“I beg you take courage; the brave soul can mend even disaster.”

In the Ojibwa tongue, the term for disaster is whangdepootenawah: “an unexpected affliction that strikes hard.” When disasters do strike, it immediately becomes obvious that the legal issues involved in local government disaster planning are some of the most misunderstood and confusing aspects of the entire process of disaster preparation and recovery. This makes the prudent involvement of the local government attorney essential. The local government attorney is encumbered with the responsibility of understanding and interpreting the seemingly
conflicting and ever-changing body of federal, state, and local regulatory laws, rules, and guidelines. It is likewise the local government
attorney who is called upon to be the bearer of bad news regarding the legal consequences of a public entity’s failure or inability to execute an effective disaster-recovery plan properly. This Article will explore the evolving body of emergency management law, as well as the practical, and at times impractical, application of that law. The Article’s analysis of state law will focus on Florida, but its discussion of the challenges that a disaster poses should resonate with all local government attorneys.

The unique and diverse nature of Florida’s population, as well as its recent history, makes attending to the needs of non-English-proficient language minorities in the voting process especially important. During the latter half of the twentieth century, Florida experienced enormous changes in the relative size, geographical distribution, and composition of its population. Some, but not all, of these changes can be attributed to national trends in population migration to the Sunbelt. Other changes can be explained by an increase in Hispanic or Latino population, again a national trend. Still other changes are the direct result of political changes in the Caribbean basin into which the peninsula of Florida extends, and United States’ policies that respond to those changes.

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Satisfying the Confrontation Clause has been described as the act of placing a witness face-to-face with the defendant, so that the defendant may cross-examine the witness in the presence of both the judge and jury. However, what happens if the witness is unavailable to testify in court?

Life insurance and other nonprobate assets such as annuities, pay-on-death accounts, and retirement planning accounts have become increasingly popular as estate planning tools. In 2004, Americans purchased $3.1 trillion in new life insurance coverage, a ten percent increase from just ten years before. Purchases made by Floridians accounted for nearly $154 million of this national total. At the end of 2004, there was $17.5 trillion in life insurance policy coverage in the United States. However, it is likely that some of those policies will not provide security for the individuals for whom they were intended, especially if the policyholder resides in Florida. An unfortunate but familiar scenario occurs when a divorced individual fails to change the designated beneficiary on his or her life insurance policy or other contractbased estate planning tool, and the ex-spouse receives the insurance proceeds upon that individual’s death. Whether due to oversight, mistake, or poor comprehension of the way contracts such as life insurance policies operate, the outcome is especially regrettable when the decedent policyholder leaves behind minor children or a financially struggling family.

At the outset, the Author begs your indulgence if the style of this Article seems a bit too informal for this context. The intent is to have a “conversation” with the reader that focuses on the case at hand, to wit, Michael Linet, Inc. v. Village of Wellington (Linet), and then discusses more broadly its practical implications.

The Author’s firm represented Michael Linet, Inc. in this case. When invited to compose a “Last Word,” the Author was tempted to write about everything that was wrong with Linet. It would likely be much more productive, however, to discuss only the most significant issue implicated by the decision: “What constitutes ‘substantial evidence’ sufficient, under the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (the TCA), to deny a permit to construct a personal wireless services (a/k/a telecommunications tower or cell tower) facility?”

In Florida Department of Revenue v. City of Gainesville, the Florida Supreme Court addressed the scope of Article VII, Section 3(a), of the Florida Constitution, which exempts from ad valorem taxation municipal property used exclusively by the municipality “for municipal or public purposes.” The Court held that municipal property is constitutionally exempt only where it is used to provide services “essential” to the health, morals, safety, or general welfare of the citizens of the municipality. Applying this gloss to the “municipal purpose” language of the constitutional exemption, the Court concluded that a statute purporting to subject to taxation municipal property owned and used by the City of Gainesville to provide telecommunications services was not facially unconstitutional. The Court, however, did not decide whether the statute would be unconstitutional as applied to Gainesville’s telecommunications property.

In its struggle to craft an appropriate test for the scope of the exemption under Article VII, the Gainesville Court arguably departed from the very principles of constitutional interpretation it expressly embraced. Even so, a careful reading of the opinion reveals that it does not impose a narrow limitation on the scope of the exemption, and lower courts would be mistaken to read it as doing so.