Jeb! Bush was absent when five of Florida's former governors met at the University of Florida recently to talk about the most important issues facing future civic leaders in the state: growth, protection of the environment and jobs, the need for a non-partisan judiciary, and how to re-engage Florida's citizenry. Ruben Askew, Bob Graham, Buddy McKay, Bob Martinez, and Charlie Crist.
The entire one and a half hour presentation at the Allen L. Poucher Legal Education Series is available online, and I recommend that you listen if you care. (To pick up at the start of substantive discussion, begin at minute 28:46.) Here are some observations.
Reviewing the seminar, held for the benefit of law school students, is instructive. The governors did not dwell much on the housing market crash; the bubble or roles they played in support of policies that nodded toward environmental protection but nearly always lowered the thresholds for developers, land speculators, and lobbyists.
Martinez, a Republican who served from 1987-91, noted the environmental and growth management reforms passed in his administration prompted critics calling them communists. Back in the 1960's, this battle cry belonged to the John Birchers. Over time, and with significant investment by corporations, it became the rallying cry of the extremists who transformed the GOP.
Over time, he said, local governments layered on their own rules and regulations, leading to delays and complexities. It is an important point, I'll come back to in a minute. Jeb! deserves to be singled out for his absence, because policies he promoted in two term as governor in key respects were the focus of the governors in attendance.
The Miami Herald did report on the event and notably former Governor Ruben Askew: “Charlie Crist got pushed out of the Republican Party for reaching across the aisle — which is what the people want," Askew later told reporters. “Charlie Crist advertised himself as the people’s governor. I’m not endorsing him, but he’s a friend, a very good friend, and I regretted he had to bear the brunt of excessive partisanship."
Jeb! loathed Crist, mostly because Crist blithely ignored him and the intensely partisan, ideological stage that Jeb had built in the state capitol, Tallahassee. Florida's current governor, Rick Scott, rebuilt that platform because when he came to office, a political neophyte who invested $75 million of his fortune in winning the office, he had no platform or anyone to help staff it. Crist had his reasons for a wary remove from the Bush legacy. Although Crist was less of an ideologue, he was ultimately unable to dodge the radical right wing of the GOP, supported by the Chamber of Commerce, the lobbyist corps, and comprising a majority of the state legislature. For example, Crist's signature moment was arranging the purchase of lands belonging to the second largest producer of sugar in Florida, the US Sugar Corporation. In doing so without consulting the Fanjul billionaires, he incurred their wrath and then their investment in Crist's political destruction. The Fanjuls emerged as key supporters of Marco Rubio, in the bid for the US Senate seat in 2010 that eventually forced Crist from the Republican party.
Bob Martinez was the only Republican on the panel of governors. He is a very interesting figure because he was the last GOP leader in Florida before the radical right, embodied in Jeb! Bush, took over the party. (Of all the former governors, Ruben Askew -- the eldest -- comes across the divide of time with the impression that indeed, Florida has seen kinder days.)
Martinez noted that his administration was charged with implementing the Growth Management Act, but that he had been a supporter many years before Jeb's! might have had a good excuse to be absent. Perhaps he had car trouble. Maybe he wants to carefully control anything that appears critical or pins him down in a way he can't control the message; a signpost of modern GOP image-makers. Without an explanation, his absence was a silent, sulking refusal of a political figure apparently unwilling to engage in the most important discussion of our times with his peers.
The governors spent most of their time on the issues of growth and the environment. Martinez was of a generation of leaders in the 1970's and 1980's who expressed clear, bipartisan support for preserving Florida's unique natural heritage as an economic matter. Floridians who voted for Gov. Scott should note their candidate had no experience whatsoever with either environmental protection, its economic rationales, or the governmental purposes that he so blithely destroyed.
Scott might have taken the time to interview the former Republican governor had he been curious. Growth management was eviscerated by Gov. Rick Scott in the last session of the legislature. We are paying an enormous price for Scott's incuriousity.
Here is a partial transcript of what Martinez said: "I became interested in compact growth when I was on water management district when we first started to permit use of groundwater. Back in 1970s you had a number of urban counties like Pinellas and Dade, that were large. There needed to be some level of growth patterns, so I got active in Fl. League of Cities, and the first thing we took up in 1981-82 we took up growth management. This was an area where Dr. John DeGrove was doing a lot of research and work, so Fl. League of Cities became great advocates of growth management law. It was time to implement statewide plan. We were called communist in rural communities. It was pretty tough. What happened over time, was that growth management got layered with more and more rules and regulations."
Here is what Martinez did not say: that it was the development community, realtors and their lobbyists who advocated for and promoted all that layering that ultimately made regulations so difficult. After the establishment of the Growth Management Act in the mid-1980's, there were at least three governor-appointed blue ribbon panels to propose revisions to the act to the legislature. These panels might have included one conservationist among the dozen-plus appointees culled from lobbyist corps, developers, Big Ag, and other land speculators.
In other words, it is easy for the former governors to say from behind the mists of time, as Martinez did and the others agreed: "... instead of killing growth management, they should have looked at what is causing added delay and costs. I think the easy way was to get rid of it. The more sensible way was to figure out what was wrong with it. The pendulum will swing … a year ago, there was not much was going on (because of the housing market crash), and politics were needing to show how they were going to grow the economy and so set on growth management. It was a mistake to do away with growth management."
It was worth pointing out to the impressionable lawyers-to-be, moreover, that these five ex-governors' first topic of conversation concerned the environment and growth, and yet this issue hasn't been briefed in this election cycle, whether at the state or national level, for a single second. Although the point wasn't made during the panel discussion, the reason is clear as day: when you have to raise money to be competitive in a governor's race, you better not bite the hands that feed you.
But even if the issues were examined in the depth they deserved, it is unlikely that the root cause of so-called "excessive regulation" would ever be discussed. An entire industry of environmental lawyers and consultants has been built on the foundation of early laws passed in the 1970's and 1980's. Their purpose, on behalf of their clients -- polluters, exploiters, wetlands developers, etc.-- is to put changes in place to make business easier.
If there are excessive and "overly burdensome" regulations, it is mainly due to the willingness of elected officials to "fix" things through complexity. At the local level, we call the county commission the "unreformable majority" for this precise reason: its members will not be deterred from changing precedent to serve existing sources of campaign cash at any time and any place. Just recently they called it "flowing with the times" when they changed a promised covenant after a developer moved the Urban Development Boundary in Miami-Dade, to something else, now that the Growth Management Act no longer functions with the state as supervising authority for compliance.
Unsurprisingly, this dissonance ties straight into the ex-governors' shared alarm/concern/worry at the lack of involvement by the citizens in civic life. Our communities are disasters, with people spending enormous chunks of their lives in endless commutes. Who wants to go to a nighttime meeting? Who cares when the deck is stacked, the way it is? Bob Graham knows this better than anyone on that panel, yet believes the restoration of civics classes to schools is the answer?
The former governors lamented that people don't seem to care about their government, but the very policies they supported -- that lead, in this one example to both gridlock in environmental and growth management -- in order to placate big campaign contributors is exactly the reason that people are turned off from participating. This was the hidden tiger in the room: the role of political money in deforming democracy.
Governor Graham mourns the disappearance of civics lessons in school classrooms. I agree with the governor on this point and recall that civics classes in grade school left a deep impression on my belief in the integrity of democracy. But given the chokehold of extremists on the Republican Party, one wonders if "educating" future voters and leaders would mean litmus tests to assure ideological purity like a multiple choice quiz based on "Atlas Shrugged", the book that the Koch Brothers' right-wing empire is funding for distribution to college classrooms. It's that bad. And it's not an exaggeration.
The entire one and a half hour presentation at the Allen L. Poucher Legal Education Series is available online, and I recommend that you listen if you care. (To pick up at the start of substantive discussion, begin at minute 28:46.) Here are some observations.
Reviewing the seminar, held for the benefit of law school students, is instructive. The governors did not dwell much on the housing market crash; the bubble or roles they played in support of policies that nodded toward environmental protection but nearly always lowered the thresholds for developers, land speculators, and lobbyists.
Martinez, a Republican who served from 1987-91, noted the environmental and growth management reforms passed in his administration prompted critics calling them communists. Back in the 1960's, this battle cry belonged to the John Birchers. Over time, and with significant investment by corporations, it became the rallying cry of the extremists who transformed the GOP.
Over time, he said, local governments layered on their own rules and regulations, leading to delays and complexities. It is an important point, I'll come back to in a minute. Jeb! deserves to be singled out for his absence, because policies he promoted in two term as governor in key respects were the focus of the governors in attendance.
The Miami Herald did report on the event and notably former Governor Ruben Askew: “Charlie Crist got pushed out of the Republican Party for reaching across the aisle — which is what the people want," Askew later told reporters. “Charlie Crist advertised himself as the people’s governor. I’m not endorsing him, but he’s a friend, a very good friend, and I regretted he had to bear the brunt of excessive partisanship."
Jeb! loathed Crist, mostly because Crist blithely ignored him and the intensely partisan, ideological stage that Jeb had built in the state capitol, Tallahassee. Florida's current governor, Rick Scott, rebuilt that platform because when he came to office, a political neophyte who invested $75 million of his fortune in winning the office, he had no platform or anyone to help staff it. Crist had his reasons for a wary remove from the Bush legacy. Although Crist was less of an ideologue, he was ultimately unable to dodge the radical right wing of the GOP, supported by the Chamber of Commerce, the lobbyist corps, and comprising a majority of the state legislature. For example, Crist's signature moment was arranging the purchase of lands belonging to the second largest producer of sugar in Florida, the US Sugar Corporation. In doing so without consulting the Fanjul billionaires, he incurred their wrath and then their investment in Crist's political destruction. The Fanjuls emerged as key supporters of Marco Rubio, in the bid for the US Senate seat in 2010 that eventually forced Crist from the Republican party.
Bob Martinez was the only Republican on the panel of governors. He is a very interesting figure because he was the last GOP leader in Florida before the radical right, embodied in Jeb! Bush, took over the party. (Of all the former governors, Ruben Askew -- the eldest -- comes across the divide of time with the impression that indeed, Florida has seen kinder days.)
Martinez noted that his administration was charged with implementing the Growth Management Act, but that he had been a supporter many years before Jeb's! might have had a good excuse to be absent. Perhaps he had car trouble. Maybe he wants to carefully control anything that appears critical or pins him down in a way he can't control the message; a signpost of modern GOP image-makers. Without an explanation, his absence was a silent, sulking refusal of a political figure apparently unwilling to engage in the most important discussion of our times with his peers.
The governors spent most of their time on the issues of growth and the environment. Martinez was of a generation of leaders in the 1970's and 1980's who expressed clear, bipartisan support for preserving Florida's unique natural heritage as an economic matter. Floridians who voted for Gov. Scott should note their candidate had no experience whatsoever with either environmental protection, its economic rationales, or the governmental purposes that he so blithely destroyed.
Scott might have taken the time to interview the former Republican governor had he been curious. Growth management was eviscerated by Gov. Rick Scott in the last session of the legislature. We are paying an enormous price for Scott's incuriousity.
Here is a partial transcript of what Martinez said: "I became interested in compact growth when I was on water management district when we first started to permit use of groundwater. Back in 1970s you had a number of urban counties like Pinellas and Dade, that were large. There needed to be some level of growth patterns, so I got active in Fl. League of Cities, and the first thing we took up in 1981-82 we took up growth management. This was an area where Dr. John DeGrove was doing a lot of research and work, so Fl. League of Cities became great advocates of growth management law. It was time to implement statewide plan. We were called communist in rural communities. It was pretty tough. What happened over time, was that growth management got layered with more and more rules and regulations."
Here is what Martinez did not say: that it was the development community, realtors and their lobbyists who advocated for and promoted all that layering that ultimately made regulations so difficult. After the establishment of the Growth Management Act in the mid-1980's, there were at least three governor-appointed blue ribbon panels to propose revisions to the act to the legislature. These panels might have included one conservationist among the dozen-plus appointees culled from lobbyist corps, developers, Big Ag, and other land speculators.
In other words, it is easy for the former governors to say from behind the mists of time, as Martinez did and the others agreed: "... instead of killing growth management, they should have looked at what is causing added delay and costs. I think the easy way was to get rid of it. The more sensible way was to figure out what was wrong with it. The pendulum will swing … a year ago, there was not much was going on (because of the housing market crash), and politics were needing to show how they were going to grow the economy and so set on growth management. It was a mistake to do away with growth management."
It was worth pointing out to the impressionable lawyers-to-be, moreover, that these five ex-governors' first topic of conversation concerned the environment and growth, and yet this issue hasn't been briefed in this election cycle, whether at the state or national level, for a single second. Although the point wasn't made during the panel discussion, the reason is clear as day: when you have to raise money to be competitive in a governor's race, you better not bite the hands that feed you.
But even if the issues were examined in the depth they deserved, it is unlikely that the root cause of so-called "excessive regulation" would ever be discussed. An entire industry of environmental lawyers and consultants has been built on the foundation of early laws passed in the 1970's and 1980's. Their purpose, on behalf of their clients -- polluters, exploiters, wetlands developers, etc.-- is to put changes in place to make business easier.
If there are excessive and "overly burdensome" regulations, it is mainly due to the willingness of elected officials to "fix" things through complexity. At the local level, we call the county commission the "unreformable majority" for this precise reason: its members will not be deterred from changing precedent to serve existing sources of campaign cash at any time and any place. Just recently they called it "flowing with the times" when they changed a promised covenant after a developer moved the Urban Development Boundary in Miami-Dade, to something else, now that the Growth Management Act no longer functions with the state as supervising authority for compliance.
Unsurprisingly, this dissonance ties straight into the ex-governors' shared alarm/concern/worry at the lack of involvement by the citizens in civic life. Our communities are disasters, with people spending enormous chunks of their lives in endless commutes. Who wants to go to a nighttime meeting? Who cares when the deck is stacked, the way it is? Bob Graham knows this better than anyone on that panel, yet believes the restoration of civics classes to schools is the answer?
The former governors lamented that people don't seem to care about their government, but the very policies they supported -- that lead, in this one example to both gridlock in environmental and growth management -- in order to placate big campaign contributors is exactly the reason that people are turned off from participating. This was the hidden tiger in the room: the role of political money in deforming democracy.
Governor Graham mourns the disappearance of civics lessons in school classrooms. I agree with the governor on this point and recall that civics classes in grade school left a deep impression on my belief in the integrity of democracy. But given the chokehold of extremists on the Republican Party, one wonders if "educating" future voters and leaders would mean litmus tests to assure ideological purity like a multiple choice quiz based on "Atlas Shrugged", the book that the Koch Brothers' right-wing empire is funding for distribution to college classrooms. It's that bad. And it's not an exaggeration.
No comments:
Post a Comment