Tallahassee and the Florida legislature on gutting growth management: DUI ... by gimleteye

It is a very poorly kept secret: how Miami-Dade state legislators vanish like smoke, once a year, to a place called Tallahassee. No one knows what goes on there, except for a few journalists given insufficient space to detail the rape and pillage that passes for governance. (please click, 'read more')

That suits the lobbyists and deal-makers just fine. Its part of the grand charade and persuasion game that perpetuates government by special interest.

The most cynical and worst bills making their way through the Republican Legislature-- unmarred by a Democratic minority-- is the effort to neuter the Florida Department of Community Affairs, including eliminating the state review process that has halted the movement of the county Urban Development Boundary for major developments.

SB 360 is headed to the Senate Ways and Means Committee today. If you have a moment, pick up the phone and call a few Senators: tell them what a disaster SB 360 is for Florida and for Miami-Dade.

I wonder what Governor Charlie Crist makes of this fiasco, in light of his stated opposition to Florida Hometown Democracy. In 2007, Crist said, "the hometown democracy amendment would limit the ability of local officials to make important decisions for their communities, and would lead to unnecessary delays in permitting for new business opportunities." But clearly, picking up where it left off in the last session of the legislature, Miami-Dade state legislators are urging those decisions to go directly to local elected officials. Anyone reading this blog or paying even the slightest attention knows that the worst thievery of the public interest, in respect to zoning and development, occurs right under the blissful gaze of city and county commissioners.

It doesn't make it any happier, that the Florida legislature is making the best case for Florida Hometown Democracy, that would give voters the choice whether comprehensive development plans should be amended or not. Here's an OPED from the Orlando Sentinel, that has consistently shown far more backbone that the Miami Herald on matters related to unsustainable growth. Its point could be equally said of Miami-Dade, where the only conceivable support for eliminating the Florida DCA are the supporters of Parkland. (Sergio Pino, Rodney Barreto, Ramon Rasco, Miguel De Grandy, et al. Read our archive feature, under "Parkland" and "Krome Gold", for more information.)


We're dying from plague of vacant buildings, homes

Mike Thomas
COMMENTARY
March 17, 2009
This is like watching an emphysema patient try to cure himself by smoking more.

Florida is dying from a spreading plague of vacant homes, vacant stores and vacant offices. And up in Tallahassee, the solution offered by legislators is more vacant homes, more vacant stores and more vacant offices.

Their cure for the economy is another whopping dose of everything that got us into this mess.

I don't know whether they're corrupt, stupid or simply so embedded in the Culture of Concrete they can't think outside that tiny box.

The pressure to pave permeates the Florida Capitol like skunk stink.

I once supported the Hometown Democracy referendum — which would allow citizens to vote on changes in growth plans — to protect the environment.
Now I support it to protect the economy.

Florida has 300,000 empty homes and condos, enough to put a roof over the head of everybody in Orange County.

This resulted from developers throwing them up nonstop, feeding a speculative market that had careened out of control.

The number of empty homes only will rise. Florida set another foreclosure record in February — more than 46,000 houses are now going through the process.

This spills over into the rest of the economy. It is why you see all those closed storefronts. Strip malls are vacant. Across the street from the Sentinel in downtown Orlando, an entire row of new retail space is empty. Office-vacancy rates nearby are shooting up.

Florida faces a massive and growing glut of empty space of all kinds.

And yet our state leaders say we need more concrete shells. They say the Department of Community Affairs has to go because it's just too burdensome on developers. They say growth laws are too restrictive, an amusing claim if you've ever driven around the region on the beltway. Development feeds an army of lobbyists, law firms, home builders, speculators, lenders, brokers, real-estate agents and so on. Florida is a state that grows for a living. And now that it isn't growing, the special interests in Tallahassee aren't making a living. Desperation is the result.

Making this all the more egregious is that for the first time in the history of counting people in Florida, we did not grow last year.

Florida has stagnated — an idea once as unthinkable as snowstorms in Miami. And according to the state demographers who track the data, we are going to stay stagnant for at least three more years.

So, pray tell, where are the people to live in the new homes, shop in the new stores, work in the new offices? We will need years of growth just to fill what we have.

And so every new building adds to the glut. Every home they build lowers the value of your house.

But give us more.

At the current sales pace, it would take 18months to sell all the homes on the market in the Orlando area.

But give us more.

Compared with January 2008, the median home sale price in January of this year fell 59 percent in Fort Myers, 39 percent in Fort Lauderdale, 39 percent in Miami, 41 percent in Sarasota, 33 percent in Metro Orlando and 33 percent in Tampa Bay.

But give us more.

Code-enforcement departments across Florida are swamped with complaints about overgrown yards, green pools, vagrants and vandals. Empty homes are dragging down neighborhoods and becoming crime magnets, destroying lifetime investments.

But give us more.

The same people who would give you more will say — with a straight face — that Hometown Democracy will destroy the state's economy by limiting growth. They say you aren't capable of managing growth, so leave it to the professionals. Leave it to them.

Well, we can see where that has gotten us. Do you really think that people who are put in political office by the hand of growth are going to bite it?