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Why do Florida legislators act like mayors? | Mac Stipanovich
Expect another assault on the authority of local governments when the Florida Legislature convenes.
 
Mac Stipanovich was chief of staff to former Gov. Bob Martinez and a long-time Republican strategist and lobbyist. He has since registered as no party affiliation and as a Democrat, and his voter registration now varies with the election cycle. [Mac Stipanovich]
Mac Stipanovich was chief of staff to former Gov. Bob Martinez and a long-time Republican strategist and lobbyist. He has since registered as no party affiliation and as a Democrat, and his voter registration now varies with the election cycle. [Mac Stipanovich]
Published Jan. 10, 2020|Updated Jan. 10, 2020

The Republican-led Florida Legislature convenes Tuesday, and local governments are looking forward to it with the same enthusiasm that coastal villages in England once looked forward to the appearance of Viking long ships. And for the same reason: Things are going to get ugly.

This wasn’t always the case. It was a palm card principle of the Republican Party during the Reagan era and afterward that the best government is that closest to the people. Today, however, disdain for local decision-making and local decision makers is deeply ingrained in the GOP in Tallahassee.

The Legislature’s lack of respect for any governmental entity other than itself is plenary. It encompasses special districts, county commissions, authorities, school boards and city governments. But school boards and cities get special attention.

The origin of the rough handling of locally elected school boards is no mystery. It is the legacy of the long, bitter war for control of public schools that was fought between cultural conservatives and the public education establishment, including teacher unions.

That war began in earnest in the 1960s and raged for more than 40 years. Sex education. Creationism. Tenure. Prayer. Textbooks. Busing. How to teach multiplication, for crying out loud. Name it, and they fought over it.

With the consolidation of Republican hegemony in Tallahassee, the conservatives finally gained the upper hand. Now the victors are still shooting the wounded enemy and methodically chipping away at the foundations of traditional public education with charter schools, various “scholarship” programs, private school vouchers, and circumventions of constitutional collective bargaining requirements. Lamentable, but at least understandable.

But the reasons for the Legislature’s annual assaults on cities are as opaque as the assaults are numerous. There is no aspect of municipal government too picayune or too arcane to escape the baleful attention of the ersatz mayors in Tallahassee.

Zoning? They’re on it, trying year after year, for example, to ram “vacation rentals” down the throats of local communities in the name of property rights - someone else’s, not yours. If your next door neighbor wants to run a flop house, who does your city council member think she is in trying to prevent it?

Rights of way purchased and maintained with local taxes? Expropriated by the state for the benefit of corporations that pay a pittance for the use of the public’s property. Local police and firefighter pension benefits and disability presumptions? Nothing is too expensive when the Legislature is spending local taxpayers’ money.

Veggie gardens in front yards? The terms of local waste hauling agreements? Tree trimming in Coral Gables? The Legislature dictates the rules.

And on it goes, year after year.

Part of the explanation may simply be that you gotta dance with them that brung you, as the old saying goes. When legislators get all up in the business of cities, the beneficiaries of their meddling are often them that brung’em to the dance - politically powerful industries and organizations.

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Part of it may be hubris. Asked about the apparent hypocrisy of hassling cities while howling about similar interference from the federal government in state affairs, a legislator once explained to me that the states created the federal government by ratifying the Constitution, and the state by statute creates cities, which are totally subservient to it in all things. So the Legislature may hassle cities and howl about the federal government as much as it pleases. This, my friends, is industrial strength self-esteem.

And with hubris go bad habits. The fun in having power is using it. The more you use it, the more fun you have. It becomes a habit, and you forget that having the right to do something does not make the doing of it right.

But whatever the reasons for the Legislature’s animosity, local governments best brace themselves. The Vikings are coming.

Mac Stipanovich was chief of staff to former Gov. Bob Martinez and a long-time Republican strategist and lobbyist. He has since registered as no party affiliation and as a Democrat, and his voter registration now varies with the election cycle.