But if you were to observe the performance of local legislatures and the recently concluded session of the Florida state legislature, you would conclude that the economy must get a lot worse before anything really changes in terms of government’s response to unsustainable growth. Even the most modest package of reforms, proposed by DCA Secretary Tom Pelham, were torpedoed.
Take a look at what is happening, up there in the ether and conference rooms of the Federal Reserve and the US Department of Treasury. Why wouldn't the Growth Machine in Florida and elsewhere reject reform, so long as the nation's bankers are kissed on both cheeks and blessed when they fob off on taxpayers the accumulated toxic debt of suburban sprawl.
That is what it means, when the US government and its private banker, the Federal Reserve, committed the guarantee by US taxpayers to absorb hundreds of billions of dollars of toxic private debt in order to keep the banking industry from imploding in systemic failure: radical and extreme measures to avert systemic financial failure because banks became, suddenly, utterly mistrustful of each other’s debt.
And no wonder: the banks understand that the toxic debt represents millions of mortgages lumped together from platted subdivisions spread throughout the fast growing regions of the nation and Florida especially, that engendered anger and dismay and resignation from citizens in Miami and Redland, in Palm Beach and Wellington, in Miramar and Weston, in Sarasota and Naples and Orlando.
Woven through the financial crisis are windfall profits to builders, contractors and land speculators now burning through cash and, still, pumping elected officials with encouragement that the party will go on, it must go on; and that is the buzz-saw that Tom Pelham's modest reform package ran into, in Tallahassee-- and no thanks to Miami representative and House Speaker Marco Rubio--Jeb Bush acolyte--who would not even take up the reforms.
From the top end, US policy makers are utterly and wholly committed to the message frame that everything is ok, the worst is behind us, that the US consumer is resilient and that now is the best time to buy. But the buyers that count—foreign buyers of US debt—aren’t having it any more.
Here is a graph of foreign purchases of US debt: what it shows is that as fast as the Federal Reserve is printing money, nations over-committed to US debt are running in the opposite direction. They know what the BS from the Growth Machine really represents: it is built on liar loans, mortgage fraud, and an effort to “game” asset creation that turned so many investors who thought themselves sophisticated into street gawkers at a game of three card monte.
As difficult as it is for ordinary citizens to grasp what happens in Tallahassee, the state capitol, I doubt even a small fraction of state legislators understand the dimensions of the financial crisis that they aided and abetted by promulgating and passing new laws that made unsustainable growth the de facto state policy of economic development.
That policy has never changed in Florida: if fast growth is good, then faster growth is better.
The practical implications are severe and scarcely known at all to the general population: that, for instance, Forever Florida, the principal land buying program for conservation, has gradually—one legislative session at a time—turned into a vehicle to fund the piping of water infrastructure to enable more growth where water resources are in scarce supply, the same way that Everglades “restoration” is first and foremost about protecting urban water utilities from shortage and maintaining the political influence of big agriculture.
It is a shame that the Florida Democratic Party cannot find its voice on this point. At a time where moral authority in the matter of economic development needs to be articulated and the historic patterns of the Florida legislature need to be changed, Democrats in the legislature have either been co-opted or hard bitten with pessimism.
The two terms of Governor Jeb Bush did immense damage to Florida, raising the prerogatives of an economic elite to unassailable status that only a few years ago exulted from positions of wealth, influence and good fortune and, now, seem bunkered and suspended.
Governor Charlie Crist, working with a very bad hand of economic cards, is making the best of it. He is preternaturally sunny and hopeful, and unlike his predecessor, welcomes and invites the disenfranchised and disaffected. It drives the remnants of the Bush machine crazy, built as it was on the foundations of personal loyalty, intimidation (like the dismissal of South Florida Water Management District scientist Nick Aumen because he was also a member of the board of the national Sierra Club) and blind allegiance to predetermined outcomes.
Part of Crist’s understanding is formed of his awareness that things have not worked out, exactly, according to the Karl Rove and Grover Norquist playbook. The variables were not introduced by opposition or the effectiveness of Democratics as manifold disasters its own policies endangered.
Certainly, some within the Crist administration understand that the billions of dollars of frozen value in the state administration fund, representing “liquid” assets for government pensions and local municipalities, is tied to enthusiasm for suburban sprawl that the policies of his predecessor represented so ably.
But neither Wall Street nor any officials in public office are eager to link, for voters, the ways that the financial crises are tied to the failure to manage growth.
Crist’s chief officer responsible for Florida’s growth management is a battle-hardened veteran, Tom Pelham. Mr. Pelham has seen it all, through a career that includes a prior stint as a Republican appointed cabinet officer responsible for the Florida Department of Community Affairs as well as an environmental land use attorney in private practice.
In the recent session of the Florida legislature, Mr. Pelham tried to advance a modest agenda of reform, but found his agenda torpedoed by the same interests, with the same plans and hopes as the previous administration: to streamline his department out of existence.
Instead, what the Growth Machine wanted was the reinforcement of its power where it has the most influence: at the level of county commissions where narrow, parochial interests along gerrymandered district lines assure that a permanent majority—no, supermajority—exists to pass zoning changes and approve permits that defy the state interest.
Of course, when it comes to local issues – like mining for limerock, the base commodity in concrete—what industry wants is to prevent local governments that might be more susceptible to the influence of homeowners and environmentalists uniting over the damage of blasting and ripping big holes in Florida’s drinking water aquifers.
In the last day of the legislature, Mr. Pelham’s modest set of reforms was thrown overboard with a cement block tied to its ankle. Here is what The Palm Beach Post had to say:
"This year's big winner: Hometown Democracy
By Joel Engelhardt
Palm Beach Post Editorial Writer
Thursday, May 08, 2008
During the legislative session, the Florida Land Council did what the group does best: Kill any proposal to manage growth. That shortsighted action, however, likely will bring on an alternative that the council and every developer in Florida dislikes even more: the Florida Hometown Democracy constitutional amendment that would require voter approval for every change to local growth plans.
Tom Pelham is secretary of the Florida Department of Community Affairs, which regulates development. Mr. Pelham, like The Post, thinks that Hometown Democracy would be an overreaction to legitimate gripes about development. He proposed to the Legislature a broad, mostly non-threatening list of reforms under the heading "Citizens Planning Bill of Rights." He billed the reforms as a first step toward deflecting Hometown Democracy.
One proposal would have frozen major changes to comprehensive plans for five days before a hearing. Another would have required developers to hold more meetings with neighbors of projects. A third would have reduced from two to one the number of review periods for changes to growth plans. Apparently, even those sensible proposals were too much for the Florida Land Council, which includes some of the state's biggest property owners, and the legislators subservient to it.
The land council and all of the state's leading business groups view Hometown Democracy as a growth-killer. The amendment would require referendums for every change to local growth plans, no matter how small. Aside from adding the cost of a campaign to every development project, the amendment would create a real chance of denial for the most controversial proposals.
The House never even considered Mr. Pelham's proposals. The Senate, behind Community Affairs Committee Chairman Rudy Garcia, R-Hialeah, worked to incorporate a watered-down version of Mr. Pelham's "Bill of Rights" into a bill to be considered on the session's final day. The Florida Land Council, Mr. Pelham said, then offered three contentious amendments. The amendments ignored the "Bill of Rights" but would have eased rules for rural development, an idea controversial enough to kill what remained of Mr. Pelham's legislation.
Hometown Democracy organizer Lesley Blackner of Palm Beach bases her case on the idea that the Legislature won't ever stand up to major landowners. "This will provide further fuel for the fire of Hometown Democracy," Mr. Pelham said in an interview. "The sponsors will say, 'See, we told you so. The Legislature won't back these issues.''"
He's right. Hometown Democracy fell just short of the signatures needed to make the 2008 ballot. This year's session starts the campaign for 2010. Unless landowners understand that Mr. Pelham is trying to help them, they likely will get Hometown Democracy. If so, they will get what they deserve."
There is always next year. And by the next session of the Florida legislature, special interests will have been so hammered by economic reality its excesses may have shrunken to a size that can be drowned in a bathtub.
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