If anyone doubted that representative democracy at the local level of government is deformed to suit the purposes of the same real estate speculators and bankers who caused the housing market/ credit crisis, just look at the agenda of today's Miami Dade County Commission meeting. Now that the tidy work of returning incumbents to office is over, with last week's sparsely attended election, the beneficiaries of massive campaign dollars have to return the favor: the sooner, the better.
If I understand what the nominal chair of the county commission, Bruno Barreiro, is proposing for vote by his fellow commissioners, it is mainly this: not just to increase the power of the chair-- by eliminating term limits for the chair, itself-- but mainly to make it more difficult for citizens to intervene in the public hearing process that groups like Hold The Line used to protest decisions to move the Urban Development Boundary.
There is plenty of reason for the special interests to wish the elimination of the messy business that zoning changes entail. How much better it would be to just take a vote lickety split: there is so little drama in proceedings whose outcome is determined by campaign contributions far in advance that most people-- like the highly educated $500 per hour "environmental lawyers"-- find it demeaning to be relegated to the stock characters in elementary school plays that these zoning changes have become.
How many times has Joe Martinez, for instance, said from the dais: "we all know how this vote is going to turn out."
The problem, of course, is that people want to have a choice in the way their communities develop. The immoveable, unreformable majority of the county commission couldn't care less.
This fall, Floridians should have been allowed to vote on the referendum proposed by Florida Hometown Democracy-- a measure that would have put the behavior of special interests and the county commissions they choose in the spotlight. Despite ample evidence that the fiercely fought-for measure met the standards of state law, the referendum issue will not appear on the November ballot.
Read the editorial that appeared today in the Treasure Coast Palm by Lesley Blackner, president and founder of Florida Hometown Democracy. It is well worth your time to wonder how your tax dollars are being wasted, destroying the quality of life you value and the very foundation of fiscal prudence. And don't forget, the hearing for Krome Gold before the county commission, is just around the corner.
Lesley Blackner: 'Big boys' have problems with FHD
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Some people get paid to pick up garbage; some people get paid to spread garbage around. Ryan Houck, executive director of Floridians for Smarter Group, is paid a monthly salary to trash Florida Hometown Democracy, the statewide initiative to give voters the power to accept or reject commission-approved growth map changes.
What do you do?
Remember rule No. 1: The developer machine will say anything to get what it wants. Floridians for Smarter Growth is a political action committee cooked up by the growth machine a year ago to keep Hometown Democracy off the 2008 ballot and defeat it in 2010. In a little more than six months, the National Association of Home Builders, National Association of Realtors, Florida Chamber of Commerce, Waste Management, Florida Home Builders and U.S. Sugar (just to name a few) dumped more than $3.5 million into this endeavor.
Floridians for Smarter Growth spent most of this money last fall and winter floating a bogus petition designed to do two things things: 1) suck away our paid petitioners and, 2) deluge certain county supervisors of elections so all petitions could not be timely validated. It worked.
Beginning last Jan. 2, Smarter Growth dumped more than 600,000 petitions in key counties around the state. Smarter Growth wasn't on the ballot, but neither was FHD. That was the plan.
FHD has raised and spent about $1.8 million since it started in the fall of 2003. Yes, we've paid for petition collection and volunteers have sent petitions, like just about every other initiative campaign. But we never paid anywhere near $3 per petition like Mr. Houck alleges.
Mr. Houck calls me a "wealthy extremist" because I put my money where my mouth is. Fact is, I've spent my entire life watching the state I love paved over and ruined.
I and so many others waited decades for leadership and reform. It never came. In fact, Florida's deterioration intensified over the past 10 years because our elected officials let developers go wild. I finally decided to do something about it and am grateful to be in a position to do so. It's a tribute to the power of Hometown Democracy that the big boys are compelled to pile on against it.
Over the past decade, developers built to their heart's content, crashing our entire economy, not to mention Florida's natural heritage. Hopefully, everybody now understands that an economy run by and for developers sinks like the Titanic.
The current meltdown is such that even Mr. Houck admits "Our growth-management system is imperfect." In reality, it works perfectly for the developer crowd. It gives them what they want: the control to build when, how and where they want. All they need is three votes out of five on the commission and they're off to the races. That's why they're so crazed over FHD.
In full spin, Mr. Houck goes further and says we need reform, just not Hometown Democracy. The developer machine's toy, the Legislature, chews new holes through our "growth management" laws every session. So don't hold your breath for "reform." And you'll never see Floridians for Smarter Growth do anything other than bash FHD.
Hometown Democracy will grant people to vote on land use changes that change the face of their community forever. It will counterbalance developer control over local government and help ensure that growth truly reflects the public interest.
The developer machine knows that Floridians want voter accountability on land use. That's why its mouthpiece, Floridians for Smarter Growth, will say and do just about anything to trash Hometown Democracy.
Lesley Blackner
president, Florida Hometown Democracy
1 comment:
How frustrated Blackner must be. She has been in the lion's den for years. It is the same old thing, the ruling party does not want the non-ruling people to have a vote on important issues. FHD is the best chance we have to have some say in how our neighborhoods grow so it can't happen. Go to the web site www.floridahometowndemocracy.com and educate yourself. Then send in a petition and some support for Ms. Blackner!
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