The City, County, and Local Government Law Section of The Florida Bar and the Stetson Law Review are pleased to present the Twenty-Fourth Edition of the Local Government Law Symposium. This Symposium continues a long-standing tradition of providing the legal practitioner with articles, practical advice, and case digests covering a wide spectrum of subjects relevant to the practice of local government law.
As a result of negotiations during the 1995 legislative session involving environmentalists, agricultural interests, state and local governments, land owners, lobbyists, and legislators, the Florida Legislature enacted a two-part property-rights initiative consisting of both the Bert J. Harris, Jr. Private Property Rights Protection Act (Harris Act) and the Florida Land Use and Environmental Dispute Resolution Act (Dispute Resolution Act or Act). Although these two acts were enacted simultaneously under the same bill, the Legislature did not intend for these Acts to be construed in pari materia, but to operate independently, stating that these Acts would “have separate and distinct bases, objectives, applications, and processes.” Notwithstanding this express provision, these Acts express the Legislature’s fundamental concern that private property rights in the state of Florida should not be subject to unfair decisions, unreasonable burdens, or inordinate burdens.
All diligent city officials and parties dealing with municipalities should have a basic familiarity with their state constitution. The nature of the document, as well as the scope of subjects that are addressed within a constitution, makes this a practical necessity. The Florida Constitution is the basic source for all state legal questions, and it answers questions regarding the following: the operation of municipalities; the ability of a municipality to regulate and enforce ordinances, to provide services, to raise revenues, to borrow money, and to acquire property; and the process for accomplishing these activities. The Florida Constitution also deals with subjects like city-county relationships, the right of city employees to bargain terms and conditions of employment, the right to be sued, the right to create courts and administrative boards, and even the very existence of municipalities.
The purpose in writing this Article is to educate people about municipal issues by exploring the importance of constitutions, providing an overview of the Florida Constitution, and surveying different sections of the Florida Constitution affecting municipalities.
We all make mistakes. Often, once we become aware of our mistakes, we are able to fix them. We retrace our steps, and the second time around, we do correctly what we could have done and should have done in the first place. It is common knowledge that local governments also make mistakes.
Less well-known is that governments have the opportunity under Florida law to fix certain mistakes through legislation enacted after the fact for an express, curative purpose. Like any person, a government may be permitted to retrace its steps and correct its mistakes. There are, however, a few caveats. Not all governmental mistakes can be as easily fixed as our own. And, unlike the rest of us, a government must be careful not to enact legislation that works retroactively to deprive its citizens of their vested rights.
This Article explores the ability of local governments within Florida to enact legislation to cure defects in flawed governmental actions. Surprisingly, curative legislation may be valid even if it is enacted only in response to a lawsuit initiated by unhappy citizens who have sued their government to challenge its mistake.
Whether it is discussed in the context of homeland security, economic implications, or allegations of racism, the issue of immigration is a perennial hot-button topic. Though much of the debate and discussion takes place at the national level as various “talking heads” argue the merits of guest-worker programs versus fence-building initiatives, the task of actually dealing with immigration on a tangible scale most often falls to city and town governments. Local officials, not federal immigration officers, bear the burden of dealing with the problems presented by an influx of undocumented workers. While some local governments or citizens have attempted to “round up” illegal immigrants and report them to the nearest Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) branch office, or have simply tried to run illegal immigrants out of town, not all municipalities choose such harsh tactics. Factors such as lack of adequate law enforcement, feared economic disruption, and simple human compassion have compelled some municipalities to seek alternative methods of addressing the problems created by growing immigrant populations.
In fall 2006, four classes of second- and third-grade boys and girls started back to school at Belcher Elementary, a public school in Clearwater, Florida, but this year these students learned apart from each other. In addition to these segregated classes, the Florida House Education Committee considered requiring single-sex classes at schools that earned a D or F on the state’s annual report card. These four single-sex classes joined the then 262 public schools in the United States offering single-sex educational programs, 3 and more are forthcoming. In 1995, only three public schools offered single-sex classes in the United States. Barely ten years later, single-sex schools and classes are on the rise, especially since 2002 when the Department of Education6 (DOE) indicated its intent to amend Title IX of the education Amendments of 19727 (Title IX) to “provide more flexibility for educators to establish single-sex classes and schools at the elementary and secondary levels.”
In the fall of 2006, the DOE announced new rules (Amendments) permitting single-sex public education. These Amendments represent a major change in Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in educational programs or activities that receive federal funds, generally public schools. According to the amended regulation, states and school districts may have public single-sex classes, schools, or activities as long as students, or their parents, volunteer to participate in them and there is a “substantially equal” coeducational (or another single-sex) class, school, or activity for students of the excluded gender.
Steven B. Stanton was Largo, Florida’s longest tenured city manager. For fourteen years, he oversaw the city’s 1,200 employees and $130.6 million budget. City commissioners gave him good performance evaluations and had recently increased his pay. But Stanton was fired from his $140,000-a-year job when the news media revealed that he would be undergoing sexreassignment surgery and returning to work as Susan Ashley Stanton. Several city commissioners said he had violated their trust by keeping his transition a secret. They insisted Stanton
was not fired because he was transgender but because they had lost faith in his honesty, integrity, judgment, and ability to lead.
In contrast, when Mike Penner, a veteran sportswriter at the Los Angeles Times, revealed he was transgender, his employer supported his decision and allowed him to come out to readers. Penner was reluctant to go public and had considered resigning after seeing what happened to Stanton. Penner’s editor, however, insisted, “we don’t want what happened to Susan Stanton to happen here.” Not only did Penner (now known as Christine Daniels) receive a promotion, the Times gave her a blog, “Woman in Progress,” to write about her transition.