Florida leaders tried to silence Key West voters on cruise ships. But democracy won | Editorial


Gwen Filosa/FLKeysNews.com

the Miami Herald Editorial Board
Sat, April 9, 2022, 

For years, the residents of Key West have struggled to gain some measure of control over the growing number of cruise ships that dock there. Who can blame them? Cruise traffic to America’s southernmost town has grown enormously in the past decade or so, while the island has remained as tiny as it ever was, about seven square miles of lush greenery surrounded by turquoise waters.

Their effort — to preserve the very things that make the island special — has landed little Key West right in the middle of Florida’s larger fight over local control. And though it seemed last year as though the state’s big-footing was gaining the upper hand, Key Westers have just wrested back at least some of their power. Participatory democracy worked. Sadly, that’s no longer a given in this country.

The residents’ wishes have been clear for years. They want to restrict cruise ships to a livable level. In 2013, Key West voters rejected a proposal to allow a study that might have led to expanding the ports for larger ships. In 2020, they approved three citizen initiatives designed to limit cruise ship sizes and the of passengers.
State overreach

Those were entirely reasonable moves, and yet, the following year, the state, under the guise of economic freedom, passed legislation narrowly aimed at Key West’s three measures, essentially nullifying the 2020 vote and preempting home rule. It was an outrageous overreach by Gov. Ron DeSantis and Republican Legislature — and it wasn’t the only one along those lines. By then, though, cruising had stopped because of the pandemic, so the Key West dispute lay dormant.

Now cruises are returning, and so is the conflict over what to do about them. Last month, Key West city commissioners, trying to uphold the will of the voters despite the state’s disregard for the democratic process, voted unanimously to close the city’s two public docks to almost all ships. That approach was left open to them because the commission controls use of the city’s ports. The move was a win for the voters and left only the privately run Pier B for big cruise ships.

Then, commissioners, thankfully, did the right thing again. They turned down a proposal that, on its face, seemed to offer restrictions on cruise ships at Pier B, but actually had the potential to increase both visitors and ship size. In other words, the opposite of what voters want.

There were some aspects to the proposal that didn’t sound half bad. No more than 349 cruises could dock, on average, in a year, and there would be some days when no ships could arrive (New Year’s Day and Thanksgiving Day, for example.) Compared to days when more than one ship pulled into town, that seemed like a win.

But the number of passengers was capped at an average of 3,700 per day, which adds up to almost 1.3 million potential cruise visitors a year. That’s higher than the greatest number of ship passengers the island has ever had visiting — about a million, in the banner year before the pandemic, according to local advocates for restrictions — and it’s vastly more than voters authorized in 2020, when they specified no more than 1,500 passengers arriving per day for a yearly total of about 547,000.
Big ships

And then there was the size of the ships — up to 1,100 feet long, under the proposal. While those are not the biggest ships in the world, they are bigger than the city has ever had before. And bringing them into Pier B also would have required what advocates said amounted to a giveaway of a public asset: 95 feet of submerged land, which Pier B would have needed in order to dock ships of that size. That alone should have been a deal-breaker.

There are other arguments for reducing cruise ships in Key West — notably, environmental ones. Cruise ships, with their deep hulls and giant propellers, churn up silt in the harbor and create turbidity, or cloudiness in the water. Last year, a Florida International University researcher found that water quality had improved while cruising was shut down. That’s common sense, of course.

And despite the dire predictions of those who had opposed any restrictions on ships or passengers coming to Key West, the island’s economy didn’t tank in that time. It flourished.
Uphold democracy

A packed commission meeting on Tuesday night featured hours of comment by residents, with many asking commissioners to uphold not just their 2020 vote, but also democracy itself. They continue to be angry — and we join them — that the governor and the Legislature blithely wiped out their votes with a piece of legislation blatantly meant to help business and thwart voters.

Indignant representatives for the owners of Pier B insisted that the city was getting a good deal. Attorney Bart Smith told commissioners that Pier B had negotiated “in good faith” and made concessions that were “in the favor of the city.” Perhaps. What we know for sure, however, is that companies owned by Mark Walsh, the Delray Beach businessman who owns Pier B Development, gave $995,000 to Friends of Ron DeSantis, the political operated by the governor.

In the end, the proposal was rejected, 5-2.

Without the new agreement, a 1994 contract — which the city, astonishingly, signed in perpetuity with Pier B — remains in effect. It’s true that the contract, as Pier B representatives noted, doesn’t limit the number of ships or passengers. That could backfire on citizens who want to see cruise traffic restricted.

But there’s one more important point that surfaced during this discussion: The current pier, built in 1999, is outside the area that the 1994 agreement authorized, according to a legal memo drafted by lawyers for the Key West Committee for Safer Cleaner Ships, a nonprofit advocacy group. If a legal challenge were to succeed, that never-ending contract with Pier B might have an end after all. Perhaps that will send the company back to the negotiating table.

You could say that the residents of Key West didn’t get a huge win; they just avoided something bad. But there was something much larger at stake: the functioning of democracy. Florida’s leaders tried to silence the voice of the people. Key West commissioners made sure they were heard.

That’s a real — and immeasurable — victory for all of us.