The City, County and Local Government Law Section of The Florida Bar, in conjunction with Stetson Law Review, is pleased to present this Eighteenth Edition of the Local Government Law Symposium. On the one hand, this Symposium is filled with Articles and Last Words that offer current practical advice to the local government attorney. On the other hand, it highlights trends and themes in local government law worthy of our thoughtful analysis and study.
After the events of September 11, 2001, the tension between violence and civilization, individual rights and security, and the minority and the majority have come into focus in new ways. This Symposium discusses and explains many such tensions.
Page 1 of 2
Many states have enacted programs to enable families to send their children to private schools. These programs range from vouchers that pay part or all of the child’s private-school tuition, to tax credits or deductions for private-school tuition and other expenses, to tax credits for donations to “tuition-scholarship organizations,” charitable organizations that provide scholarships for students to attend private schools.
As the Supreme Court has recognized, the goal of assisting low-income families in sending their children to the school of their choice is legitimate and even laudable. In Committee for Public Education and Religious Liberty v. Nyquist, the Court noted that “the tailoring of [a state program] to channel the aid provided primarily to afford low-income families the option of determining where their children are to be educated is most appealing.” Because the substantial majority of private elementary and secondary schools are religious schools, however, such programs raise issues of governmental subsidization of religion and are subject to constitutional challenge under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. In addition, not only do states have their own constitutional prohibitions similar to the Establishment Clause, but many also have additional constitutional provisions containing language that appears specifically to bar government aid to religion, religious instruction, and religious institutions.
Sara was 13 when she was raped by her stepfather, became pregnant and gave birth to a son. Her first appearance in Dade’s circuit court was in the dependency division, where she came as an abused child seeking the court’s protection and a guardian ad litem. Her second appearance was as a witness in her stepfather’s criminal trial. She later appeared in the court’s juvenile division, when she was appointed a lawyer for the termination of her parental rights so the child could be adopted. The court appointed another guardian ad litem for the infant.
In another Dade case, two children saw their father murder their mother. They appeared first in dependency court with a guardian ad litem, then in criminal court as witnesses, and finally in family court, when relatives sought to adopt them. They also were represented in probate court to settle their mother’s estate.
In the fiscal year 2000-2001, there were 51,325 delinquency referrals to the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice (Juvenile Justice) for felony offenses and 79,000 referrals for misdemeanor offenses. As high as these numbers appear, they are actually down from 1996-1997, when there were 59,295 felony referrals and 92,055 misdemeanor referrals. Speculation about what has contributed to this decrease in juvenile crime in the State invariably includes one of the more cutting-edge concepts implemented by the State of Florida in the mid-1990s – Juvenile Assessment Centers (JACs). JACs, which still operate in most areas of the State today, are prime examples of productive collaboration between state and local governmental entities in an area critical to the safety of our communities.
This Article will address several questions relating to JACs. First, this Article will describe which agency is responsible for JACs. Second, this Article will discuss why and how JACs were created. Third, this Article will explain how JACs are funded. Fourth, this Article will explain the current status of JACs and will focus on a specific model JAC. Finally, this Article will offer an opinion regarding the future of JACs.
For millennia, the proper interaction between religion and government has been a topic of debate in nations around the world. In America, the debate rages perhaps strongest in the public-school context. Noting that the State compels children to attend school and that students are especially susceptible to religious indoctrination, the United States Supreme Court has been leery of permitting religious speech within public-school classrooms during school hours. However, the Court has been more willing to uphold policies providing for religious speech on school campuses after school hours, so long as such policies contain two “special ingredients.” First, the policy must provide for both religious and non-religious speech on equal terms. Second, the policy’s provisions must ensure that any resulting religious speech would be attributable to the private choices of individuals and not to the government.
One of our greatest rights as Americans is the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment. One of our most divisive issues today concerns a woman’s choice to have an abortion, though it, too, is a recognized right. Limiting the outbreaks of violence between supporters and protesters of abortion, while at the same time preserving the free-speech rights of these opposing sides, has become an increasing problem and places courts in a Catch-22. The United States Supreme Court recently reexamined these issues and this problem in Hill v. Colorado.
The Stetson Law Review recently addressed the Florida Fifth District Court of Appeal’s decision in Pomerance v. Homosassa Special Water District. That recent development, Taxation: Pomerance v. Homosassa Special Water District, concluded that the majority in a Fifth District panel improvidently affirmed Homosassa Special Water District’s (the District) special assessment for potable waterlines “even though [the] property consists primarily of wetlands, has limited development potential, and receives a less[er] benefit than adjacent lands.” This analysis suffered from a core omission. The authors were not aware of the facts of the case, which are not apparent from the reported decision. On its facts, the Pomerance decision was in step with over one hundred years of case law that presumes that property adjacent to a linear public improvement derives a special benefit from that improvement.
In Johnson v. De Soto County Board of Commissioners, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit upheld the district court’s reliance on non-census data to conclude that blacks could not, as of the time of trial, constitute a majority of the voters in a single-member district — an essential element of a racial vote-dilution claim. The trial court credited testimony of the defendants’ experts that, based on extrapolations from current voter-registration data, demographic changes in the eight years following the 1990 census had eliminated the possibility that a majority-black district could be established in the county. Whether the estimation process employed in De Soto County will be useful to future litigants depends on the degree to which the challenged jurisdiction has experienced significant demographic changes since April 1, 2000, the date of the most recent census.
In the opening paragraph of its decision in Harris v. Moore, Florida’s Fourth District Court of Appeal summarized its holding as follows: “We reverse an order requiring that a proposed referendum ballot question be stricken from the Broward County ballot in the March 14, 2000, election.” For a Supervisor of Elections, in particular the Broward County Supervisor of Elections in this case, the words “stricken from the . . . ballot” provoke anxiety and uncertainties that often go overlooked by the real parties in interest in an election dispute.
The Supervisor of Elections is the instrument to provide relief in election disputes. The Supervisor of Elections takes on a unique role in such litigation: he or she usually takes no position on the main issue or underlying dispute, but must position himself or herself as to the relief sought in such disputes. Election lawsuits frequently reach their crescendo in the days and weeks leading up to the election. In election disputes of the nature involved in Harris v. Moore, there are two issues: (1) Who is right on the merits and (2) how to effectuate relief? How to effectuate relief is frequently treated as a collateral issue, but it should be the only real issue for a Supervisor of Elections.
Having represented the Secretary of State in the matter, I felt compelled to respond to Debra Tuomey’s case comment on Harris v. Moore. The comment indicates that, unless every aspect of the proposed changes to a county charter is clear to the average voter, the citizens of the jurisdiction should be prevented from voting on the matter at all. I believe that the appropriate emphasis is on allowing members of the electorate to decide the matter for themselves, unless the ballot summary is misleading in some significant manner.
What most disturbs me about the case comment is the assertion that the ballot summary failed to explain adequately the effect of the amendment, as required by Grose v. Firestone, and that the ballot summary did not make obvious to the average voter that the county manager would be replaced by a veto wielding, strong mayor.