Executive Decisionmaking by Local Legislatures in Florida: Justice, Judicial Review and the Need for Legislative Reform

EXECUTIVE DECISIONMAKING BY LOCAL LEGISLATURES IN FLORIDA: JUSTICE, JUDICIAL REVIEW AND THE NEED FOR LEGISLATIVE REFORM Robert Lincoln, AICP* TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION ................................. 628 II. A TAXONOMY OF GOVERNMENT POWER: DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN LEGISLATIVE, EXECUTIVE, QUASI-JUDICIAL AND JUDICIAL POWERS .............................. 631 A. Legislative Powers ............................. 632 B. Executive and Quasi-Judicial Powers ...................................... 635 C. Judicial Power ................................ 639 D. Distinguishing Legislative from Judicial Lawmaking ........................... 642 E. Distinguishing Legislative from Executive Decisionmaking ...................... 643 F. Conclusions .................................. 651 III. THE SEPARATION OF POWERS AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS IN FLORIDA ..................... 652 A. The History and Purpose of the Separation of Powers Doctrine .............................. 653 B. The Separation of Powers Doctrine and Local Governments ................................. 656 1. History of Local Government Powers .......... 657 2. Local Government Law and the Separation of Powers ................................. 659 C. Conclusion: Modern Powers and Modern Problems . 662 * Sarasota, Florida. J.D., Florida State University College of Law, 1993; M.S.P, Florida State University Dep't of Urban and Regional Planning, 1990; B.S., New College, 1983. 628 Stetson Law Review [Vol. XXV IV. STRUCTURAL AND SUBSTANTIVE LIMITS ON LOCAL LEGISLATURES' ADMINISTRATIVE ACTIVITIES ..................................... 666 A. Vagueness Attacks as a Constraint on Self-Delegation ............................... 666 B. Legal Challenges to Executive Action ............. 671 1. Challenges that are Original Actions .......... 671 2. Record Review ............................ 677 3. Procedural Due Process ..................... 681 a. Due Process and the Problem of Property .............................. 682 b. Procedural Due Process in Quasi-Judicial Hearings ............................. 684 C. Conclusions .................................. 692 V. STATUTORY REFORM TO CURB ADMINISTRATIVE ABUSES BY LOCAL COMMISSIONS ................ 693 I. INTRODUCTION Local governments make hundreds of decisions everyday. Most of these decisions are administrative: whether to grant a building or land clearing permit, whether to approve a site plan or a variance, whether a piece of property is or is not a wetland. At the local level, many of these administrative decisions are made by elected commis- sioners who also sit in a legislative capacity. The process by which these decisions are made at the local level is vital to the well being of the community. In Florida today, the choice of procedures used in local regulations is left completely to local government discretion. Namely, the state imposes procedural requirements on the ways that counties and cities adopt ordinances,1 comprehensive plans,2 and land use regulations.3 However, the state does not prescribe any methods for 1. FLA. STAT. §§ 125.66(2)(a) (counties), 166.041(3)(a) (cities) (1995). 2. See id. § 163.3161–.3243 (providing methods of adoption and substantive requirements for comprehensive plans as well as substantive requirements for land use regulations). 3. Id. § 125.66(5) (placing notice and hearing requirements on the adoption of land development regulations by counties); id. § 166.041(3)(c) (providing same requirements for municipalities). 1996] Legislative Reform 629 the implementation and administration of local laws. Local governments are exempt from the procedural protections of Florida's Ad- ministrative Procedures Act (APA), unless “expressly made subject . by general or special law.”4 To date, no functions of local commissions have been brought within the APA.5 The only procedural requirements binding on local government administration of land use or environmental regulations are either self-imposed through local charters or are imposed by courts enforcing the state or federal constitutions. I will attempt to demonstrate in this Article that these limits are insufficient to protect citizens from unjust and un- fair treatment. Among the effects of the absence of controls on the administration of local regulations is the concentration of unconstrained and unguided administrative power in the hands of local legislative bodies.6 Local legislatures may sit in an executive or a quasi-judicial capacity to decide how regulations should be applied in particular cases.7 This freedom and power is denied legislative bodies at any other level of government8 because it provides the opportunity for tyranny.9 Traditionally, Americans have created two bulwarks against this tyranny: structurally limiting the opportunity for abuse of power through the separation of powers doctrine, and legally limiting it through judicial review. In the case of the participation of local commissions in administrative matters, these protections fail. Historically, the separation of powers principle has not been applied to local governments for two 4. Id. § 120.52(1)(c). 5. Many actions taken by school boards are covered by the APA because they are considered state agencies rather than local governments for historical reasons. 6. Local legislatures are generally known as commissions, and exist at either the county or municipal level. FLA. CONST. art. VIII, §§ 1–2. Other bodies which arguably hold local legislative power include the boards of independent special districts, community development districts, and water management districts. This Article will focus on municipalities and counties, as those governments hold the most broadly drawn powers. The term “commission” will refer to the legislative body of either. 7. Quasi-judicial decisions are otherwise executive decisions made after notice and a hearing, where the decision is contingent on the showing made at the hearing. De Groot v. Sheffield, 95 So. 2d 912, 915 (Fla. 1957). Examples of quasi-judicial decisions frequently made by local legislatures include rezonings, special exceptions, variances, and appeals of administrative decisions. See Robert Lincoln, Inconsistent Treatment: The Florida Courts Struggle with the Consistency Doctrine, 7 J. LAND USE & ENVTL. L. 333, 345–48 (1992). 8. See infra part II. 9. See infra part III(A). 630 Stetson Law Review [Vol. XXV reasons. First, local governments were seen as mostly administrative bodies with some narrowly confined policymaking powers. Sec- ond, the issue of local power and its control has not been reopened with the advent of the broad powers local governments now com- mand under home rule. The effectiveness of judicial review is lim- ited both by the courts respect for the separation of powers and by doctrines and presumptions that limit not only the scope of review, but the remedies available to the courts when local commissions act improperly. In short, current law is insufficient to keep local commissions behavior within acceptable bounds of fairness, and only the state legislature can address the problem. Developing and defending this proposition is not a simple mat- ter. Many courts have seemed unable to determine whether a local government was behaving legislatively, administratively or quasi- judicially in acting on a particular issue — a confusion that directly affects the nature and form of review. The relationship between the purpose of the separation of powers doctrine and local governments had not been adequately explored, particularly in the light of the increasingly common provision of home rule powers to local governments. Finally, the scope of due process protection was often unclear (though the tests involved were more so). This was a particular problem in the area of procedural due process because so much of the litigation in recent years has involved decisions covered by some form of administrative procedures act. In this context, marshaling support for a call for significant legislative intervention in local procedures required a broad treatment of all of these issues and re- sulted in a five part article. This introduction forms Part I of the Article. Part II examines the distinctions between legislative, judicial, executive and quasi- judicial actions. This discussion is included because in reviewing local actions, particularly when the commission is involved, there is often confusion about where legislation ends and administration begins. Also critical in this context is identifying which decisions should be considered quasi-judicial, an increasingly difficult issue for the Florida courts. Part III of the Article looks at the law and policy behind the concept of separation of powers and why the doctrine does not limit local legislatures from wielding executive or quasi-judicial powers. An understanding of these issues is critical to understanding why fairness in local administration is such a tangled issue. This is par- 1996] Legislative Reform 631 ticularly true in Florida, where local governments wield far more power than has been traditionally permitted. The available means of judicial review to address the use of executive power by local legislatures in order to guarantee fairness and justice in local decisionmaking are discussed in Part IV. The legal challenges available to attack administrative action by local commissions are reviewed and their limits described. The inability of judicial review to guarantee fair treatment of those subject to local administrative control — and in today's

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