2016 Ballot Recommendations – State Constitutional Amendments

Amendment 1: NO

The most important thing is to vote NO on Amendment 1. It has a maliciously worded summary that makes it sound pro-solar, while its actual effects on solar power in the Sunshine State would be somewhere between a Trojan Horse and a neutron bomb. For more details, I encourage you to read what energy law expert and UM Law Professor Felix Mormonn has to say about it. The takeaway is clear:

Amendment 1, if adopted, would mark yet another stumble along Florida’s painfully slow journey toward a sustainable energy future. Already, Florida lags behind most states in the union in terms of installed solar capacity, largely as the result of a policy landscape that does little to promote solar and other renewable sources of energy.

…To fight the deployment of climate-friendly, renewable solar power seems downright self-destructive for a state that is uniquely threatened by sea level rise and other manifestations of anthropogenic climate change, yet generates most of its energy from carbon-intensive fossil fuels.

Full text of Amendment One. Please vote NO – it’s very important.

Amendment 2: YES

It would allow medical marijuana, and at that only in limited cases for people with serious diseases. I’m not sure why this is even an issue when full legalization is taking off around the country.  Full text of Amendment 2.

Amendment 3 & Amendment 5:  Bah Humbug

These create bigger homestead exemptions for two deserving groups: poor senior citizens and disabled first responders.  Who could be against that, right?  Not so fast — read what UM Law Professor Stephen Schnably has to say about what he calls “the latest tweaks to a broken system”: “fundamentally pernicious” amendments that discriminate against those too poor to own a home, and  are just “Potemkin relief for the elderly poor and for disabled first responders.”

They’ll both pass anyway.

Full text of Amendment 3 & Full text of Amendment 5

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