments) generally be able to pass local laws to protect public health, the environment, and quality jobs when a community believes that statewide laws aren’t enough?
81% of Floridians answered yes. I reject the premise of the question. The way they framed it wasn’t objective for the purpose of eliciting objective answers. Should local government be able to protect health, the environment and quality jobs, blah, blah, blah. It’s designed to elicit the response it received for political purposes. And the purpose is local activism. We’ve watched what’s happened with radical local policy in cities like San Francisco and Seattle. Now we have some of those same forces working to exact similar outcomes here.
Anyone who’s ever experienced an overactive HOA knows what can go wrong when we have overactive local governance. I’ve never witnessed an HOA board or municipal government tell their constituents that they’re about to enact bad policy and stick it to the community. Have you? But I have witnessed local policy that’s been a real determent to a community. Have you? And that’s the point. There’s a reason why there’s a supremacy clause in the US Constitution. Otherwise there’d be no point to being part of the same country. It’s also the reason why there are similar provisions in place in the state of Florida that balance home rule with state authority. The last thing we need are D.C. activists moving in to influence our state’s policy. My eyes are wide open. Yours should be too.