Government Gone Wild
On Thursday, September 4, 2008, a small group of elected officials joined a handful of anti-citizen-rights activists at City Hall in Gainesville, Florida in verbally attacking more than 8,600 local residents who signed a petition that simply affords voters the opportunity to cast an up-or-down vote regarding the city’s controversial Gender Identity Ordinance.
The group included four Gainesville City Commissioners: Mayor Pegeen Hanrahan, Jack Donovan, Craig Lowe and Thomas Hawkins. Additionally, two Alachua County officials, County Commissioner Paula Delaney and County Tax Collector Von Fraser, expressed their opposition to the vote, despite the fact that nearly two thousand county voters supported the petition effort either financially or by symbolically signing additional petitions. This was clearly the culmination of a bait-and-switch strategy by these elected officials, each of whom, when running for office, promised to welcome and encourage citizen input, but are now resorting to unprecedented measures to repress citizen input.
After one of the greatest outpourings of voter displeasure in Gainesville history, with more than 8,600 city voters signing petitions (73 percent subsequently validated), Gainesville’s City Commissioners should have exercised good leadership and acknowledged that they had been out of touch with the local mainstream when they voted in favor of the Gender Identity Ordinance. Instead, these elected officials have responded by pronouncing their own constituency ignorant, uneducated, narrow-minded, and mean-spirited, simply because the vast majority disagrees with them on the ordinance.
Citizens for Good Public Policy, knowing that the exercise of rights brings responsibility, has sought to petition city government in full accordance with all applicable laws. This right was responsibly exercised by the thousands who signed petitions for submission to the Supervisor of Elections, and by the hundreds who gathered signatures and financially supported our efforts. Any elected official should hail such efforts, especially by people willing to endure the unethical, untruthful accusations of activists intent upon preventing citizens from voting. Not so. Instead, these elected officials—in a glaring example of government gone wild—first sought to keep you and your fellow citizens from exercising your cherished First-Amendment right to “petition government for the redress of grievances.” Now, even after an overwhelmingly successful petition drive that gave voice to more than 15 percent of the electorate, the Mayor and City Commission are persisting in their attempt to minimize voter turnout on this issue, if not to prevent a vote altogether.
If you signed the petition to repeal the Gender Identity Ordinance, or if you are simply fed up with elected officials abusing their authority by attempting to repress voter’s rights, please explore this website, where you can contribute online, volunteer with your time, and discover other ways to help put local government back in the hands of the citizens of Gainesville.