Should the State Impose Local Regulations?
If you, like me, care about having the option to create city or county ordinances and regulations that make sense for us locally, you may be interested in reading my letter to the editor in The Miami Herald about the State legislature's attempt to minimize the voices of Miami-Dade residents and of its elected leaders.
We know Miami Beach is expensive and needs to set a minimum wage that makes sense for Miami Beach, not one that makes sense for lawmakers in Tallahassee.
I was already worried about House Bill 17 before reading Michael Auslen’s Feb. 23 article, “Should Florida override local business regulations? Some lawmakers think so.” I knew that it could eliminate protections Miami-Dade has put in place for LGBTQ residents. I knew it could forbid us from setting minimum wages that reflect our sky-high housing costs. I knew it could prohibit us from deciding we didn’t want to ruin our coastlines by continuing to use Styrofoam or filling our landfills with plastic bags that do not biodegrade.
Thanks to Auslen, I now know that I should be worried about this initiative for many, many more reasons, like wage-theft rules and environmental protections. I do not want people living hundreds of miles away to be forbidding local governments from implementing appropriate rules that make sense in their towns. I guess that it’s time for us to call any lawmaker that supports this bill and tell them No.