Charlie Crist could take Mississippi, not Florida ... by gimleteye

Charlie Crist raised a boatload of money for his US Senate campaign, reporting $4.3 million last week. In no small part, the bounty is reward for his support of new laws that tip the balance of power even further in favor of special interests turning the state of Florida into a concrete jungle. The first law emasculates the governing boards of the state's water management districts, centering authority for permitting decisions-- that can involve billions in contracts-- with managers whose first allegiance will be to the revolving door with private industry. What the law does is ensure that insider dealing will be the order of the day. The second law is called the "Growth Anywhere Act". What Crist did was to allow developers to short-circuit the agency that is charged with making sure that Florida doesn't turn into Mississippi.

It is easy to understand why Florida's Growth Machine would support these measures. It acknowledges no responsibility-- none-- for the current economic catastrophe rolling through the state in waves, the result of greed and hubris gearing local zoning decisions with fraudulent mortgage debt instruments in defiance of supply and demand. Yesterday, their attitude was captured by a Miami Herald report on the collapse of one of Florida's largest banks, BankUnited. The bank chased the market for the riskiest residential mortgages; the flip side of the ghost town suburbs that now litter Florida. ''The bank was brought down by adverse conditions in the residential market that affected the entire banking system,'' said C. Thomas Tew, BankUnited's attorney." (How the old BankUnited came apart, July 13, 2009)

Those adverse conditions and that logic support Charlie Crist's Senate campaign. The fact is: before those conditions became adverse, they conferred vast wealth to a small group of production homebuilders, lobbyists, attorneys, engineers. The Growth Machine. What Charlie Crist's new laws do is to guarantee that conditions will become, for citizens, more adverse, not less; more burdensome for taxpayers, not less, and more destructive of our quality of life, not less.

It wasn't just citizens or Democrats who opposed the elimination of state review of growth planning. The Florida League of Cities joined the fight to persuade Crist not to sign the terrible legislation into law. Why? Because they know it will be chaos once markets revive. Several Florida cities have joined in litigation against the Crist Growth Anywhere Act. Where this is all headed is straight into the teeth of the 2010 buzz-saw: a citizen's ballot referendum called Florida Hometown Democracy.

The measure asks voters: do you trust your local government to do the right thing in changing local growth plans, or, do you want to vote on those measures? It is the first time in Florida history that voters will have the chance to vote up or down on growth. For that reason alone, the Growth Machine is scared witless.

The Florida Chamber of Commerce and Associated Industries and the builders' trade associations apoplectic did everything possible-- including enlisting high profile former public officials to lie on their behalf-- to prevent the measure from being allowed to the statewide ballot box.

In 2010, statewide incumbents and challengers will have to take a position on growth and Charlie Crist's double-cross of Floridians. Regardless of how the Florida legislature tries to further gum things up in the next session, an angry electorate will go to the polls in 2010, disinclined to regard the economic collapse as a blameless exercise as Mr. Tew and his client would have it.

Charlie Crist will have plenty of money in his campaign account to persuade voters that he is just an aw-shucks kind of guy who believes in the Everglades and the environment. But he will not be able to explain away the bad decisions he made to curry favor with the special interests who claim that the real obstacle to Florida's future is too much interference by the state. They shouldn't have been entrusted to run Florida and they certainly can't be trusted now.