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Highlands Today

County: Sun 'n Lake lawsuit 'wrongfully filed'

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By JIM KONKOLY

Highlands Today

Published: July 1, 2009

SEBRING - The lawsuit filed against the Highlands County Board of Commissioners by the Sun 'n Lake of Sebring Improvement District's five-member Board of Supervisors was wrongfully filed, county officials say.

It appears likely that a judge will dismiss the lawsuit due to two significant legal errors, according to top county officials.

And a law professor who specializes in land-use law at the Stetson University College of Law said it appears highly likely that the county's position is correct.

The suit is over voting rights, a long-running bone of contention between SNL homeowners and the wealthy, absentee landowners, which include a large, out-of-state corporation.

Two members of the improvement district's board are elected by the electorate. The other three members of the board are elected by landowners within the district.

County Attorney Ross Macbeth said Tuesday that the county commissioners' action pertained to the election of the three seats by land owners.

The Sun 'n Lake Improvement District by statute references itself as the type of development district that should round up the number of acres for election purposes, which reduces the number of votes for entities with large numbers of lots, he said.

Macbeth said he does not comment on pending lawsuits, but noted that the county will be filing responses to the suit on Thursday.

Until last month, the small number of large landowners controlled the elections of board of supervisor's members, since the voting system had been based primarily on how much land you own.

For years, residents have complained that the SNL Improvement District voting system denies them their constitutional rights to one-person-one-vote, because their votes are meaningless compared to the big blocks of votes in the hands of a few wealthy landowners.

The county commissioners, in a unanimous vote in May, changed the voting system, giving the homeowners much greater power at the ballot box and, as a result, taking voting power away from the big landowners.

The SNL Board of Supervisors' lawsuit, filed soon after the county commission changed the SNL voting system, claims the commissioners' action is unconstitutional under Florida land development law.

According to the lawsuit, the county commission also violated the Board of Supervisors' federal Fourteenth Amendment right to "equal protection."

The SNL board's two lawyers, hired specifically to file this lawsuit, said in their pleading that, for voting purposes, SNL is divided into two groups of people: those in the "urban area," who are the homeowners, and those who own large tracts of land.

"Over the years," the SNL attorneys wrote in the suit, "landowners within the urban area have displayed impatience with the system set forth in 189.4051, Florida Statutes, and have placed continuous pressure upon the BoCC (board of county commissioners) to make changes to the Board's (Sun 'n Lake Board of Supervisors)'s composition, disregarding the legislature's intent to allow for a systematic shift in the composition of the (SNL) Board."

Attorneys Robin Gibson of Lake Wales and Michael E. Wynn of Lakeland said the county commission's action violates the voting rights of the large landowners, who don't live within the district's "urban area."

The first error in SNL's lawsuit against the county was filing it on behalf of the improvement district's board of supervisors.

Under Florida law, the lawsuit should have been filed by the large landowners who don't like the new voting system. They should have hired their own lawyers and paid all the legal costs for the lawsuit, according to county officials.

"There is a general legal doctrine called 'standing,' which you must have in order to sue, and the element in standing is that you - either as a person or an organization - has been injured by the defendant," said Stetson University law professor Paul Boudreaux.

"If you have standing, then you can sue and say I'm going to get some remedy, some redress from the court. But I can't sue you over someone else's injury."

Boudreaux said the SNL supervisors lawsuit has "a serious potential problem with standing for the board of supervisors to sue over the rules of how they are elected."

By filing the lawsuit, the SNL Board of Supervisors wrongly claimed that they were hurt by the switch in voting rules when, in fact, it was the large landowners who were "injured" by having their formerly controlling voting power diluted.

The second error, county officials say, is that the SNL Board of Supervisors filed the lawsuit prematurely and without following the rules set forth in state law for one local government to sue another.

As an independent local government, the SNL Board of Supervisors can sue another local government, such as Highlands County, just as, for example, the city of Avon Park could sue the city of Sebring.

But, before one local government can sue another in Florida, the complaining government must hold a public meeting with the other local government and try to resolve whatever conflict exists that might lead to a lawsuit.

If that public meeting is held and the two governments try but fail to solve the problem between them, then, and only then, can one of the governments sue the other.

The Sun 'n Lake Board of Supervisors never held a public meeting with the county commissioners to talk over their displeasure at the changes in SNL voting rules before filing their lawsuit.

Boudreaux said he is not an expert on "rules for intergovernmental relations in the state of Florida."

"But," he said, "it seems reasonable that the state would have rules to encourage mediation rather than lawsuits" to settle disputes between local governments.

Highlands Today reporter Jim Konkoly can be reached at 863-386-5855 or e-mail jkonkoly@highlandstoday.com

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