Miami Herald:
Florida Lawmakers Marching to Developers' Beat
Myriam Marquez
Miami Herald
Mar 11, 2009
More than 300,000 empty houses and condos in Florida are waiting for a buyer.
Big box stores like Circuit City -- the nation's second-largest consumer electronics retailer -- closed for good on Sunday, giving pink slips to thousands.
Linens 'n Things, Home Depot's Expo Design Centers? All goners.
Empty homes, empty stores, growing unemployment. Whom do we blame?
Why not blame the state's rules governing growth, the ones meant to protect Floridians' quality of life?
That's what some lawmakers in Tallahassee are doing. Egged on by developers desperate to make the math work for their new projects at a time when credit is super tight, lawmakers have come up with a wild plan to ''fix'' what ails us: Dismantle the Department of Community Affairs, loosen rules on building in swampland and let local governments do their thing without the state's check and balance.
THE DEVELOPERS' MANTRA
Because, hey, we're in a recession, buddy, and we need to build everywhere!
Except growth-management rules haven't tanked Florida's economy. We all know there was hyper-growth the past five years based on speculators swooping in and building on a whim and a loan. Nobody griped about growth management then. Now the banks have bailed and the credit has dried up, and legislators want to pretend the problem is the Department of Community Affairs?
It's crazy. The DCA keeps locals honest when they want to skip ''little'' things. You know, like ensuring our water supply remains adequate and that new subdivisions don't overwhelm schools and cram ever more cars on already jammed roads -- or that our waterways don't die from seeping sewage from too many homes and businesses built in the wrong place.
Protecting Florida's pristine areas and its residents from hop-scotch growth isn't a liberal idea. Under Gov. Jeb Bush, a proud, card-carrying conservative, the Legislature passed Florida's first growth-management overhaul in years. Under that law, counties are required to plan growth with their local school districts. And local governments have to make sure there's enough drinking water before a new development is given a green light.
And under that law, some rules also were streamlined to help move construction along and not add to the costs.
So what's really behind this push to disband the DCA?
Florida has thousands of acres available for building within designated areas that don't require state review. Ah, but that's not enough for greedy speculators who want cheap land far away from water and sewer services, and would love for the taxpayers to pick up the tab by ditching developers' responsibility to pay for those services through impact fees.
A GOOD STEWARD
DCA Secretary Tom Pelham has been a good steward of Florida's land -- which may be what's behind this Greedy Developers Act. His agency has blocked megadevelopments in the middle of nowhere that want to scrimp on schools or roads and ignore wetland rules meant to protect the quality of our waterways.
Gov. Charlie ''The Green Man'' Crist wants to combat climate change, too, and the DCA is working energy efficiency into Florida's building code and transportation networks so new buildings don't waste as much energy and so vehicles run on cleaner fuel.
In poll after poll, the vast majority of Floridians say they back The Green Man. We want our Florida lifestyle protected while there's still one to protect.