It has been five years since an overwhelming majority of Florida voters approved a constitutional amendment to allocate state revenue to revive the popular Florida Forever land acquisition program.
\nWe’re still waiting for the Florida Legislature to obey the will of the voters and amendment sponsors.
\nThis week a lawsuit in which environmental groups prevailed in circuit court\u00a0 and legislators appealed was before appeals court judges in Tallahassee.
\nDuring the\u00a0 hearing, the arguments were familiar.
\nLawyers representing Sierra Club and other environmental groups charged that legislators were using the voter-approved land-purchase appropriation as a slush fund for whatever they felt like spending it on.
\nLawyers representing legislators and other state agencies argued the amendment’s language was vague enough to allow them to do as they pleased.
\nThere is no word on when a ruling will occur.
\nThe case is expected to be ultimately resolved by the Florida Supreme Court. Lawyers for environmental groups have sought to expedite getting the case to the high court.
\nMeanwhile, the price of land increases as the economy recovers following the recession that caused state officials to suspend most spending on the Florida Forever program and development pressure on rural lands is returning.
\nThis lawsuit is not only the pursuit of a principle but a race against time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It has been five years since an overwhelming majority of Florida voters approved a constitutional amendment to allocate state revenue to revive the popular Florida Forever land acquisition program. We’re still waiting for the Florida Legislature to obey the will of the voters and amendment sponsors. This week a lawsuit in which environmental groups prevailed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gci"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=797"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":801,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797\/revisions\/801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}