For nearly a quarter century I have observed Florida's greatness whittled away, one land use decision at a time, to benefit speculators who manipulate politics to extract value out of wetlands and environmentally sensitive lands buffering the Everglades and Biscayne Bay.
The formula: find land that is zoned for agriculture or as wetlands, hire lobbyist or "environmental land use law firm", secure a land use change through zoning councils and local government legislatures, build a rock mine or crappy subdivision, take a share of profits and contribute to political campaigns. Do it again, and again, and again.
When neighborhoods, community activists or environmentalists complain: accuse them of being elitist, closing the door behind them, how increased tax base is necessary to fund services, and when the economy turns to crap, how barriers to jobs need to be eliminated.
The folks at the Beacon Council and other white glove economists regularly wring their hands at the need to diversify Florida's economy. What they fail to say-- but know perfectly well-- is that one generation at a time Florida capitulated to the Great Destroyers. Their free reign erodes any chance of attracting new jobs, unless those jobs are part of the pass-through economy. Nothing "sticks" in South Florida, because we have encouraged an urban/ suburban landscape that nothing sticks to.
Meanwhile the Great Destroyers name sport stadiums or educational facilities or performing arts centers to buy community credit and esteem. Not even Archimedes could criticize that equation.
Not even the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression has altered it. Instead, the crisis-- fomented by the Great Destroyers-- has been like a catalyst to epoxy resin; hardening their silos. For observers, keeping tabs on what the Destroyers do next is like watching a game of wack-a-mole; the one with a toy hammer. Kids hit one target only to find another pops up somewhere else on the board.
Amusing, if it didn't describe the way Florida's race to the political bottom works today. Florida GOP state senator Ellyn Bogdanoff from Broward is just the latest pop up, with her proposal for a new law to usurp local authority that has struggled for years to regulate the growth of suburban sprawl into Dade wetlands, farmland and open space.
Bogdanoff is the GOP's fresh-faced, new Great Destroyer for having the splendid idea to prevent local jurisdictions from exerting their own authority of changes to Comprehensive Development Master Plans. The CDMP is the "road map" for community growth. Changes to the Urban Development Boundary, for example, require a supermajority vote of the local county commission. That's a hard number to accumulate, for the Great Destroyers.
In the Rick Scott era, we are in a phase where every point in the legal process governing developer ambitions, the Great Destroyers are testing the boundaries. What Governor Scott approved-- either with forethought or simply because he had no clue how state government works when he purchased his way to the Governor's Mansion--was eliminate state regulatory authority for those community master development plans that every county and most municipalities are required to produce.
By taking the guards off their watches on the ramparts, now the Great Destroyers are pushing and probing at every point of entry to see how far they can push the regulations governing growth management in Florida.
It is perverse to watch the GOP-- the so-called party of liberty and anti-government authority-- regularly violate its own convictions, imposing its own set of rules on personal freedoms and, in this specific case of Bogdonoff's amendment (read, below, for details) state authority over local jurisdictions.
In the Miami Herald today, Representative Felix Diaz, a Republican from Miami, whines: “With the economy being what it is, we should not be creating barriers to investment in our community." What a crock of s#@t.
There is no mystery-- none at all-- about what drives Bogdanoff and the remnant lobbyist corps after the great economic washout, due in large part to overdevelopment of crappy subdivisions throughout the state of Florida. It is the same as it has always been: more crappy subdivisions. Eliminate supermajority votes to rezone land outside the Urban Development Boundary to benefit the speculators and campaign contributors.
Bogdanoff is just another in a long line of GOP wannabe's: the latest to shop in the second-hand clothing store of the Great Destroyers, trying from the rack what fits best even though it has been worn a hundred times before at dances in the chambers of the county commissions and state legislature or hallways where prying eyes can imagine what happens next.
The formula: find land that is zoned for agriculture or as wetlands, hire lobbyist or "environmental land use law firm", secure a land use change through zoning councils and local government legislatures, build a rock mine or crappy subdivision, take a share of profits and contribute to political campaigns. Do it again, and again, and again.
When neighborhoods, community activists or environmentalists complain: accuse them of being elitist, closing the door behind them, how increased tax base is necessary to fund services, and when the economy turns to crap, how barriers to jobs need to be eliminated.
The folks at the Beacon Council and other white glove economists regularly wring their hands at the need to diversify Florida's economy. What they fail to say-- but know perfectly well-- is that one generation at a time Florida capitulated to the Great Destroyers. Their free reign erodes any chance of attracting new jobs, unless those jobs are part of the pass-through economy. Nothing "sticks" in South Florida, because we have encouraged an urban/ suburban landscape that nothing sticks to.
Meanwhile the Great Destroyers name sport stadiums or educational facilities or performing arts centers to buy community credit and esteem. Not even Archimedes could criticize that equation.
Not even the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression has altered it. Instead, the crisis-- fomented by the Great Destroyers-- has been like a catalyst to epoxy resin; hardening their silos. For observers, keeping tabs on what the Destroyers do next is like watching a game of wack-a-mole; the one with a toy hammer. Kids hit one target only to find another pops up somewhere else on the board.
Amusing, if it didn't describe the way Florida's race to the political bottom works today. Florida GOP state senator Ellyn Bogdanoff from Broward is just the latest pop up, with her proposal for a new law to usurp local authority that has struggled for years to regulate the growth of suburban sprawl into Dade wetlands, farmland and open space.
Bogdanoff is the GOP's fresh-faced, new Great Destroyer for having the splendid idea to prevent local jurisdictions from exerting their own authority of changes to Comprehensive Development Master Plans. The CDMP is the "road map" for community growth. Changes to the Urban Development Boundary, for example, require a supermajority vote of the local county commission. That's a hard number to accumulate, for the Great Destroyers.
In the Rick Scott era, we are in a phase where every point in the legal process governing developer ambitions, the Great Destroyers are testing the boundaries. What Governor Scott approved-- either with forethought or simply because he had no clue how state government works when he purchased his way to the Governor's Mansion--was eliminate state regulatory authority for those community master development plans that every county and most municipalities are required to produce.
By taking the guards off their watches on the ramparts, now the Great Destroyers are pushing and probing at every point of entry to see how far they can push the regulations governing growth management in Florida.
It is perverse to watch the GOP-- the so-called party of liberty and anti-government authority-- regularly violate its own convictions, imposing its own set of rules on personal freedoms and, in this specific case of Bogdonoff's amendment (read, below, for details) state authority over local jurisdictions.
In the Miami Herald today, Representative Felix Diaz, a Republican from Miami, whines: “With the economy being what it is, we should not be creating barriers to investment in our community." What a crock of s#@t.
There is no mystery-- none at all-- about what drives Bogdanoff and the remnant lobbyist corps after the great economic washout, due in large part to overdevelopment of crappy subdivisions throughout the state of Florida. It is the same as it has always been: more crappy subdivisions. Eliminate supermajority votes to rezone land outside the Urban Development Boundary to benefit the speculators and campaign contributors.
Bogdanoff is just another in a long line of GOP wannabe's: the latest to shop in the second-hand clothing store of the Great Destroyers, trying from the rack what fits best even though it has been worn a hundred times before at dances in the chambers of the county commissions and state legislature or hallways where prying eyes can imagine what happens next.
6 comments:
Interesting, the developers and rock miners could not find a State office holder from Miami Dade to sponsor this. That should speak to how far off base she is on this issue.
Is there any doubt that right wongers are anti-environment? Enought to make you want to vomit.
Good job! You don't leave us much to say as you say it all. I concur, especially with:
"It is perverse to watch the GOP-- the so-called party of liberty and anti-government authority-- regularly violate its own convictions, imposing its own set of rules on personal freedoms"
The Senate Rules Committee knocked down The Bog's amendment this morning. It won't be heard.
I had the privalege attending a committee hearing in which Mrs. Bogdanoff was part of and was embarrsed for her by her behavior. She talked, giggled and figgited in her chair with another female counterpart during a very important part of the meeting. She was most unproffessional and showed her true lack of interest when she should have been activley paying attention to proposed legislation that effects the very people who put her in office. We can only hope her political days are as short lived as her attention span was that day.
During the redistricting hearings, she was on her phone texting, reading email or so etching else, talking to her counterpart(another GOP) and paid not one bit of attention to what her constituents had to say....
Have you ever tried to get in to see her.....there is no way and her office is just as rude and ignorant as she is
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