Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the bill June 11 that will schedule a 2026 referendum on how Lee County commissioners are elected.
The signing – which came without ceremony or statement – continues a war of words between local Republicans, who control every level of government involved in its passing.
The county Republican Executive Committee had urged the GOP governor to veto the bill.
The bill, sponsored by Cape Coral Republican State Rep. Mike Giallombardo, won approval 6-1 in January by the completely GOP county Legislative Delegation. It sailed virtually without opposition though GOP-dominated committees and both houses in the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature.
Some of the opposition comes from Lee County commissioners themselves, a board that has not seen a non-Republican elected in almost 40 years, as well as from the local executive committee.
The new law calls for a referendum in 2026. It will offer voters a choice between the current system in which commissioners must live within their district but are elected by countywide vote, and one in which commissioners are elected only by voters within the district.
The change has been championed by Lee Property Appraiser Matt Caldwell for more than 20 years. He first supported it as an appointed member of the county Charter Review Committee, then as an elected State Representative and now as a citizen who happens to be the elected Property Appraiser.
It also sees support from the residents of rural areas such as Alva, where they are wary of recent county commissioner decisions allowing new development in the area.
Residents there, including unsuccessful District 5 commission candidate Amanda Cochran, want to see the current system changed.
Cochran lost to current District 5 Commissioner Mike Greenwell in 2024 despite winning in 15 of the 17 voting precincts within the district. Greenwell, who owns some of the property he and other commissioners voted to up-zone, won the countywide vote.
Three ways voters could have chosen
State Committeewoman Tara Jenner has preached against the bill, calling it a usurpation of local home rule. She points out there are three ways locals could choose single-member districts.
The county charter – a mini-constitution for county government – allows for the appointed Charter Review Committee to place the issue on the ballot. County commissioners could also choose to do so.
Neither chose to.
Jenner points out the third option – a citizen petition process, was never attempted.
There were a few votes in committee against the bill, which passed through the House by a vote of 94-11. The Senate vote was 36-0.
Of the 11 House votes against the bill eight were Democrats. Two Republicans joined Fort Myers Rep. Jenna Persons-Mulicka in opposition.
At the local delegation meeting the lone vote against came from Persons-Mulicka, whose husband, David Mulicka, was elected as a county commissioner under the existing system in 2024.
Opposed: Good Government Leadership Fund
There is another GOP group working against the bill and the single-member districts idea. The Good Government Leadership Fund is a local group that was running radio ads against the bill and the concept back in January when the Legislative Delegation was hearing the bill.
The group’s spokesperson won’t say who its members are, and claims it is a non-profit registered as such with the IRS. The IRS says it isn’t, but a deeper search turns up a Federal Employee Identification Number shared with the State Government Leadership Foundation.
That group is an arm of the Republican State Leadership Committee, which brags on its web page about being “the nation’s largest organization based solely on electing Republicans”.
Those who oppose the bill, including Persons-Mulicka and Jenner, call it a top-down imposition from Tallahassee. They claim commissioners elected by only district voters will have little motivation to work together on countywide issues.
Proponents hope for more accountability
Proponents such as Caldwell say the change would make commissioners more responsive to their districts and point to the Greenwell situation where the locals did not get to choose.
Caldwell got involved in the fight when he was appointed to the county Charter Review Committee in 2006. That year State Rep. Bruce Kyle, now a circuit judge, sponsored a bill to move the county to single-member districts. It failed that year, the second straight session in which Caldwell says it was killed by Sen. Burt Saunders of Naples, now chairman of the Collier commission.
Caldwell unsuccessfully pushed the idea as a state representative from 2010 to 2018. He claims the Charter Review Committee might have proposed the change, but commissioners lampooned those efforts by making sure their committee appointments knew they opposed it.
Commissioners, including the current crop, have solidly opposed single-member districts.
Disenfranchisement? Higher costs?
Commissioners say the change would disenfranchise voters, since they currently vote for all five commissioners.
Jenner said the move is “a slippery slope” that voters should not venture down. She points out that approaches touted in Town Hall meetings before the Delegation tackled the bill included two additional commissioners elected countywide, and even an elected county manager.
She says those changes would grow the size – and the cost – of local government.
Caldwell says the Greenwell scenario has played out 14 times in 23 election cycles since 1980. Caldwell calls the current at-large voting system “fruit of the poisonous tree”. It is in fact a holdover from the Jim Crow era, designed to keep minorities, racial and political, out of public office.
More recently, single-member proponents say, the expense of running a countywide campaign has distorted local politics as the better-funded candidates have ridden development and even out-of-town and out-of-state funding into office.
In fact, the only black county commissioner in Lee County history, Melvin Morgan, appointed in 1983 after scandal rocked the commission, lost her seat in 1984 despite winning her Fort Myers-centric district with more than 60% of the vote.
Persons-Mulicka bristles at Caldwell’s characterization, calling it inaccurate and offensive.
“Lee County has repeatedly elected Hispanic and African-American leaders through countywide voting,” she wrote.
The last Hispanic elected to the commission was Vicki Lopez, then Vicki Lopez-Wolfe. She resigned in 1993, and was later convicted of honest services fraud. She was pardoned after serving 15 months, and her conviction was later vacated.
Lopez is now a Miami-area State Representative.
DeSantis signed the bill two days before it would have become law without his signature.
This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Governor signs single-member referendum bill for Lee County
Reporting by Charlie Whitehead, Fort Myers News-Press / Fort Myers News-Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
