(St. Pete Beach, FL – March 9, 2011) Last year, the roughly 10,000-person town of St. Pete Beach found itself at the center of the debate over Amendment 4, a statewide version of the government-by-referenda measure St. Pete Beach had adopted in 2006. Heeding the warning of St. Pete Beach, Florida voters overwhelmingly rejected Amendment 4. Last night, local voters in St. Pete Beach followed suit, passing Charter Amendments 1, 2 and 3, which effectively ended the city’s four-year experiment in “Hometown Democracy.” The complete results can be found at the Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections website, here.

“St. Pete Beach has at last come full circle,” said Ryan Houck, executive director of FreeMarketFlorida.org—the group that led the campaign to defeat Amendment 4. “The town that started the debate over ‘Hometown Democracy’ has now brought it to a fitting close. Although other battles are sure to occur, we believe that last night’s victory will unequivocally consign ‘Hometown Democracy’—and the philosophy that underpinned it—to the dustbin of bad ideas, where it belongs. Congratulations to the people of St. Pete Beach.”

FreeMarketFlorida.org is a free market watchdog group. The organization works with a coalition of business and civic leaders and, in 2010, led the successful “Vote No on 4” campaign, garnering 67 percent of the vote.

  
www.FreeMarketFlorida.org