President Obama and Sprawl: lack of trust in local government, continued... by gimleteye

"The days where we’re just building sprawl forever, those days are over." President Barack Obama in Fort Myers, February 10, 2009. (to review, click on link and advance forward to 55.00 minutes.)

President Obama is right: our economic crisis is being propelled by a lack of confidence and trust. In fundamental ways, this downward spiral is being aided and abetted by local government acting, still, as if we were in the midst of 2005 and not 2009; a new economy of scarcity and extraordinary challenges.

That is the underlying fact of Fred Grimm's editorial (for the full text click 'read more') on the outrageous conduct of the unreformable majority of the Miami Dade County Commission in approving first and then suing the state for rejecting two development applications outside the Urban Development Boundary: one for Lowe's and another for a private development on Kendall Drive.

It turns out that this case before a state administrative law judge parallels the broader economic crisis in another way. By failing to support its own professional staff and experts, political leaders (cf. County Commissioners Natacha Seijas, Pepe Diaz, Joe Martinez, Javier Souto, Barbara Jordan, Audrey Edmonson) abandoned precaution in favor of lobbyists, speculators, and campaign contributors. Nor did the mainstream media pick up on how the abandonment of prudent land use regulations helped foster the housing bubble that has turned into a national nightmare spilling over the globe.

In important respects, the Growth Machine made visible by conflicts at the Urban Development Boundary is not only intact but working behind the scenes to prime the pump; nail guns, cement manufacturers, road builders, Parkland 2014-- all are waiting to revive a failed economic model and bail out speculators. The state administrative hearing was a sad revelation of government at war with itself and taxpayers; a setting where calm and competent professionals wasted time and energy and undermined confidence in government because of the actions of the unreformable majority which refused to abandon its fruitless litigation. Through issues like the UDB and suppression of popular ballot initiatives like Florida Hometown Democracy, confidence and trust in government is being undermined by our own elected officials. That is a very big problem for the economy and one that deserves the full attention of voters and taxpayers.




Posted on Wed, Feb. 11, 2009
Miami-Dade's stance on urban development boundary: Yes and no

BY FRED GRIMM
Miami-Dade County, defending a decision to allow developers to breach the Urban Development Boundary, was up against damning evidence from compelling experts.
Those experts just happened to be on the county payroll.

''It was a funny thing,'' Miami Lakes Mayor Michael Pizzi said Wednesday, though the way the mayor said ''funny'' he was clearly not amused by the county's self-flagellation before a state administrative judge. ``You have the county fighting to expand the UDB and all evidence against expansion comes from the county's professional staff.''

VETO OVERRIDDEN

Last summer, the County Commission rejected the recommendations of its own professional planners, overrode the mayor's veto and said yes to two commercial projects -- a home-improvement store and a shopping center -- on the forbidden side of the development boundary.

But the state Department of Community Affairs found the county staff's original finding plenty convincing and ruled that the two projects violated both county and state planning policies. The county staff had found ''no compelling need'' to violate the UDB and those words echoed through the hearing that ended Jan. 29.

Here was the scenario: The county attorney's office, appealing the ruling with legal help from the developers, was up against the Florida Department of Community Affairs, the regional planning council, Mayor Pizzi (representing a conglomeration of angry citizens) and a coalition of environmental groups represented by the Everglades Law Center.

Mostly, the county was up against itself.

Pizzi and Robert Hartsell of the Everglades Law Center both spoke Wednesday about taking on an opponent at war with its own expertise. ''We didn't need to hire a single expert witness of our own,'' Hartsell said.

''Our star witnesses were on the county staff,'' Pizzi said.

COUNTY PLANNERS

County taxpayers had paid for the original studies that found ''no compelling need'' to penetrate the UDB and build yet another big box store or shopping center. And the county taxpayers paid the salaries of the county planners whose testimony undermined the county legal position while paying staff lawyers from the county attorney's office to pursue the commission's bizarre compulsion to violate its own planning tenets. ''It was surreal,'' Pizzi said.

And the deeper South Florida descends into this recession, with shopping center vacancies escalating, with big box stores like Circuit City going as empty as gift boxes the day after Christmas, the commission's underlying premise seems ever more absurd. Richard Grosso, executive director of the Everglades Law Center, juxtaposed the County Commission's argument that southwest Miami-Dade County ''needs'' those two commercial projects against ``the reality of all those empty storefronts that can't be rented.''

Hartsell and Grosso are both confident that the absurdity of the county's argument was not lost on the administrative judge, who's expected to send the governor and cabinet a recommended order within a few weeks.

Pizzi said that after watching county staff undermine the county's case, he's ready to bet the mortgage on the outcome.

''They should have pulled the plug on this a long time ago,'' he said.


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