This fall's ballot to be filled with bundles

TAMPA (FOX 13) - It was go-time for Florida’s Constitution Revision Commission on Monday, when the 37-member body voted to put proposals on the November ballot to amend the state’s constitution. There was just one problem -- proposals were being bundled, and commissioners were in disagreement over it.

This fall, voters will see firefighters' benefits have been combined with a proposal to make it harder to raise college fees. A ban on offshore oil drilling has been combined with a ban on vaping indoors, and the rights of crime victims, better known as "Marsy's Law," is grouped with judge retirement ages.

"Are we supposed to set up a system where we bundle things that we know the citizens aren’t going understand substantially, and then have them vote on it?" Commissioner Bob Solari asked. "I believe that’s not what we are supposed to do."

Commission Chairman Carlos Beruff told FOX 13 he had initial concerns over the bundling, but realized it was part and parcel of what the commission did the last time it met, in 1998. 

“My staff said, if two or three things that are similar, if it’s the same section of the constitution, and I said OK as long as we’re doing something that everybody acknowledges is past practice and accepted.”

Commissioner Brecht Heuchan is chair of the Style and Drafting Committee that grouped the plans. He wants more credit given to voters.

"Voters are very discerning when they go through their ballots," he said. “I reject the notion that somehow these people are not capable of understanding basic related proposals.”

Beruff echoed that sentiment.

“There’s six months before now and November, and these things will be published. It’s not like you’re walking into the voting booth the day of and you have to read it," Beruff said. "You’re going to have this ballot available to you on the internet for a long time.”

LINK: Detailed list of ballot issues

Some of the commissioners filed a motion to unbundle all of the proposals. One concern is voters could be torn between two bundled issues.

"If they sincerely believe in something, and you put them together, people are going to go negative and vote it down," Commissioner Arthenia Joyner worried.

The motion to unbundle failed. Now, for each measure to pass this November, it will need approval from 60-percent of voters.

One stand-alone proposal put forth by the commission would ban greyhound racing in Florida. We asked St. Pete's greyhound race track about that. They didn't want to comment about the proposal.