This article by Jerry Iannelli appeared in the Miami New Times on January 7th, 2020.
In 2018, the City of Miami finally, after years and years of bellyaching and protest from residents, launched a pilot project to force developers in one tiny downtown neighborhood to include affordable-housing units in every building they construct henceforth. The move was a long time coming — critics for decades had warned that the city was becoming virtually unlivable for working-class residents and that housing stock for typical wage earners was pitifully low. The city’s class of rich real-estate developers was, naturally, livid and tried to fight the move.
But after that measure passed, a funny thing happened: The Republican-dominated Florida Legislature considered a bill to ban cities from enacting those kinds of housing regulations.
The measure failed, but it was indicative of what a nonpartisan watchdog group said yesterday is a massive problem across Florida: that state lawmakers — at the behest of rich donors, businesses, and lobbyists — have been banning local governments from enacting their own laws. The nonprofit Integrity Florida said in a 43-page report that big-business interests, including the National Rifle Association, Florida Chamber of Commerce, and American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), have successfully pushed state lawmakers to ban left-leaning cities and towns from enacting any legislation those groups don’t like. Integrity Florida is now suggesting that any new preemption laws require a two-thirds majority vote to become law, but that suggestion is unlikely to gain traction in the state Legislature.
(To read the rest of this article at its original source please click HERE.)