The people who plan our neighborhoods, rezone our blocks, and steer our redevelopment dollars should answer to residents — not to the developers, property owners, and private boards they also work with on the side. Amendment 2 writes four plain rules into the city charter to keep strategic advice independent.

The Problem

The City of Pompano Beach and the Pompano Beach Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) are two legally distinct entities with separate budgets and, on many deals, opposing interests. Today, the same strategic-planning firm can be paid by both sides at the same time — shaping zoning changes, transit-oriented development plans, and redevelopment projects on behalf of the City and the CRA simultaneously.

That's not the only structural problem. Principals of those same firms can hold ownership or investment interests in the very districts they're being paid to redevelop. Former consultant staff can walk directly into pivotal City or CRA staff roles — and back out again. And the same principals can sit on the joint City–Chamber of Commerce Economic Development board, where they help direct the plans they're also paid to implement.

Four overlapping conflicts, one outcome: strategic advice that quietly favors insiders over residents.

What This Amendment Does

Amendment 2 writes four forward-looking rules directly into the city charter. It regulates the City's own contracting, hiring, and board-appointment power — which is squarely within residents' charter authority.

What This Amendment Does Not Do

This amendment is narrowly targeted at strategic and advisory consultants who shape what gets built and where — not the firms that physically build it. Licensed construction, engineering, architectural, and design-professional firms performing project-specific, bid-awarded scopes of work are not covered and can continue to contract with both the City and the CRA as they do today. The distinction matters: a firm that bids competitively on a specific public-works project is a different legal category from a firm that quietly drafts the plan that creates the project.

Who Else Prevents Consultant Double-Dipping?

Rules that stop advisors from sitting on both sides of the same deal aren't new. South Florida governments — and Florida itself — have spent decades writing versions of these protections. Amendment 2 brings Pompano Beach up to the same standard.

Governments with rules like this

Revolving-door, dual-representation, and disclosure rules already on the books

Each of these jurisdictions restricts the movement between public-side decision-making and private-side paid advocacy — the same structural concern Amendment 2 addresses.

  • Miami-Dade County — Two-Year Rule: former officials & employees can't lobby their former agency for 2 years
  • Broward County — Code of Ethics: mandatory disclosure of outside employment & family-member contracts
  • Palm Beach County — Countywide Code of Ethics, Commission on Ethics, registered-lobbyist ordinance
  • Jacksonville — Ethics Code Ch. 602: 2-year ban on lobbying former board, consulting included
  • State of Florida — §112.313(9) & Art. II §8(e): 2- and 6-year lobbying bans on former officials
  • FDOT — Procedure 375-030-006: firm can't design a project and then bid/CEI the same project
  • Federal government — 18 U.S.C. §207: 1–2 year post-employment lobbying ban on senior officials
Pompano's current gap

What Pompano Beach's charter does not currently address

State and county rules above apply to people leaving government. They do not fully prevent a private firm from holding simultaneous contracts with the City and the CRA, or from cycling principals onto City-appointed boards that oversee their own work. That's the specific gap Amendment 2 closes.

  • No charter rule — against a strategic advisory firm holding City and CRA contracts at the same time
  • No charter rule — on 24-month cooling-off between consultant and senior City/CRA staff role
  • No charter rule — preventing principals from serving on City-appointed boards influencing their own contracts
  • No charter rule — requiring public disclosure of consultant-side outside interests (property, developer pay, board seats)

Sources: Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics — Two-Year Rule; Broward County Code of Ethics (overview); Palm Beach County Code of Ethics — Practical Guide 2025; City of Jacksonville Ethics Code Ch. 602; Florida Commission on Ethics — Guide to the Sunshine Amendment and Code of Ethics; FDOT Conflict of Interest FAQs (Proc. 375-030-006); 18 U.S.C. §207. The rules cited apply to different categories of officials/employees/consultants; Amendment 2 targets the specific municipal-consultant gap described above.

Common Questions

Aren't the City and the CRA basically the same thing?
No. The CRA is a legally separate entity created under Florida's Community Redevelopment Act, with its own board, its own budget, and its own statutory purpose. The City and the CRA regularly deal with each other on contracts, land, and redevelopment financing — and on those matters they are not on the same side of the table. A consultant paid by both cannot give independent advice to either.
Why does this carve out construction and engineering firms?
Because they are a different class of conflict. A construction or engineering firm hired for a specific, bid-awarded project — a road, a building, a stormwater upgrade — is not the firm quietly drafting the redevelopment strategy that decides which projects happen in the first place. This amendment is aimed at strategic advisors, not builders. Drawing that line keeps the rule legally defensible and commercially sensible.
Is this targeting a current consultant or firm?
No. This is a permanent structural rule that applies to all strategic consultants and their principals — current and future. Good governance doesn't depend on who happens to hold a contract today. The rules stay when the names change.
Won't a 24-month cooling-off period make it harder to attract talent?
No — and plenty of cities already do it. Federal agencies, state governments, and major municipalities across the country use cooling-off periods to prevent the revolving door between private consulting firms and public planning authority. It's a standard anti-capture tool, not an experiment. Reputable advisors already expect this rule.
Don't consultants already have ethics rules?
Not the same ones as elected officials and employees. Florida Chapter 112 requires disclosure of financial interests from public officers and from employees with major purchasing authority — but outside consultants, who often draft the recommendations the Commission votes on, are not held to the same disclosure standard. This amendment closes that gap at the charter level, where it cannot be quietly waived.
Is this legal? Can the charter really do this?
Yes. Every provision regulates the City's own contracting, hiring, and appointment powers — which are squarely within charter authority under Florida Statute §166.031. The amendment does not attempt to bind the CRA directly; it binds the City's choices about who the City itself retains and hires. Florida Commission on Ethics opinions also confirm that municipalities may adopt stricter local ethics rules than state baseline. Before circulation, the final charter text will be drafted by a Florida municipal attorney experienced in §166.031 petitions.
How does this get on the ballot?
Under Florida Statute §166.031, residents can place charter amendments on the ballot by collecting signatures from 10% of registered voters — 5,796 signatures. Once submitted, the Commission is legally required to put it to a vote of the people.

Deeper Questions

Two questions keep coming up. Here are the plain-English answers with the legal receipts.

Topic 1

Why can't this just fix the CRA directly?

Isn't the CRA part of the City?

Legally, no. Florida law creates every Community Redevelopment Agency as a separate public body, corporate and politic — independent from the city or county that activated it. Section 163.357(1)(b) of the Florida Statutes says a CRA is “separate, distinct, and independent from the governing body of the county or municipality.”

That's why the CRA has its own board, its own budget, its own bond authority, and its own legal purpose under Chapter 163, Part III. The City and the CRA regularly negotiate with each other on contracts, land, and redevelopment financing — and on those matters they are not on the same side of the table.

So why doesn't the amendment just regulate the CRA too?

Because the city charter can only bind the City. Under Florida Statute §166.031, residents have the power to amend their municipal charter — not the governing documents of a separate public body. The Florida Attorney General has repeatedly confirmed in opinions like AGO 2019-05 that a CRA is its own legal entity and that transferring or binding its authority has to follow the Community Redevelopment Act's own process.

Trying to regulate the CRA directly from the city charter would get the amendment thrown out in court. So the amendment stays squarely inside the City's own lane: who the City hires, who the City contracts with, and who the City appoints to boards.

If the amendment only binds the City, how does it stop a firm from working both sides?

Because the dual-contract conflict requires the City to be one of the two clients. Amendment 2 says the City cannot retain a strategic planning, economic development, or redevelopment advisory firm while that same firm is simultaneously contracted to the CRA for the same or similar services. The firm is free to pick either client — the City will just not be the second one.

The disclosure, cooling-off, and board-seat rules work the same way: each one regulates something the City itself controls — a City contract, a City staff hire, a City board appointment. The charter has clear authority over all three.

Where's the legal authority for this in plain terms?

Before circulation, the final charter text will be drafted by a Florida municipal attorney experienced in §166.031 petitions.

Topic 2

Is a 24-month cooling-off actually normal?

Do other governments really do this?

Yes — cooling-off periods are a standard anti-capture tool at every level of government. A few examples:

  • Miami-Dade County imposes a two-year rule barring former elected officials and senior employees from lobbying their former agency.
  • Federal government: 18 U.S.C. §207 bars senior officials from lobbying their former agency for one year, and imposes a two-year ban on matters they had official responsibility for.
  • San Diego uses a one-year revolving-door rule on former officials lobbying the city.
  • NIH and other federal agencies apply published cooling-off guidance to employees moving into or out of regulated industries.

The principle is the same everywhere: people who have just finished shaping public policy shouldn't immediately turn around and get paid to influence that same policy from the other side.

Why 24 months and not 12?

Because planning, zoning, and redevelopment decisions move slowly. A rezoning study started today can drive a land deal two years from now. A 12-month cooling-off closes the door just long enough for the paperwork to clear. A 24-month cooling-off closes it long enough for the decision itself to clear.

Twenty-four months matches the federal standard for matters an official had personal responsibility for (18 U.S.C. §207), and it matches what Miami-Dade applies countywide. Pompano Beach isn't breaking new ground — it's matching the benchmark.

Does it apply in both directions?

Yes. The cooling-off runs both ways:

  • A strategic consultant to the City cannot, for 24 months after their contract ends, be hired into — or appointed to — a City or CRA staff role with planning, zoning, procurement, or redevelopment authority.
  • A City or CRA staffer with that same authority cannot, for 24 months after leaving, be retained as a strategic consultant to the City.

One-way rules only solve half the problem. The revolving door spins both directions, and so does this rule.

Won't this scare off qualified consultants?

Reputable firms already live with rules like this. Any consultant who has worked for a federal agency, a large county, or a major city has already planned around cooling-off periods — they're written into standard federal contract ethics training and into most big-city procurement codes.

What the rule does filter out is the small category of advisors who expect to move fluidly between selling strategic advice to the City and taking senior public-sector roles that implement that advice. That's the exact pattern Amendment 2 exists to stop.

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