In a recent post, "Everybody's Green!" I was reprimanded by one reader for painting all builders with the same brush in respect to the trashing of South Florida. Fair enough. It is true: there are some strong voices, like Matt Greer, who deserve recognition and thanks.
But the fact remains that the builders lobby, ie. the Growth Machine, wants to have its cake and eat it, too. We are all dragged along in its delusions.
The Green Building Council and a few caring developers need to speak loudly and forcefully AGAINST the lobbyists at city and county hall who make their living, one zoning change at a time. Want some credit? Speak out against the people who talk green and walk suburban sprawl and overdevelopment of unaffordable housing in the urban core.
The Miami Herald notes, in today's editorial, the out-migration from South Florida. Our quality of life and its decline has reached a tipping point for lots of people. (Not of course the people who flee a few months or weeks or days from the cold north to party on South Beach and appear on the inside page of the Herald A section.)
I have friends who have moved away, after trying to make a difference here. And I know more people who didn't have the time to try but moved away because they couldn't stand what happened to the quality of life in South Florida.
It is too bad that The Miami Herald doesn't name, names.
Because the interests responsible for putting our drinking water at risk, for plowing platted subdivisions into South Dade, for wrecking our quality of life: they do have names.
Today's top story in the local section of the Herald has to do with the interminable delays in passing Miami 21, the zoning ordinance that has been delayed and stuck in quicksand by, among others, the big land use lawyers who behave as though they are more entitled to run City Hall than staff employed to represent the public.
I'm sorry, builders: you can't have it both ways.
I learned the rules of the game many years ago, courtesy of the National Association of Homebuilders. At the time, its board of directors was comprised, primarily, of suburban sprawl developers. They were willing to entertain-- in a little cordoned-off part of their collective brain-- the notion of urbanism. But only so long as sprawl was given the undiluted measure of its lobbying strength.
Of course it is a good thing that builders and buildings are incorporating "green" technologies into new structures and work: so is the National Association of Homebuilders, too.
But the bottom line is the street grid, the neighborhood, and how infrastructure investment dollars are directed. It is still the Growth Machine serving suburban sprawl, linking toxic financial credit to campaign contributions to local zoning officials, that rules.
If a faction of the building industry wants praise, then stand up and be counted in opposition to the growth policies that have wrecked the state and to the special interests who are still smoking crack when it comes to dreams for more suburbia in farmland and wetlands and the Everglades.
Contribute to charitable organizations that are willing to fight to protect our quality of life and not just whittle at the edges.
Type the rest of the post here
5 comments:
One of the names, a South Dade farmer James Humble, is making a play to be appointed to the governing board of the South Florida Water Management District. The Dade County Farm Bureau is pushing him forward. He's been one of the foreceful behind the scenes players for the destruction of farmland in South Dade. I hope Gov. Crist pays no attention to that wrecking crew.
But they can have it both ways. They have the money to spin the media and the people. For instance, they have thousands of signatures to move the urban development boundary for the Lowe's store. They hoodwinked the neighborhood.
Gimleteye response: I stand corrected.
RE naming names:
Property rights backers plan legal foundation too
By Elizabether Willson
St. Petersburg Times
March 31, 1993
Critics called it one of the most radical bills they had ever seen.
The Private Property Rights bill could wipe out Florida's environmental and
growth management laws, environmentalists said. They said it could cost the
state billions of dollars.
Pushing the bill were some of the state's wealthiest land barons, commercial
developers and agribusiness interests. An influential group of lawyers and
lobbyists aggressively peddled it to legislators.
Now, it turns out, behind the scenes, some of the same lawyers and
lobbyists have been quietly organizing a legal foundation to champion the
same issue they were selling to legislators.
Although they are vociferous in their support of the bill in the Legislature, the
lobbyists are secretive about the Florida Legal Foundation. They refuse to say
who's supporting the foundation or how.
State corporate records list the directors of the foundation as:
Wade Hopping, a Tallahassee lawyer and lobbyist who represents some of
Florida's largest community and commercial developers. He helped draft
versions of the Private Property Rights bill, according to its sponsors.
L.M. "Buddy" Blain, a Tampa lawyer who represents the Lykes family empire
in land disputes.
Timoth Warfel, a Tallahassee lawyer who heads a conservative group that
failed to persuade Floridians to oust Supreme Court Chief Justice Rosemary
Barkett.
"The purpose basi'cally is to create a foundation that would try to establish a
balance in legal actions between the state and the individual with respect to
regulation of property rights," Warfel said.
"What we have found is that there are a number of small property owners that
basically get steamrolled in judicial or regulatory proceedings, and we believe
these people ought to have assistance."
Despite advertising for an executive director, the non-profit foundation's
directors won't identify its financial backers. They name only one other person
involved with the start-up of the foundation: Lobbyist Chuck Littlejohn, who
represents the Florida Land Council.
Members of the Florida Land Council, which has supported the Private
Property Rights bill, include some of the state's wealthiest land barons:Miles
Collier of Naples; Joseph Duda of Duda & Sons of Oviedo; Ben Hill Griffin of
Frostproof; Nelson Fairbanks, president of U.S. Sugar in Clewiston; and Tom
Rankin, CEO of Tampa-based Lykes Bros., the citrus, meat, banking, gas
and land conglomerate.
Hopping said some members of the Florida Land Council and the Association
of Community Developers support the foundation. "I helped pattern it after the
Florida Land Council, but it is broader than them," Hopping said. "There are a
lot of property owners who are interested in it." There are a lot of kind of civic-
minded people who feel like, with 1,000 Friends of Florida suing everybody in
sight and with Sierra Club and the Legal Environmental Assistance
Foundation being so active in lawsuits, that the business community -- being
in the middle of what I call a depression -- needed some equal countervailing
force.
A committee has been working on getting the foundation running, Blain said.
He also refused to identify its members. Does the Lykes family support the
legal foundation? "I can't say," Blain answered.
Why so much secrecy?
Littlejohn says it's because the foundation is still in its infancy. Fewer than 20
people are "very seriously" involved. " Involved in a less serious way, there are
very many, many rnore,"he said. "I'd just like to emphasize their objectives
are long-term, not short-term, to protect the asset value of private land
holdings."
The Florida Legal Foundation is modeling itself after the conservative Pacific
Legal Foundation in California, Hopping and Warfel said. Unlike the Pacific
group, which addresses a broad array of issues, the Florida public interest
group is committed to the narrow focus of property rights.
Hopping says the legal foundation has only a "loose" connection to the Pivate
Property Rights bill that's moving through the Legislature.
"It is a public interest law firm dedicated to the protection of traditional
property rights and traditional values and the kinds of things that make
America different from other countries," Hopping said. "It's kind of amazing
that nobody thinks a thing about the natural resources law firms, but people
get real interested and curious on this other side of the equation."
Defenders of Florida's programs to manage future growth, environmentalists
and the head of the state's planning agency have opposed the property rights
bill. They contend it would have dismantled the state's environmental and land-
use regulations.
The bill, backed by more than 50 sponsors in the House, has turned into a
$50,000 study, said Rep. Ken Pruitt, R-Port St. Lucie, one of two prime
sponsors.
If passed this week, the bill would set up a committee to study the original
proposal: to reimburse property owners who have seen the value of their
property depreciate by 40 percent or more as the result of a government
restriction such as zoning or a growth management rule. Property owners
could sue local or state governments in court for damages.
"This gives us a chance to step back and really look at this for a year," Pruitt
said. "This issue is not going to go away."'
Critics argue the legislation could cost governments billions of dollars.
They contend it could apply to virtually any land regulations a tries to enforce,
including local zoning laws, comprehensive plans for growth management,
environmental regulations and fire districts.
"It's the old Chicken Little theory - the-sky-is-falling syndrome," Pruitt
said. "When you look at what they're saying, that it would cause a 40
percent increase in taxes, if that's the case, then maybe we've been taking
people's land all along.
David Gluckman, a lawyer and lobbyist who represents Florida Audubon
Society and other environmental groups' says the legal foundation follows a
trend.
"We are seeing this nationwide," Gluckman said. "The far right has set these
up in a number of areas to fight environmental and growth management
statutes.
The Senate also has turned the bill into a study.
A primary target of the property rights bill and the new legal foundation will be
the state's Department of Community Affairs and growth sponsors say.
Florida's growth management laws require new accompanied by roads,
sewers and other services.
"Everybody's complaining about the bureaucratic red tape just to get a
building permit in this state," Hopping said. "The foundation will not be
suing everybody. If they follow the pattern of the Pacific Legal they will be
selecting key cases to weigh in on the side of out Foundation, business
people."
The foundation would represent property owners who can't afford lawyers,
challenge land-use rules adopted by the DCA, environmental agencies and
local governments, and appeal adverse court decisions.
Although the foundation's directors are tight-lipped about the new law firm's
financial underpinnings, expect some of the state's most powerful land
barons and commercial developers to jump on board. Hopping hopes some of
his clients will join the effort.
Said Hopping: "I'm going to send them some money myself, and I will
encourage all of my clients to do so."
To Gimleteye:
I enjoy your posts. I often agree with the sentiment and the reasoning behind your statement. I especially appreciate the posts that are deep with facts and references.
I do think you need to work on your READING skills though.
I said (cut/paste) in reference to forces within the building industry trying to make good: "I did not say the list was deep. I DIDN'T say that most of them SHOULDN'T be drawn-and-quartered." (emphasis added)
Granted, my sentence structure leaves a bit to be desired with the double-negative, but I said that I largely agreed with your sentiment.
The greater point of my response to your post was to suggest that you could stop throwing EVERYONE under the bus a la the picture of the Earth Hour event. There are lots of people doing everything from the substantial to the trite.
I take issue with the constant finger wagging at people who are working against significant odds to make a difference in this town.
You are too. Just don't act like you are in it alone.
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