Memo to voters who re-elect incumbents: stop the madness ... by gimleteye

It takes a lot to stand up to developers who will do anything to realize their dreams of extracting maximum value from land speculation outside the Urban Development Boundary in Miami-Dade County. First, you have to be the Governor and Cabinet in Tallahassee; a thousand miles from the place where lobbyists have the most influence-- City and County Hall. Second, you have to be elected by state-wide voters, making you immune to the parochial politics of commission districts where incumbency is zealously guarded. Third, you need citizens to spend thousands of hours, tens of thousands of dollars if not more, and the agreement of an administrative law judge to give you a certified piece of paper that states the obvious, "yes, the world is indeed round and not flat."

Because these things happened, yesterday the unreformable majority of the Miami-Dade County Commission was thwarted in its bid to move the Urban Development Boundary. So, yes: many thanks are due to the Hold The Line Campaign, the individuals and organizations that scratched together enough money and resources to fight a Fortune 500 corporation, Lowe's, to uphold sound planning. Clean Water Action, Tropical Audubon, Everglades Law Center, 1000 Friends of Florida, Friends of the Everglades, Sierra Club, National Parks Conservation Association, Florida Audubon, the Urban Environment League and individuals like Michael Pizzi, Miami Lakes mayor, Barry White and Karen Esty who joined with the county commission minority: Katy Sorenson, Carlos Gimenez, Sally Heyman, Rebecca Sosa, and Dennis Moss.

Lowe's never "needed" a store outside the Urban Development Boundary in Miami-Dade. Lowe's was, however, tapped by corporate interests to take its turn at the front of the line: the latest icebreaker seeking its passage into new territory for production housing, strip malls, and unfettered commercial development closer and closer to the edge of the Everglades. All the public hearings with rent-a-crowds, incoherent as to the reasons for their presence, all the non-sequitors by Pepe Diaz and Joe Martinez (yes, Charter Schools outside the UDB!), and the snide insider jokes (Dorrin Rolle, Audrey Edmunson, Natacha Seijas, Pepe Diaz, Joe Martinez), all the slumbering of Javier Souto sinking like a piece of water-logged wood behind the dais: it is the great unwritten history of a dysfunctional, wasteful government that is neither by the people or for the people.

County staff, for maintaining its professional standards and ethical bearings, had to endure repetitive onslaught by lobbyists, bullying land use attorneys, and from the unreformable majority on the commission: Joe Martinez, Pepe Diaz, Javier Souto, Natacha Seijas, Barbara Jordan, Audrey Edmunson, Dorrin and Bruno Barreiro. These are the county commissioners who wasted enormous resources and money of taxpayers in the fruitless pursuit of moving the UDB.

Why do voters keep returning these incumbents to office? Campaign cash is the biggest reason. Challengers are simply unable to raise enough money to wage competitive campaigns independent of the formula that overbuilt so much of South Florida, leading to collapsed housing markets and ruin. Today I can picture Joe Martinez, Pepe Diaz and Natacha Seijas: they are shrugging: they simply did what they were elected to do. And for their efforts-- rejected by common sense and the law-- they will be well rewarded by the Growth Machine.

Another reason these incumbents are returned to office: the incumbents are fully aware that supporting development at the fringe of the Everglades doesn't immediately threaten their constituents. Few citizens know about the "connect-the-dots" patterns of political patronage and corruption that define land use in Florida. In 2008, the Miami Dade Charter Review Commission made recommendations to create some breathing room and independence from predetermined outcomes on local land use: it was Natacha Seijas, at the direction of commission member and former state legislator Miguel DeGrandy, who furiously rejected any notion of reform-- except in the area of commissioner salaries.

Yesterday's decision by the Governor and Cabinet (despite Bill McCullom's pandering to Miami-Dade campaign contributors and developers in other counties closely watching the proceedings) was a victory, but it was depressing too. This summer, a committee of Senate legislators is meeting to make a final assault on Growth Management: it wants to eliminate Growth Management altogether.

They-- Republicans-- have come up with the brilliant strategy that regulations are responsible for an economy in turmoil; the way to fix the economy is to further "streamline" permitting. The best way to streamline permitting? Eliminate state reviews of zoning changes and developer applications altogether. Especially environmental and land use laws. State Republican leaders are poll-testing new messages that reviving the economy depends on returning final decisions on growth to elected representatives at the local level, and not the state. Left to their own devices, they will do every time what the unreformable majority of the county commission does in Miami-Dade: do what their campaign contributors want.

They want to "Sunset" the Florida Department of Community Affairs, the agency that administers municipal and county growth plans throughout the state. After all, it was DCA who stood in the way of Lowe's and the unreformable majority.For Lowe's, the cost of waging the UDB battle in Miami-Dade shows up as a rounding error in a marketing budget. In other words, it is the cost of doing business. The attorneys at Holland and Knight and Greenberg Traurig are waiting for their next bite at the apple. The unreformable majority of the county commission is a gift that keeps giving because none are accountable except to the gears and ratios of unsustainable development.