On a clear day you can see forever by gimleteye

In Miami, it is Superbowl 24/7 but for Governor Charlie Crist now is the time to batten down the hatches because the severe correction in Florida’s housing markets means big trouble ahead for the state budget.

Political survival is going to depend on sticking the responsibility for paying unfunded and unallocated costs of growth right where it belongs: on local county and municipal governments.

What is interesting is that newspapers in other areas of the state that still have a chance to alter unsustainable growth patterns are hopping mad. Even the business publication, Florida Trend, is losing patience with the enormous costs of growth.

In Miami, shifting costs of growth to a later date has been a kind of continuous Superbowl for elected officials.

Allowing infrastructure backlogs to pile higher than Mount Trashmore has allowed the Miami-Dade growth machine to chug freely while taxpayers' quality of life slid on a different set of tracks.

It has required disinformation in order to work, the kind of disinformation--for instance--that allowed our drinking water wellfields to become polluted, in spite of figleafs like "wellfield protection zones".

In Miami-Dade--despite a thousand construction cranes on the skyline--the game is mostly decided. Yes, there are billions to be made by developers if the Urban Development Boundary is moved by county government, but the difficulty makes the green fields on the west coast and north even more enticing.

For the most part, production homebuilders who spread the costs of suburban sprawl in Miami like ketchup on Happy Meals have been stacking their plates, packing their tents, wagons and model units and moving north and west, to places like Lee and Collier and Palm Beach and Martin, Stuart, Fort Myers, Sarasota, West Palm Beach or Vero. They announce their arrival with optimistic flags at the side of the turnpike.

The editorial page of the Treasure Coast Palm in the Stuart area observes that even though re-sales of existing homes in the area are down 28 percent in Indian River County and off 34 percent in Fort Pierce-Port St. Lucie market, home builders are still building at a mad pace.

“Market forces are swamping sellers who can’t find buyers at any price. Their for-sale signs get lost in a cloud of dust as bulldozers move dirt for far-flung subdivisions while traffic builds all around.” The editorial concludes, “A glutted real-estate market driven by freewheeling developers is no way to build a quality community that maintains its value.”

From the outside, the Treasure Coast Palm sees Miami clearly in a way the Miami Herald rarely does.