Patience Is A Virtue

By now many of you may have been doing your research and have read Florida Statute, 100.361 Municipal Recall.  It might seem a little intimidating to some of you, but the recall process is really not that complicated.  It is designed for ordinary citizens to step up and take an active role in what is happening in their community.  No Political Action Committee (PAC) needs to be formed.
 F.S. 100.361 (2) RECALL PETITION
(c) Recall Committee-- states that electors of the municipality making charges contained in a statement of Grounds For Recall, as well as those signing the recall petition, shall be designated as the Recall Committee.  A specific person shall be designated in the petition as the Chair Of The Committee, and this person shall act for the committee.     The recall committee and the officer(s) being recalled are subject to the provisions of Chapter 106.

In order for council persons to be eligible for a recall, they must have served 25% of their term. So the council members who were sworn in on April 13, 2010 are not eligible for a recall until after that date in 2011, at which time they will have served one year of their four-year term.  The two council persons that are eligible for the recall process at this time are up for re-election in April, 2012. 

A very important statute must not be overlooked when recalling only 2 out of 5 officials.
 F.S. 100.361 (7) EFFECT OF RESIGNATIONS.-- If the member of the governing body being recalled resigns from office prior to the recall election, the remaining members shall fill the vacancy created according to the appropriate law for filling vacancies.  In other words, the majority of the remaining seated members still influence who is being seated to fill the vacancies.  They can appoint 2 persons who support their agenda and these newly appointed officials will be in for the remainder of the term of the official they are replacing.  Then all the work involved in the recall process will have been for naught.  And the same process will be repeated when another recall process is started for the two council persons who can be recalled after April 13, 2011. 

If the recall process is started after April 13, 2011, four council persons can be recalled at the same time.  As F.S. 100.361 (7) EFFECT OF RESIGNATION.-- describes if all of the members of the governing body are sought to be recalled, and all the members resign prior to the recall election, the recall election shall be canceled, and a special election shall be called to fill the unexpired terms of the resigning members.  In the event that any of the members that are sought to be recalled decide they want to resign before the recall election is held, the proceedings for the recall of members not resigning and the election of successors to fill the unexpired terms shall continue and have the same effect as though there had been no resignation(s).  If only one council member remains, there will not be enough votes to appoint successors to fill the vacant seats by council, therefore the people get a say who will be seated through a recall election or special election.

For each official to be recalled, the total process requires two petitions to be circulated to collect the required amount of signatures.  For the size of our municipality, the first petition only requires a minimum of 100 qualified voters signatures collected within a 30 day period.  The committee chairperson files these petitions with the City Clerk.  Immediately after filing the petition forms, the Clerk shall submit such forms to the County Supervisor of Elections who has to verify them within 30 days.  After successful verification, the persons to be recalled will have 5 days to submit a defensive statement of not more than 200 words.  The Clerk then has 5 days to prepare the "Recall Petition and Defense" and submit sufficient copies to carry the signatures of 30% of the registered electors to the Chairperson of the Recall Committee.  The second petition only needs to have 15% of all qualified registered voters (a minimum of approximately 137 qualified voters signatures out of approximately 915 qualified registered voters).  All signatures for the second petition need to be collected within 60 days.  

All this can be done at a minimal cost.  The City Clerk has to submit the first set of signatures to the Supervisor of Elections for verification at a cost of 10 cents per signature.  So for 100 - 120 signatures the cost is only $10.00 - $12.00 for each official recalled.  The second set of signatures for the petition containing a minimum of 15% of the voters is verified by the Supervisor of Elections at a cost of 10 cents per signature to be verified.  So that cost might be approximately $14.00 to $20.00 for each official recalled, depending how many signatures are to be verified.

As you can see, waiting until April 14, 2011 will be to our benefit.