As reporter Curtis Morgan said: Call it Jobs vs. Environment. I call that "bullshit. Jobs are a diverting tactic." According to the article:“To light a fire under the frozen economy, some lawmakers are seeking to "streamline" a slew of environmental and growth regulations. Proposals call for erasing or weakening everything from wetlands and wildlife protections to requirements that developers improve roads to handle the traffic glut of new projects.” And, Morgan says:
“Environmental groups and the Florida League of Cities warn that the moves could produce more of the uncontrolled sprawl that earned foreclosure-ridden Florida the 'Ponzi State' label in a recent New Yorker magazine piece.”
This sucks. See Gimleteye’s blog about this yesterday. It appears the Miami Herald reported it, a day later. Get the contact information for your Senator with this link. And here is more info on Senate Bill 360:
While 1000 Friends supports many of the concepts underlying the bill, especially incentivizing and stimulating growth in urban areas, we have serious concerns that SB 360 would stimulate sprawl in suburban and rural areas as well. In a nutshell, in those cities and counties with more than 1000 people per square mile or more than 1 million in population, SB 360 would:
Eliminate Development of Regional Impact (DRI) review.
Eliminate Transportation Concurrency requirements.
Eliminate Department of Community Affairs (DCA) Plan Amendment review.
Provide for only one local public hearing for development projects.
1000 Friends agrees that these measures are appropriate to promote infill development in truly urban areas in Florida and would support such legislation. However, SB 360’s “1000 people/per square mile” criterion promotes unchecked development in vast swatches of fringe and rural lands. Using this definition, the above exemptions would be applied to:
All development projects in Broward, Duval, Hillsborough, Miami-Dade, Orange, Palm Beach and Seminole Counties.
All development projects within the incorporated areas of as many as 270 municipalities in Florida, ranging from tiny Arcadia to Tallahassee to Naples. (There are some exemptions for those parts of communities that are in the Coastal High Hazard Area and other special planning areas).
For certain development projects in areas designated as Rural Areas of Critical Economic Concern (these would not require DCA reviews of plan amendments).
Promoting appropriate infill in Florida’s urban areas is an important tool in efforts to limit sprawl and protect this state’s rapidly vanishing rural lands. 1000 Friends would support well-crafted legislation to that end. However, as drafted SB 360 would seriously undermine growth management efforts in some of the most important areas in Florida, and promote rural sprawl in some of the largest counties.
While we understand the desire to quickly pass legislation to stimulate the economy, such efforts must be undertaken with caution. With passage of the 2008 Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) bill, we all learned the painful lesson that “the devil is in the details.” Let’s not make similar mistakes with SB 360.
Ask your Senator to make sure that the issues raised in 1000 Friends of Florida’s letter of February 12, 2008 to Senate Community Affairs Chairman Mike Bennett are resolved before this legislation is adopted.
3 comments:
Yeh, that's what we need, more legislation to destroy what little quality-of-life we have left. Don't these bozo legislators understand that people have stopped coming to this state because it no longer offers the environment that they want? We are becoming a big, crowded, dirty state without the culture of a New York. People are leaving and building more houses and less roads won't get them back.
It is not what they understand but who pays them.
Money talks. Shame.
I think that the misuse of our trust and our money is depressing the US population more than the recession.
The loss of faith in those folks we always trusted with our most personal item, our money, drags one down. Between the corruption in the stocks, banks and government it is difficult to imagine who to trust.
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