To the Editor:
On June 25, the City Commission unanimously passed a resolution directing the City Attorney to analyze legal avenues to challenge the state’s Live Local Act.
The City Commission was apparently unaware of the fact that (1) on March 6, Hillsborough County filed a lawsuit in Leon County (where Tallahassee is located) against the State of Florida challenging the constitutionality of the Live Local Act, and that (2) on April 22, the state filed a motion to dismiss the case.
If the City Commission was not made aware of the lawsuit prior to passing the resolution, it should have been made aware of the lawsuit and the motion to dismiss.
The motion to dismiss the lawsuit cites Florida case law and indicates that Hillsborough County is barred from filing suit because Florida’s public official standing doctrine bars local government entities like the county from filing lawsuits seeking to declare state statutes unconstitutional.
The City Commission could be using this time to have an analysis performed as to how the City of Miami can lobby the State Legislature to limit the scope of the Live Local Act so that the objections of many of the commissioners and Miami residents (including me) can be adequately addressed.
The City Commission doesn’t have a Plan B to oppose the Live Local Act as it currently exists. It needs a Plan B that has a much better strategy of succeeding than challenging the constitutionality of the Live Local Act. No way the Leon County judge sitting in Tallahassee is going to hold that the Live Local Act (which passed the State Legislature 140-6) is unconstitutional.
Barry Subkow
Coconut Grove
Our elected representatives in Tallahassee (and also here in Miami and Miami-Dade County) are supposed to represent us, and we can always vote them out if they stop doing that, or so the courts tell us. Somehow that doesn’t seem to be working so well when the incumbents on average are reportedly getting re-elected most of the time.
With regard to the Live Local Act (LLA), why couldn’t our local elected representatives try something in addition to suing our other elected representatives in Tallahassee, or asking them (aka “begging”) for an amendment to a law that so obviously violates the universal principle of “One size never fits all.”
Maybe our Commission could simultaneously try “sandbagging” the Live Local Act? While LLA preempts local governments’ requirements regarding zoning, density, and height, a little bit of creativity could come up with ordinances steering high-rise developments where they are wanted and needed and discouraging them where they are not. After all, protecting the “health, safety and welfare” of all citizens can mean a seawall here, a road improvement there, a new park over there, and better sewage treatment almost everywhere.
That would be better than letting private development interests select the LLA sites, and, while we’re at it, expanded County Rapid Transit Zone (RTZ) sites, too.