Palm Beach County Circuit Court Judge Joseph Curley's action did not come as a great surprise, as numerous citizens and one council member, Matthew Lane, had been pointing out the defects in the questions since the ballot language was released at the end of last year.
The first question dealt with a grab bag of proposed charter changes that were described in "insufficiently descriptive" terms.
The second was a weakening of term limits that voters had approved with 80% of the vote in 2014. The ballot question asked "Shall the Palm Beach Gardens Charter be amended to provide for term limits for city council members which shall be effective retroactively for all sitting council members providing that no person may serve more than three (3) consecutive full terms?"
The measure was cleverly designed to solicit a yes vote from term limits supporters, even though the actual effect of the measure, if approved, would be to weaken the existing two-term term limits already approved by voters!
The Judge Curley's final word was damning:
“The failure to communicate that the amendment’s effect is to increase — rather than create — a term limit, renders the summary so misleading that it must be invalidated."
The election will still be held as scheduled, but only measures 3 and 4 will be valid. A citizens effort is under way to encourage voters to reject them both and close the book on this unsavory chapter of Palm Beach Gardens history.
HOMETOWN HEROES
The court victory represents the second time Palm Beach Gardens citizens have been forced to resort to the courts to preserve the popular voter-approved law.
In 2016, incumbent council member David Levy announced he was running again in defiance of the voter-approved term limits law and the political wagons -- with the assistance of Palm Beach Gardens City Clerk Patricia Snider and Palm Beach County's Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher -- circled around him. In that case, the courts also stood up for the voters against political malfeasance.
But court review isn't automatic. In both cases corruption would have triumphed if it went unchallenged. Once again local lawyer James D'Loughy and plaintiff and resident Sid Dinerstein came to the defense of the voters.
MATT LANE SAW IT COMING
Had the other four council members heeded the warnings of Matt Lane, the city could have saved a lot of money and embarrassment. Lane was the only council member to question the process and vote against all four proposed ballot questions.
Many of his comments at the Dec. 7 city council meeting were prescient:
"I believe the ballot
language is so obscurely written as to be
subject to legal challenge and be voided for vagueness. I believe if we are going
to make changes to the charter we need
to specifically lay out what the changes are that we are asking for the citizens
to approve..."
About the term limits proposal, he was even more forceful:
"The way that this ballot language is written (pause) ... It’s so deceptively written that it is guaranteed to be subject to a legal challenge. And you can feel free to quote me as a council member as part of the legislative history of this proposed ordinance in any legal proceedings that will inevitably be brought to challenge the ordinance...
"They are intentionally written in a manner that masks their purpose. If we are going to put these on the ballot we should at least be honest about what we’re doing."
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