We read today’s editorial in the Miami Herald with interest. “Sobering view of Florida in 50 years” was subtitled, “Our opinion: chance to shape state’s future quality of life begins now”.
The editorial is based on a report by the group, 1000 Friends of Florida. The group’s board of directors includes big dogs in real estate development, home builders, and agribusiness.
1000 Friends is strongly adverse to confrontation. We don't care about being polite. We do this for free.
And our conclusion is that the pattern of subsidies implicit in miracle-gro suburban sprawl is swallowing the state like an anaconda gripping the mouth of a crocodile.
By subsidies, we mean primarily the skyrocketing infrastructure deficits that are piling costs on ours and future generations, ruining families, quality of life, and the environment in the process.
Suburban sprawl has fueled Florida’s economy and politics for the past two decades, but especially during the two terms of Governor Jeb Bush. (Jeb has gotten a free ride by the Miami Herald and other mainstream media for allowing state regulatory authority to wither while production home builders/ Republican campaign contributors ran the Florida legislature and county commissions from one side of the state to another. But that is a story for another day.)
Today, we simply note how the 50 year spyglass allows the Miami Herald to blithely skip over the question of real deficits that plague us today.
Not once has the Miami Herald commented on a county manager report in which department heads totaled UNFUNDED infrastructure backlogs. Excluding schools, airport and port services, the total is close to $7 billion!!!!
The way ordinary readers of the Miami Herald experience that $7 billion deficit is unbearable traffic, insufficient parks, a declining quality of life, and sacrifice of the environment and public health.
These deficits/ public subsidies for suburban sprawl accumulated at a time when Miami Herald executives and editorial board members could have shouted out, putting the paper to a crucial public purpose.
They never did. NEVER.
And so today’s editorial, right in its pertinent aspects to the future, is an expression of timidity.
We think it is time the Miami Herald came clean: successive generations of the paper’s Herald’s executive leadership openly applauded, refraining from any dissent, as the costs of growth imposed on taxpayers and citizens exploded.
In the September election cycle, the Herald’s editors made the inexcusable error of endorsements for county commission races, urging readers to resist the urge to “throw the bums out”. Pathetic!
Its editorial concludes, “the new leadership coming to Tallahassee can begin now to take steps to enhance Floridians’ quality of life in 50 years. That kind of power is rare. Lawmakers should seize the moment.”
Given the Herald's record, its editorial gravitas has as much weight as a nerf ball.
With its 50 year eyeglass, Miami Herald executives and editors are once again skipping over their responsibility to slam fists on the editorial table about the mess we are in, today.
“Sobering view of Florida in 50 years” feels like an orphan. Take some ownership! Put your reporters to work with regular and lengthy investigative reports that cut to the quick, instead of sitting on your hands with the Herald “Neighbors” section covering your butts.
1 comment:
Very good points. You mean we had that Bond and now we still have unfunded infrastructure costs of 7 billion? Where is that money going to come from? I also think the Herald should not have endorsed ANY of the county commissioners to send a clear message to commissioners that we know and the Herald knows that no one is watching the store.
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