17 Foot Python Slithered Onto The Property of Okeechobee Florida Veterinary Clinic.

This is the biggest one yet! The constrictor stretched 17 feet, 2 inches and measured 26 inches around at its thickest point. It weighed in at a staggering 207 pounds. Florida is overrun with this invasive species. Pet owners in Florida are releasing the critters to a very hospitable breeding ground.

The veterinarian killed the snake with head shots from a .22 caliber rifle the Miami Herald said. Though it's illegal to shoot them in state wildlife management areas or federal lands, the FWC says pythons can be legally shot on private property.

County Commissioner Katy Sorenson Strikes Back. By Geniusofdespair

You will remember (LOL, like you actually would) my July 27th post asking why County Commissioner Katy Sorenson joined the Vile Natacha Seijas led Unreformable Majority in a vote on adjourning the meeting without setting a tax rate. Sorenson defends her vote to the Miami Herald Editorial Board in a letter to the Editor today: (Damn, I can't find it online...I have to type it?? nah, it is Saturday, I will scan).

On Miami 21 by Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk

The following was sent out as an email to wide distribution and is reprinted with the author's permission.

"At long last Miami 21 is coming before the City Commission for first reading. As an observer of the process you can understand that there are a variety of naysayers, from those who are fearful of such a complex and thorough change, to those who feel the effort has fallen short of acceptable goals, to those whose individual interest is at odds with city-wide benefit. I am writing to ask you to participate in the City Commission hearing August 6th at 2:00PM in support of the proposed zoning code.

This is a code to prepare the city for a transit-oriented, walkable, energy-conserving future. This effort has had extensive public participation and has been thoroughly responsive to individual concerns as they have been raised. (please click, 'read more')

Is it 100% perfect? Probably all would agree that it is not. However, it is a great advance over the existing code. Some of these advances are: an entirely new Chapter 23 for historic preservation that includes transfer of development rights; a response to neighborhood preservationists with a smaller single-family building envelope responding to the outcry over Mc Mansions; more appropriate transitions from commercial corridors to residential neighborhoods, a new medium-density urban townhouse and low rise apartment type; higher density building types providing wider sidewalks and pedestrian passages in overly long blocks; building liners to conceal garages; a new use type allowing live-work – including in industrial areas. Miami 21 also includes a Public Benefit Program designed to assist the City with its growing needs in terms of affordable housing, parks and open spaces, green buildings, civic infrastructure and brownfield redevelopments.

The overall Miami 21 project includes as well the Parks and Public Spaces Master Plan (by Goody Clancy), the Climate Action Plan, the Bicycle Action Plan, designation of new historic districts – all very much coordinated with the proposed zoning code.

Miami 21 cannot satisfy all its critics. However, it represents tremendous improvement over current regulations. I hope you can join us at the City Commission meeting and/or write a letter to City Commission. We need possible voices to give our City Commissioners the confidence to support the code. Please let me know if I can do something to enable your support."

Now this is cute! By Geniusofdespair

I am so tired of looking at pictures of kids and having to say they are cute. This is what a cute kid looks like.

This kid, waiting to go back in a pool, has attitude. Love the body language. Love the photo taken by Carles Trainor Jr. for the Miami Herald. If there is a race, you just know this is the kid to beat.

Michelle Spence-Jones Campaign Report 4/01-6/30/09. By Geniusofdespair

Spence-Jones has collected $114,352 so far. Popular with Lennar Applications on the wrong side of the UDB, the trio: Planner Rob Curtis, Economist Andy Dolkart and Traffic “Expert” Cathy Sweetapple gave $500 apiece. Ick.

Lawyers Holland, Larkin, Radell, Berkow, Lasarte, Kasdin, Zinn, Lawrence, Sokol all gave $500. Law Firm of Weiss Serota Helfman gave $500. Linda Haskins gave $500 and Roosevelt Bradley gave her $300. Gatehouse Group (Affordable Housing) gave $500. Ron Book and his family gave $3,500. An Attorney named Manny Diaz and his Corp. gave her $1,000. There was also a wide array of developers but these were the ones I found most interesting.

Ale to the Chief!

Thanks, Harry and the Artist: Old Grover!

The SISO method of accounting for government budgets ... by gimleteye

"Shit in/ Shit Out", SISO, is the new method of accounting of property values to establish taxable property values in Florida. I'm still trying to understand why foreclosures and other distressed sales of homes are not considered "arm's length transactions" at a time when such sales dominate _real_ estate markets in South Florida. The point of this post is to talk a little about what is real and what is not.

If I understand Florida Department of Revenue rules correctly, only "arm's length transactions" are included in assessments for property tax purposes. What Eyeonmiami documented recently is that sales recorded in the Property Appraiser database are remaining at assessed value of the sale preceeding the transaction under foreclosure or distress. Although this method of accounting appears to be within DOR rules, those rules probably should be changed. Why? Because foreclosures and distressed property sales were always considered to be the exception and not the rule.

Not only are distressed sales the rule in the majority of transactions in South Florida (at least), it also appears that Florida counties are not using the same standards to assess property tax rolls. This led to a further question: the S&P/Case Shiller data for performance of housing markets is assembled by an independent company, Fiserv Inc. It claims to be using "proprietary" techniques to evaluate housing markets. Beyond that simple statement, I haven't been able to establish what are the "real" rules for the S&P/Case Shiller data. Given everything else that has gone wrong in the last year and a half, in estimating the depth of the economic crisis, doubt is warranted.

The public deserves to know what is "in" the numbers that portray the housing markets as stabilizing, or, falling "less quickly". I haven't been reassured by answers-- incomplete as they are-- to this point. I'll share that information with blog readers as it is provided. While consumers are worried about the value of their home-- the biggest asset for most Americans, confidence in the economy and government continues to fall. Questions about the veracity of data of housing markets lead directly to related doubts about the size of government budget deficits.

In the case of foreclosures or homes selling in some stage of distress, there is a huge difference between what homes are selling for, and in many cases-- the assessed value for tax purposes. Homeowners will be questioning-- especially if homes were purchased during the boom years-- why their assessments have not been lowered. From local government's point of view, assessed values need to stay high in order to deliver revenue based on millage rates. If assessed values fall, the millage rate will have to go up. Unless housing markets recover, the budget deficits are likely to increase-- not stabilize. It will take years and years to work through the growing number of vacant homes: on banks' books, as foreclosures, as failed condominium associations, and Community Development Districts.

Instead of establishing the true parameters of the housing market implosion, the crisis is providing opportunity for the home builders and construction and development lobby to knock down laws and barriers to further "streamlined" zoning and permitting changes. It just happened in the Florida legislature. The Republican majority in the legislature is desperately trying to eliminate the government agency charged with growth management: the Florida Department of Community Affairs.

With elected officials like Gov. Charlie Crist, the industry has found pliable collaborators. For the sacrifices taxpayers are being asked to make, the least they are owed is honesty: honesty in data and honesty in what our taxes are paying for and guaranteeing. So far, it's just SISO.

Hold the Line Gal At 30 Weeks. By Geniusofdespair

Celebrating the Victory for the Hold the Line Campaign -- Namely, stopping the Lowe's Application -- Madeline Mateo dances around at Big Cypress Preserve. That belly might look familiar, in an earlier stage, from my June 29th post on the Hold The Line Beach Party. Getting close Madeline!

Miami Today: time to get the facts straight on economy... by gimleteye

Michael Lewis' editorial in Miami Today begins: "Miami-Dade is playing a perilous game of hot potato with a 13% tax increase plan, exacerbating the worst recession in 70 years." I think I know what Mr. Lewis' point of view is: that government must cut, cut, and cut to bring expenditures in line with revenues. He should come out and say it. But Mr. Lewis needs to recalibrate his facts.

The problem is deeper than Mr. Lewis acknowledges. He writes, "... Newly elected Property Appraiser Pedro Garcia... had to set a ceiling high enough to cover county spending a year ago, called the rollback rate. That, coupled with the 9.5% fall in countywide appraisals, required a 13% rate hike ceiling." Problem number one: the facts are wrong. Real property appraisals in Miami-Dade exclude or limit inclusions of foreclosures under Department of Revenue rules. Since the majority of real estate sales are occurring under some form of property in distress, and since those figures are substantially EXCLUDED from the tax base, revenues will be much, much lower than predicted. That means that to balance the budget, the tax increase would have to be substantially higher than 13 percent.

I think your government knows this perfectly well, and so should Mr. Lewis. Eyeonmiami detailed the confusion in posts late last week: I am continuing to try to untangle the data sources and facts-- but clearly, the mainstream media is part of the problem. Mr. Lewis is right: we are "in the worst recession in 70 years". But our current circumstances require accurate data. The profound lack of public confidence-- showing up in statistics-- is because people feel that we are not being told the truth. Fixing that problem starts with getting the facts straight.

Michael Lewis Calls County Commission Buck Passing on Setting Tax Rate a Hot Potato. By Geniusofdespair

Michael Lewis in Miami Today says of the County Commission's decision to adjourn rather than set a tax rate (their most important duty by the way):

Miami-Dade is playing a perilous game of hot potato with a 13% tax increase plan, exacerbating the worst recession in 70 years. And:
Those who orchestrated the game expect it to play out this way:
Commissioners can decry Mr. Garcia's (Property Appraiser) huge hike, though he had no hand in it.

Who is responsible for orchestrating the game? Could it be Vile Natacha Seijas? Over Chairman Moss's call of "Out of Order", Natacha proposed to end the meeting and leave the tax rate up to the Property Appraiser. The Commission voted to overrule Moss and listen to their actual leader. Lewis says "The rate ceiling that Mr. Garcia was required to announce would raise county taxes on a $250,000 home an average of $317.50, varying with exemptions."

Community Development Districts (CDD): what next? by gimleteye

An eagle-eyed reader directed me to a website I haven't seen before: housingcrisis.com, and a long post: "Ground under repair: Florida's CDD comeuppance".

Back in the boom days, beginning in the late 1990's, Community Development Districts began to pop up all over the place, especially in South Miami-Dade farmland. These Districts were bullet-proof from public criticism and objections. What the developers said, and what made the county commissioners nod in vigorous asset, was that CDD's were entities that "covered the costs of growth". The special taxing districts, in other words, could pay for all the infrastructure, including schools, whose costs often got in the way of favorable zoning decisions.

It comes as no surprise, then, that these Community Development Districts are crashing-- right alongside individual home markets and, in doing so, are dragging down all the promises that helped "sell" these big developments in South Miami Dade that are now emergent Ghost Towns. Housingcrisis.com does not take a look at South Florida CDD's, but local newspapers should: the aggregate "value"-- a term I use with irony-- is in the hundreds of millions of dollars, now burning a hole in some financial institutions balance sheet, stoppered by the financial guarantees of US taxpayers.

The blog writes: "Some of the hugeness of the CDD problem in Florida may be the precise measure of its solution, as the massive de-leveraging of the economy and resetting of asset values grinds its way toward a solution. Take the toxicity out of the asset and you’ve got an asset of some value or other. That’s where the big question is: Is an asset that was worth a dollar in 2006 worth a dime today? Or 40 cents? Or 85 cents?"

Clearly, all those CDD's that scooted by public objection-- turning potato and row crop farmland into abject, awful housing by Lennar, for instance, in South Dade-- should be causing voters to ask the question of elected officials: how could you have approved so many worthless developments and how much is the liability to taxpayers now that the CDD's are defunct?

"The markets haven’t decided on the new value base: Large bondholders are weighing their options—owning land or cashing out for pennies, Bank lenders are likely to be wiped out since their debt is junior to bondholders, Cash vulture investors are circling, awaiting blood..."

But here is the one that grabs my attention: "Mitigation of off-site expenditures need resolving." Let me put it to you this way: many of these CDD's succeeded because developers promised to provide infrastructure; roads, water connections, water treatment plants, schools, etc. etc." Community activists who were shooed away from the speakers podium at zoning meetings, because their concerns "were being addressed" by developers, should now be allowed to come back. Who is going to bail out the taxpayers?

If any of our readers live in CDD's in South Dade, I would like to hear your experiences.


"GROUND UNDER REPAIR–FLORIDA’S CDD COMEUPPANCE

As often we do, we start here with a dream. In this case, the dream was of 1,750 acres near the West Coast, the Gulf side of Florida, north of Fort Myers, south of Port Charlotte, i.e. arguably, the middle of nowhere. Starting out as raw dirt in late 2005, it would in the next half-dozen years become a thriving place for 738 garden condos, 504 mid-rise condos, 208 coach homes, 360 single-family homes, a golf course, fitness center, a 60-room hotel, as well as 85 units of commercial office space.

To jumpstart the dream–known as the Tern Bay Country Club Resort–developers set up a local quasi-government that Florida statutes allow to create special purpose districts. This entity, called a Community Development District, has the financial and operational clout to move a project from being mere dream on paper to reality, where real people buy the 1,810 or so homes, and live the American Dream–owning a home in one of Florida’s brand new communities.

To do that, the CDD gets power to collect tax payments from the property owner or property owners—first, the developer, and then, progressively, the home buyers. Other states have an equivalent; California has its Mellow-Roos Community Facilities Districts that act the same way. Texas has them too.

The kicker is this: just like a shark has to move constantly and eat often, a new CDD has to be propelled forward by demand for new homes to live. When growth stops, the youngest of these things die of asphyxiation.

With the tax payments assured of coming in from property owners, developers and, one believed, a seemingly endless flow of new homeowners, CDDs also have the power to issue bond debt on those present and future payments. In 2005, Tern Bay’s CDD issued $58 million in bond debt to fund infrastructure like roads, water supply, sewers, amenities, and to “put down the lots.” The principal contractor to buy the lots and build was Lennar Homes. In addition to the almost $60 million in bond debt, Ocean Bank also fronted $61 million for the project as the first mortgage holder.

Fast-forward two years, to 2007. More than $33 million in development costs later, Lennar cuts loose from the project. Developer Priority Developers walks as well, apparently forgetting to tell the golf course lawn mower service to stop cutting the grass. The CDD starts missing its payment obligations on operations and management, and the project tailspins into default. Said golf course lawn mower service, Hawkins Environmental, Inc., winds up at an advertised foreclosure sale on June 29, 2007, and walks away with title to the entire tract for $100.

Wait a minute. Weren’t we just tallying total debt—bond and bank mortgage–on Tern Bay at more than $120 million? Yes. What happens, then, when a lawn mowing company picks up title to 1,750 acres for $100? Well, now he owes bond holders a lot of money, is what. Clearly, it’s a mess.

“Prior to May 2008, we had exactly one default in all the years we’ve been doing this, and now we’ve got 90-plus that are in various stages of distress,” says Ed Bulleit, a managing director at Prager, Sealy & Co., which has underwritten the lion’s share of CDD bond issuances since their 1990s creation. “When CDDs were set up in the 1990s, they represented a small component of the capital stack available to the developer. Like everything else, they overgrew during the 2004 to 2007 period because of the intense demand for instruments for liquidity.”

For more than a year, Tern Bay has been slogging through foreclosure proceedings, and the legal complexities are too numerous to go into. Now, multiply the Tern Bay case by say 120 or 130 times, with upwards of $2 billion in bond debt at risk, collateralizing land that may be worthless or at least far less than the face-value of the bonds outstanding.

In round figures, estimates of 100 to 150 are number of CDDs set up in Florida during the go-go years 2003 to 2007 that are either already in distress or are likely headed for default and foreclosure. All told, there are just under 400 Florida CDDs, with about $8 billion in bond debt outstanding.

The highest casualty rate is for CDDs that cropped up as scores of new dots up and down both coasts of Florida’s map during the great real estate surge. Billions of dollars in bond money has been spent on vast tracts with roads, sewer and water, parks, golf courses, etc., with tens of thousands of finished lots ready to go, and going no where. The means for bond holders to get their money back has evaporated as paths of growth morphed into trails to real estate paralysis–and as values of everything have plummeted–the land itself is worth a fraction of the money spent on horizontal development.

Tern Bay is viewed by many Florida real estate pros as the poster child of CDDs gone bad. Since reality has scrunched everyone’s rose-colored eyeglasses to a thousand pieces, the dream is now seen for what it was—a pipedream—and what it is—a nightmare. Other CDDs that have hit the wall in Florida include Cordoba Ranch in Hillsborough County, Southern Hills in Hernando, Grand Hampton in Hillsborough, River Hill in Lee County, Bridgewater in Polk County.

Ironically, though. Some of the hugeness of the CDD problem in Florida may be the precise measure of its solution, as the massive de-leveraging of the economy and resetting of asset values grinds its way toward a solution. Take the toxicity out of the asset and you’ve got an asset of some value or other. That’s where the big question is: Is an asset that was worth a dollar in 2006 worth a dime today? Or 40 cents? Or 85 cents?

The markets haven’t decided on the new value base
Large bondholders are weighing their options—owning land or cashing out for pennies
Bank lenders are likely to be wiped out since their debt is junior to bondholders
Cash vulture investors are circling, awaiting blood
Mitigation of off-site expenditures need resolving

Mayday Mayday

Mayday comes from the French “m’aidez,” and is globally understood as code for “We’re in big, big trouble here, so help now!” That’s precisely what May Day has come to mean in the world of Florida’s CDDs. Like so many of real estate’s pretty good ideas-gone-terribly-wrong, CDDs’ immediate past has been caught up in a billion-dollar vortex where easy money instantly swung to rack and ruin.

As it turns out, a CDD’s interest and principal payments on bonds come due twice a year, May 1 and November 1, with May 1 being the more important. When things go right, CDD’s collect assessments as property taxes and make payments vs. “A Bonds” from homeowners’ property taxes over an extended period, and “B Bonds” from assessments to developers and builders who are phasing through their plan, usually within seven years.

Last year, things started not to go right, and this year they went wrong. Around May 1 of this year, 80-plus CDDs defaulted on payments they needed to make to fulfill obligations to bondholders who invested upfront dollars so that developers and builders could put in infrastructure.

CDD distress has its phases. When money stops coming in via the tax assessments to businesses and homeowners, the district may no longer be able to pay operations and management fees first. That’s a no-no that trips covenants. Depending on how bad things get quickly, a CDD may not be able to make its interest and principal payment on May 1. They tap their emergency reserve fund so that bondholders get paid, but then they’re technically in default.

The CDD, working in the fiduciary interest of the bondholders as senior to all other debt—including first mortgage bank debt—can decide to proceed toward foreclosure.

What’s likely in at least some of the cases is that the CDD will go from being a paper asset to a real estate asset. Bondholders will need to decide whether to take a little cash and run far away from the instrument, or to take the land just like a bank takes land back as real estate owned, and possibly hold it until volume comes back to normal and it may regain a value.

“There’s no single solution for all of these districts. It depends where they are; how far along in development they are, what the disposition of the bondholder to wait or not is, many, many factors that make each one different when you approach restructuring,” says William Rizzetta, president of Rizzetta & Co., which performs financial and operational management more than 100 CDDs, and is the largest company of its kind.

Still, their future as a sensible financial building block for planned residential development is in question. Who gets burned and how much will no doubt reset risk and reward levels around their use.

Part of the ironic so what for home builders is this: If they could get their hands on at least some of the finished lots soon, for as little as they’d have to pay for them, they could build and sell highly affordable homes and generate cash to live through another quarter. Estimates of as many of 80,000 to 90,000 finished lots are tied up in CDDs whose future remains uncertain.

So, in a sense, while the resolution of CDDs heading to foreclosure can take more than 12 months, there’s actually a shortage of lots in Florida, a shortage of lots that can pencil to sell into today’s market.

In early July, Rizzetta was to host a meeting among the larger CDD bondholders –Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Oppenheimer Funds, Van Kampen Investments, Vanguard, Nuveen, and Alliance Bernstein Investments. “We want to make sure the lines of communication are open and that we’re hearing face to face what the concerns are and where there might be opportunities to work through some restructuring of the bond debt in some cases,” says Rizzetta.

For the bondholders’ part, CDDs were never the sexiest play, although they became kind of flashy during the run up. But while the expectations were never that high, they certainly weren’t supposed to be such big losers. So, the dilemma over whether to hit eject or become landowners will come to the fore as more and more of the districts fail to perform."

More on the Sex Offenders and The Dave Aronberg Fix. By Geniusofdespair

After I watched the FOX video I posted yesterday of State Senator Dave Aronberg speaking about the issue, I was pretty shocked. He said that sex offenders were only there at night."What??"

Indeed that is true, this was in Newsweek:
At the Julia Tuttle camp, the sex offenders begin trickling in around dusk. It is a squalid and dreary place. The air is thick and stifling, reeking of human feces and of cat urine from all the strays that live there. Overhead, the bridge drones and trembles with six lanes of traffic.

So, let me get this straight. All day most of the sex offenders can run free (when kids are actually in the schools, libraries and parks) but must be under the bridge by nightfall, when kids are NOT in the schools, libraries and parks. This 2,500 foot law is only in effect while dark? Some law. This is what happens when you leave it to a lobbyist to fix a problem.

Aronberg's bill proposes more electronic monitoring so we know where sex offenders are at all times, 24 hour a day 300 feet restriction from parks, schools and libraries and a Statewide 1,500 feet living restriction.

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.

Lowe's Loss - See the Video of the Cabinet Meeting and Read the Herald Article. By Geniusofdespair

The county will now live with the decision, said Assistant County Attorney Dennis Kerbel. But Martha Harrell Chumbler, the lawyer who represented Lowe's, said that her client will decide in the next 30 days whether to appeal the ruling. - Miami Herald and:
Miami-Dade County Commissioner Joe Martinez, who championed the Lowe’s application, said he was disappointed by the ruling and hoped Lowe’s would continue its fight. - The South Florida Business Journal

Watch the Cabinet Meeting on the Lowe's application to move the Urban Development Boundary.
The discussion begins at 41:00 on the counter but don't bother going to the link if you don't have Real Audio Player. Here is the Miami Herald article (that McCollum is a real idiot):

Florida Cabinet thwarts plan to alter Miami-Dade development boundary

By MARY ELLEN KLAS
Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau

Gov. Charlie Crist and Cabinet members sent Miami-Dade and other urban counties a message Tuesday when they rejected the county's attempt to move the development line west to accommodate a Lowe's Superstore.

Crist and the Cabinet, voting 3-1, agreed with an administrative law judge that the county violated the state's Growth Management Act when it expanded the urban development boundary for the home improvement center.

Environmentalists and urban planners hailed the decision, saying it sets a precedent for dealing with counties that attempt to bend state growth management laws and allow sprawl. They hope the ruling will halt attempts by politically powerful developers who are seeking to move development boundaries in other counties, including the creation of a new suburb on the Everglades' doorstep in Miami-Dade called Parkland.

"You can't hire a consultant to sort of gerrymander a needs analysis to determine the outcome," said Richard Grosso, a lawyer who represented the National Parks Conservation Association and 1000 Friends of Florida in the case.
He said counties like Miami-Dade can't "justify moving the boundary for the next parcel" just because it's next to farmland. "It's a boundary for a reason."

In Miami-Dade, the Urban Development Boundary, or UDB, is a demarcation line that runs along the western and southern edges of the county and limits development to one dwelling per five acres outside its borders. Lowe's sought the boundary change in order to build a store at the intersection of Tamiami Trail and Southwest 137th Avenue on a 52-acre parcel.

The Cabinet decision was a blow to county commissioners who twice overrode a veto by Mayor Carlos Alvarez and pushed through the changes based on a consultant's analysis that said there was a need for the Lowe's store in the region. Alvarez had argued that the county had enough commercial space and the expansion wasn't needed.

APPEAL BY LOWE'S?
The county will now live with the decision, said Assistant County Attorney Dennis Kerbel. But Martha Harrell Chumbler, the lawyer who represented Lowe's, said that her client will decide in the next 30 days whether to appeal the ruling.

`WRONG STANDARD'
Chumbler told the governor and Cabinet that the judge's ruling was flawed because he failed to consider an analysis that showed the community needed general commercial development. ``The wrong standard of review has been applied,'' she said.
In a separate case, the panel also agreed with Judge Bram D.E. Canter that the county was within the law when it approved another amendment for a 42-acre commercial development at the western end of Kendall Drive, known as the Brown tract.
Miami-Dade's Department of Planning and Zoning had urged denial of that change as well, saying there was plenty of available space inside the boundary lines. But Canter said the exception was justified because of the unusual configuration and location of the parcel and because it set no precedent for future developers wishing to move the UDB line.

Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson was the lone no vote.

But Attorney General Bill McCollum also seemed to waver. When he was first asked his vote, he responded: ``I didn't say no.'' Twenty minutes later, he amended his vote to ``yes'' and explained that he still had questions about the issue.

`I'M NOT SURE'
``I'm not sure which side is correct on it,'' McCollum said after the meeting. ``It seems to me there is an argument and it may go to court to challenge it.''

He said that because he was in doubt, he voted to approve the staff recommendation to reject the Lowe's amendment and approve the Brown amendment.

Mary Ellen Klas can be reached at meklas@MiamiHerald.com

Sex Offenders: Where are the bible thumpers when you need them? By Geniusofdespair

I hate the predators but not so much the sex offenders. Whatever, I am not here to figure that part out. I am just trying to understand how someone can serve their time for a crime and then be subject to living under a bridge or to live in a converted jail (that is pretty absurd but that is what they are proposing). We let murderers out of prison and many do it again, but we don't punish them like the sexual offenders. We might have a convicted murderer living next door to us this very moment and we wouldn't know it.

I just keep thinking about this because it reaches deep into my...I can't think of a word...sense of self? Soul? I think about these men and women, many afflicted with mental conditions, that on the one hand I cannot empathize with because of the nature of their crimes but on the other hand they are fellow human beings so I do. I wonder how we can all sit in our homes and think that requiring a released prisoner to live under a bridge is okay. Yes, it was amusing at first but they are there for years now! Mr. Book and Commissioner Pepe Diaz: They are not animals. Something has gone horribly wrong in Miami. I don't have any answers. I just know when something isn't right and this isn't.

State Minority Whip (Attorney General hopeful) Dave Aronberg has a fix (yes this is a FOX video but it is good):

STUNNING VICTORY FOR US - End of the Line for LOWE'S Outside the UDB! By Geniusofdespair

The governor and cabinet's Final Order said Lowes Big Box Store was found out of compliance and they also limited the precedential adverse impact of the Brown Amendment.

The County is ordered to rescind the Ordinance allowing the Lowe's store on the other side of the Urban Development Boundary within 60 days. The unreformable majority on the County Commission that originally approved it should hang their heads.

Barbara Jordan's Aide, Not a Gator Fan. By Geniusofdespair

A few years back I went to Barbara Jordan's district office for an appointment where 2 Aides, instead of Jordan, were trotted out to meet with us; two burly guys. The men were were very polite and friendly. We got to talking and both admitted they had never been to the Everglades (both born and raised here). The bigger of the two admitted to a fear of alligators. When I left I wondered how many of our Commissioners and their staff have never ventured a few miles to the West of their districts into the vast acreage of Everglades National Park. I thought to myself: "How can you protect what you don't understand or know?" If in one's mind it is just a swamp that is a repository for dangerous alligators, it would make sense to let development creep into the buffer lands. Did they understand the link to our drinking water supply, or the importance of the birds nesting there? No. Shopping Centers are a lot more friendly to some than nature when uneducated. Herald: Do a survey, find out how many at County Hall have been to this important National Park.

Florida to Blue Dog Democrats: go where you are needed most. Sarah Palin needs a retriever ... by gimleteye

On health care reform, Florida Congressman Allen Boyd is doing no favors to citizens. ""What's the sense of getting a health care reform that, when we go down the road six or eight or 10 years, you've got a worse problem than we've got now?" the Monticello Democrat said Wednesday. "If we're going to do this, we need to get it right." (Florida Today, July 28, 2009)

But the Blue Dog Democrats are making no sense, as Paul Krugman points out in the New York Times. ("An Incoherent Truth", July 26, 2009) "Maybe they’re just being complete hypocrites. It’s worth remembering the history of one of the Blue Dog Coalition’s founders: former Representative Billy Tauzin of Louisiana. Mr. Tauzin switched to the Republicans soon after the group’s creation; eight years later he pushed through the 2003 Medicare Modernization Act, a deeply irresponsible bill that included huge giveaways to drug and insurance companies. And then he left Congress to become, yes, the lavishly paid president of PhRMA, the pharmaceutical industry lobby. One interpretation, then, is that the Blue Dogs are basically following in Mr. Tauzin’s footsteps: if their position is incoherent, it’s because they’re nothing but corporate tools, defending special interests. And as the Center for Responsive Politics pointed out in a recent report, drug and insurance companies have lately been pouring money into Blue Dog coffers."

For the 2010 election cycle, Congressman Boyd already has $1,589,000 on hand, compared to challenger state senator Al Lawson, with $38,000. You have to give credit to the other side: they know an opportunity when they see it. The eight members of the Blue Dog Coalition are playing right into the hands of the so-called "fiscal conservatives" who crashed the economy onto the rocks of the worst crisis since the Depression. Here is a way to send a message to Congressman Boyd: call his Tallahassee office: (850) 561-3979 the Blue Dogs are needed most in Alaska, where Sarah Palin is looking for retrievers.

Sea level rise in Florida ... Now is the time to prepare for the great floods... is anyone in Miami listening? by gimleteye

"If we want to build a lasting legacy for our descendants, we should do so on the plentiful land that is in no danger from the sea." That's the ending of a July 1 editorial in New Scientist Magazine, "Now is the time to prepare for the great floods". (reprinted below)

In Florida we are not even close to "acting" on land use restrictions for new development in future flood plains. I served as Mayor Alvarez' appointee on the Miami Dade Climate Change Advisory Task Force during its first year, along with dozens of other volunteers who brought a wide range of experience to the subject. The one constituency that wasn't represented: South Florida builders.

In the recent session of the Florida legislature, the building and construction lobby promoted a new law to make state review of land use planning even weaker than it is, today. They are agitating to entirely do away with the state agency charged with growth management in the next session of the state legislature. So, on the one hand we have a clarion call for attention to "preparing for the great floods" and, on the other hand, we have industry doing everything in its considerable power to do the opposite: "keep building in flood plains". The US Army Corps of Engineers is promoting a new "roadshow" in Florida: "a full day of interaction with Corps Project Managers to discuss helpful tips for streamlining permitting." Florida Power and Light has amassed an army of engineers and lobbyists to secure permitting for two new nuclear reactors at sea level at the edge of Biscayne National Park, including transmission lines for its "needed capacity" in the middle of an extremely low lying portion of Everglades National Park. The FPL boondoggle, whose planning costs are already being fronted by ratepayers, will likely exceed $20 billion. The question arises with every inch of lifting seas; who will pay to decommission nuclear reactors at sea level as a matter of a public emergency? No one is asking this question, except on the blogs. Florida's builders who only care about getting the sheet rock flowing and the nail guns shooting give new meaning to the label, "radical extremists".

Read the editorial from New Scientist Magazine, here:

Now is the time to prepare for the great floods

01 July 2009
New Scientist Magazine issue 2715.

THREE key facts about rising sea levels need to be hammered home to the world's politicians and planners: sea-level rise is now inevitable, it will happen faster than most of us thought, and it will go on for a very long time.

Even if greenhouse gas emissions stopped tomorrow, the oceans will continue to swell as they warm, and as glaciers and ice sheets melt or slide into the sea (see "Going, going..."). The growing consensus among climate scientists is that the "official" estimate of sea-level rise in the last report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - 0.2 to 0.6 metres by 2100 - is misleading. It could well be in the region of 1 to 2 metres, with a small risk of an even greater rise. And barring a megaproject to cool the planet, it could take several thousand years for the system to reach equilibrium - by which time sea level will be somewhere between 10 and 25 metres higher than it is today.

For many islands and low-lying regions, including much of the Netherlands, Florida and Bangladesh, even small rises will spell catastrophe. Most countries, however, will only lose a tiny percentage of their land, even with a very big rise. The problem is what has been built on that land: large parts of London, New York, Sydney and Tokyo, to mention just a few cities. Unless something can be done, great swathes of urban sprawl will vanish beneath the waves. It will take a massive engineering effort to protect these cities - an effort that may be beyond economies that have been brought to their knees by climate change.

In a few hundred years, large parts of London, New York and Sydney will vanish beneath the waves
None of this means we should despair, and stop trying to curb emissions; the more we pump into the atmosphere, the higher and faster the seas will rise. But alongside these efforts, we need to start acting now to minimise the impact of future sea-level rise. That means we must stop building in the danger zone.

Countless billions are being spent on constructing homes, offices, factories and roads in vulnerable coastal areas. For instance, the glittering skyscrapers of Shanghai, China's economic powerhouse, are being built on land that is a mere 4 metres above sea level on average, and which is sinking under the weight of its buildings and as water is extracted from the rocks beneath them.

In cities that have been around for hundreds of years, this sort of development may be understandable. But planning for new coastal developments is to fly in the face of reality. If we want to build a lasting legacy for our descendants, we should do so on the plentiful land that is in no danger from the sea. It is one of the easiest ways to mitigate climate change, and we should be acting on it now.

****

back to article

To print this article, open the file menu and choose Print.
Florida Keys could be lost to rising seas


The Associated Press

Published: Sunday, July 12, 2009 at 7:32 a.m.
KEY WEST, Fla. — Treasure salvors searching for an 18th-century wreck in the Florida Straits a few years ago made a fascinating but little noticed discovery. Not buried treasure. Buried land.

Some 35 miles west of Key West, in 45 feet of water under a five-foot layer of dense mud lay an 8,500-year-old shoreline not unlike today's coast of the Florida Keys. There were well-preserved mangroves, pine cones and pine tree pieces, some amazingly still fragrant when brought to the surface.

"Looking at it, I was thinking: 'Wow, this could be the shoreline of Big Pine Key,'" said Corey Malcom, director of archaeology for the Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society.

The prehistoric past paints a sobering picture of what many experts see as an all-too-near future for the string of low-lying islands that make up the Florida Keys.

"South Florida is on the front line against sea-level rise in the United States, and the Florida Keys are ground zero," said Evan Flugman, who co-authored a Florida International University report on the importance of Monroe County tackling the issue now.

By 2100, under the best-case predictions of a seven-inch sea-level rise by an international climate panel, the Keys would lose about 59,000 acres of real estate worth $11 billion, according to the nonprofit Nature Conservancy.

Under the panel's worst-case projection of ocean waters rising 23.2 inches, about 75 percent of the Keys 154,000 acres and nearly 50 percent of its $43 billion property value could become submerged. Consequences also include the loss of habitat for many endangered plants and species, including Key deer.

And the panel's predictions are conservative in comparison to some scientists' calculations.

The eye-opening projections were presented at a June meeting in Marathon to urge Monroe County Mayor George Neugent, other Keys leaders and residents to develop long-term plans to deal with climate change. Unlike Miami-Dade and Broward counties, the Keys do not have a climate change task force.

The charts displayed at the meeting, which depicted disappearing land, weren't intended as scare tactics. As Chris Bergh, the Nature Conservancy's director of coastal and marine resilience for Florida, said: "Nobody is going to drown from sea-level rise."

In the last century, waters in the Keys gradually rose nine inches, an amount that caught the attention of scientists but few others. But if a growing consensus of climate predictions for this century prove true, rising waters will become impossible to ignore.

"This presentation is not to make anybody panic and run out and sell their property; I live on Big Pine and am trying to add onto my home," Bergh said. "It's designed to make people think and get better information."

During the presentation, Patrick Gleason, a geologist and member of the Broward County Climate Change Committee, noted that South Florida is among the world's more vulnerable areas, due to low elevation and a porous limestone base.

A Nature Conservancy study mapped out the potential ecological and economic consequences of rising seas for the Keys, particularly Big Pine Key. Yet the FIU study concluded that little has been done to plan for climate change in the Keys.

"If we are the canary in the coal mine, let's start tweeting," said the Nature Conservancy's Florida Keys conservation manager Alison Higgins, who also serves as president of the Keys' nonprofit Green Living Energy Education.

James Murley, appointed by Gov. Charlie Crist as chairman of the Florida Energy & Climate Commission, said Monroe County should take advantage of its state designation as an area of critical concern. He said the county should seek help from the state and nearby climate change task forces.

Murley, who lives part time in Key West, acknowledged that "there are still a lot of science questions out there. But go with what you know and start makings plans, which you can adjust."

Experts at the Keys meeting said any plan to address rising seas should include mitigation to help reduce greenhouse gases that are accelerating sea-level rise and adaptation to cope with the consequences.

"Some people think, 'Let's put up sea walls, build New Orleans' type dikes and levees,'" Bergh said. "But that won't work for the porousness of rock and sand in the Keys."

Residents attending the meeting offered their own suggestions. One said the Keys should clean up toxic sites that could pollute the sea. Another suggested raising the roadbeds every time a road is repaved.

Already, though, scientists say the Keys have seen the results of climate change, from coral reef bleaching to loss of land. Standing in about a foot of salt water that now fills a 1950s mosquito control ditch on Big Pine Key, Bergh showed how the sea already has saturated the once-dry spot. Pointing at a dead tree, he said: "The pines tell the story."

Under the international climate panel's best-case scenario, Big Pine Key would lose 16 percent of its land to the sea and another 11 percent of upland habitat for the endangered Key Deer and other rare species and plants.

Under the worst-case prediction, the sea would claim 51 percent of Big Pine Key, and leave only 4 percent of the island's pine forest and hardwood hammocks intact.

"Whatever we do, we are just buying time," Bergh said. "Ultimately, the sea will cover this whole place."

Merce Cunningham Dead at 90. By Geniusofdespair

I can't say I ever really appreciated Merce Cunningham's work, but some of you might be fans of his. He was an innovative choreographer.

Clarify the dismal record of late Florida Senate President Jim King ... by gimleteye

"Never held accountable", might be the byline of the obit for the late Senate president Jim King, (R) Jacksonville. (Florida Senate leader Jim King dies... long-time Florida Republican legislator known for one-liners and being passionate about healthcare issues, has died of pancreatic cancer. He was 69." And King was known for more.

An accurate summation of King's legacy would include the politician's key role in legislation suppressing civic engagement, splitting the environmental movement in Florida, and pushing Everglades restoration into the distance. I spent (or wasted as the case may be) a huge amount of time trying to rally citizen opposition to maneuvers that King supported as Senate President: the 2003 "Everglades Whenever Act" by Gov. Bush and his consigliere FDEP secretary David Struhs at the behest of Big Sugar to rewrite the critical 1994 legislation regulating Sugar's pollution of the Everglades.

But the worst of King's involvements against the public interest occurred a year earlier in 2002. That year, the Dayton News Journal put it this way: "On its merits, a bill to shut out the people's voices in order to streamline permit-processing for developers couldn't pass muster with most Florida legislators. Senate Bill 270 was simply badly written legislation that could stop their constituents from protesting harmful local development. But Senate Majority Leader Jim King, the bill's sponsor, was intent on getting it passed this year. So on the last day of the 2002 Legislature, he amended SB 270 to the popular Everglades Restoration Act (SB 813) that sailed through both houses. Now, cloaked in the imperial clothing of a do-good bill, the bad measure is on its way to the governor. ("Sen. King's Everglades foil: Veto essential after bad late-hour amendment", Daytona Beach News-Journal editorial, March 28, 2002) Of course the measure was signed into law.

An enormous amount of civic energy-- and support from editorial boards around the state-- went into trying to dissuade Gov. Bush and Senator King from their chosen path. These bills, now laws, were true stains on the record and must not go unnoticed. In the case of "The Everglades Whenever Act", after numerous legal challenges in federal court, its key provisions have been thrown out. Needless to say, challenging this law cost citizens dearly and the Everglades even more. The result of the 2002 anti-citizens legislation was arguably more damaging: it split the state's environmental movement in ways from which it has not recovered.

The decisions that Senator King was involved with clearly benefited the development industry and the fast-paced growth of the Jacksonville area during the late, great building boom-- now in cinders. One result-- the clamor to shift water resources by pipes from one area of the state to another-- has lately manifested in new legislation signed into law by Gov. Crist, further removing people and citizens from the decisions of the state's water management districts. A recent decision by the St. John's Water Management District to divert billions of gallons of water from historic Florida springs and rivers to the needs of suburban lawns and golf courses falls in that category.

These are important matters. Important history. In summing the life of a powerful state politician, they should not be buried without note.

Television, the American Landscape and the New Economy ... by gimleteye

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Sunday said he engineered the central bank's controversial actions over the past year because "I was not going to be the Federal Reserve chairman who presided over the second Great Depression." Bernanke either doesn't acknowledge or hasn't tapped into the new zeiteist on pay cable television-- where a raft of characters and plots are better leading indicators than those preoccupying Federal Reserve economists. If Washington doesn't know how to describe a Depression, Americans attracted to cable TV do.

In the real world where most TV viewers cope with a cratered housing market, vanished assets and expectations, talk of TARP funds and fiscal stimulus hardly register. Note to Federal Reserve: for American audiences the economy has been bad for so long, the entire notion of "rescue" is a faded joke. On today's menu of TV story lines: characters on the edge of pratfalling out of the middle class.

The zeitgeist of the new television connects to societal depression, not a mental recession or tea leaves featured in Time or Newsweek or advertiser-sponsored, network TV. In NBC's "The Office", there are whispers of layoffs, triggering panic, but no one is layed off who doesn't return. Everyone plays the edge of his or her comedic level of competence. Look, I'm a fan of "The Office". But in "Breaking Bad" on the AMC Channel, an incompetent drug addict turned thief gets his head crushed by a pinball machine in the course of a kidnapping. His girlfiend's fiendish response: get the meth from his pocket. It's a laugh, alright. In "Eastbound and Down", the retired home run king who lorded it over the protagonist gets his eye socket pulverized at a baseball "duel" meant to attract buyers to the local car dealership. No cars are sold, and it is very funny! The downbeat get their due on cable TV, if not in reality.

Today's television comedies on pay cable skewer the passive consumer. Clearly, that's not acceptable for any part of the economically challenged mainstream media, like advertiser sponsored television. Movie humor today is harmless, sophomoric and stripped of irony leaving only jokes about flatulence or premature ejaculation. Perhaps that is because international audiences-- for whom American movies are really targeted-- don't share the peculiar evolution of American awareness. They were never at the top of the economic order, so they don't experience the bitterness having fallen so far.

Drama and comedy always thrive at the edge of normal behavior, with characters who dive back and forth entertainingly. But today's best crop of television comedies are onto something new. In "Weeds", a suburban mom turns wily drug dealer battling Mexican drug lord screws one to safety while protecting her family in idealized middle class stability. In "Breaking Bad", a suburban high school chemistry teacher with cancer-- who cannot afford his cancer treatments without bankrupting his family-- starts freelancing as a maker and seller of crystal meth. In "The Riches", a family of gypsy grifters blend in seamlessly with the trappings of suburbia, cheating and winning with the flat-landers on adaptation strategies that viewers can only fantasize. In the new HBO "Hung" another teacher-- the second winningest basketball coach in Westlake history-- embarks on a career as a male escort to pay the bills and redeem himself with his twin Goths. In "East Bound and Down", a former pitcher in the Major Leagues parlays a failed career as a middle school athletic coach, boffing the Homecoming Queen now teacher in the same school, and pitches his comeback to the small Southern town where he was once a hero and now everyone is overweight and either teetering on the edge of ruin with sweetened ice tea. In HBO's new series, "Nurse Jackie", the last standing leg of the US economy-- healthcare--is the backdrop for a nurse who doesn't even look at the label or the number of the anti-depressants she is popping.

These comedies don't need to say the "green shoots" economy is a running joke. Place matters. In "Breaking Bad", in "Hung", and "True Blood", the opening sequences are visual montages of the creepy, dissolving American landscapes. This is the canvas of the new reality. "Hung" is set against the decrepit background of Detroit where solid middle class values--whatever they were-- went the way of abandoned factories. People still have lake boats to tool around on weekends, and there is still gasoline in the Porches of the anonymous, blinding anomie of suburban Arizona ("Breaking Bad") or California ("Weeds"). But the bottom line is its own horror: an American landscape so pockmarked with failed Chamber of Commerce values that you can only do one thing with the discrepancy between the idealized and the real: laugh or overdose.

The same, of course, holds true for the law. In Showtime's "Dexter" or "Damages", law enforcement, lawyers, and forensic detectives all thrive betraying their professional license requirements. The proliferation of drugs in American society is so obvious, prohibitive laws so ineffective that the plot lines glide straight through the obsessions of political "values". Those values voters? More likely or not snorting meth or spacing out on hash brownies or hiring the largest dong in Detroit or cheering Kenny in "East Bound and Down".

In the new television, what should be in the shadows is out in the open. This is, too, the playfulness of "Mad Men" that tracks the evolution of American advertising through the 1950's and 1960's. Today, there is no Cadillac in the year-end performance bonus. Just the Detroit high school coach figuring the commercial advantage of an extra large size penis by the inch, the housewife with a keen sense for making money selling pot by the ounce then kilo from her Corian kitchen countertop, the grifter without legal experience becoming legal counsel to a fraudulent real estate developer, the beaten down former baseball pitcher trading status as a has-been pro-baller for community acclaim: the more outrageous one can make the "getting by" in these difficult times, the funnier the premise.

In yesterday's TV interview, Fed Chief Bernanke described himself as "disgusted" at the circumstances that led to the biggest intervention by government in the economy since the Fed was formed in 1913. I'm going to guess that Mr. Bernanke is nowhere near as disgusted as the viewers supporting the new television. It is a form of silent protest against the modern version of a Depression that shows no "green shoots" for 99.8 percent of viewers.

That's why all we need is love, a little more Coke, and a little less of the real thing.

What is Wrong With This Picture? The Inclusion of Commissioner Katy Sorenson. By Geniusofdespair

Trading places with Commissioners Joe Martinez and Javier Souto, Katy Sorenson has joined the unreformable majority in a vote and a photo from the Miami Herald. Haven't really studied the issue, nor did I watch the meeting, but the Miami Herald Editorial Board seems to think she is wrong-headed for having voted to adjourn the meeting without having set a tax rate (cop-out). We know the rest of those pictured (Rolle, Jordan, Diaz Edmonson Barreiro and Vile Natacha Seijas) are just about always wrong on important issues, so the Herald could have a point. I know one thing for sure, I wouldn't want my picture included with this crew. Readers are saying Sorenson got a bum rap from the Herald. Be sure to read the comments.

Property Appraiser’s Records Are NOT Accurate in Florida and Miami-Dade is Worse. By Geniusofdespair

Eye on Miami reporter Gimleteye calls it "Contaminated Data" and looks at the larger implications. I just find it wacko that the Florida Department of Revenue will not allow counties in Florida to count distressed sales which means the entire State of Florida’s Property Appraisers are not counting half the properties changing ownership in their assessments under the guise of distressed. Worse it is not uniform, in Miami-Dade ALL foreclosures are distressed but in Broward County it is SOME foreclosures. In Broward County they post the distressed sale price and date in their public records, but they put a “D” next to the price signifying it is a distressed sale. Any property that is deemed distressed is not counted but at least Broward’s records are accurate. Miami-Dade County will not post any information related to the sale, except the buyer, creating inaccurate records. Look at the graphic at left and I will explain why, in Miami Dade there is little accuracy.

County Commissioner Natacha Seijas (yes her name is spelled wrong in official records) bought a house in December 2008. How do I know this? Because I looked at her financial disclosure form. As you can see, in the graphic, I would NOT know this from the Property Appraiser records. I would assume she bought it in 2006 and paid $360,000 instead of the accurate information of 2008 for $225,000. If I looked up the records by the identifying numbers, I would get the old sales information, they are not correct either.

As a reporter (okay I am taking liberties here) who values accuracy, I would be reporting wrong information if I base it on County Records. This ties my hands. I cannot go out into the outskirts of our cities seeking property turnover information. I will not know if the property has turned over. I cannot look for trends, to see if developers have had to dump properties. I cannot track anything with accuracy in Miami Dade County but if I reported in Broward County, I could.

Currently, the Seijas property is assessed at $320,822 but she only paid $225,000 so her assessment won’t change as much as it would in Broward County. Broward counts some foreclosures in their assessments, those put on multiple listings and advertised. Miami Dade doesn’t county any. Each County in the State is able to set their own rules so don’t look for any uniform accurate records. Read Gimleteye's post July 24th for the far reaching implications.

P.S. If you want to find Natacha's records at the Property Appraiser, key in Sejaz but to find her records at the Miami Dade County Clerk's office you had better use Millan, Natacha S. Go figure, same deed.

If the data is wrong, how can improvement in housing markets be right? ... by gimleteye

This week's post on contaminated housing data from Miami-Dade County was picked up by several national blogs like Patrick.net; showing that there are many readers interested in ways that facts of the housing market crash are being concealed.

The Miami-Dade property appraiser selectively excludes foreclosure sale prices from last sale data. His defense: the Florida Department of Revenue allows local jurisdictions leeway in how to account for foreclosures. That was complete news to me, and I thought I had heard everything. Because foreclosures were once so rare, the state apparently allowed local appraisals for the purposes of tax assessment to ignore them. In Florida, the worst economic crisis since the Depression has made the exception--foreclosures--very nearly the rule. In some Homestead suburbs, for instance, a clear majority of sales are through properties in one stage or another of foreclosure.

The impact of failing to uniformly account for foreclosures is contaminating databases and allowing politicians to sidestep reality. Otherwise, there would be even greater pressure for these officials to raise taxes to cover budget shortfalls. Since Florida is entirely reliant on property transaction taxes, this is a very big deal. It is a new principle of public accounting: "shit in/ shit out" (SISO).

In so far as the actual, real and not imagined real estate market is concerned, it may be that the only bottom being formed in Miami is an artificial one: banks are restricting the number of foreclosures they are leaking into the marketplace. They can do this, because their balance sheets are now "solvent" thanks to gerrymandering financial rules and guarantees by federal taxpayers through TARP and "mark to market rules" and God knows what other favorable treatment is given to the new SISO accounting rules.

Here are what some of our readers wrote earlier this week: "If overall values go down, guess what, the millage rate will go up. The county has bills to pay. The point of the matter is that a record is a record and it should be accurate. I don't look to the MLS. I look to the county for the real number." Predictably, the nation's mainstream newspapers are filled with stories of home owners flooding local tax assessor offices with complaints and requests to re-assess property at lower and more realistic market values. (A story The Miami Herald ought to consider picking up.)

Another commenter wrote, "I've got a question for you all. Did anybody here check to see if MLS "SOLD" prices for these foreclosures in Miami Dade were reported at the foreclosed upon "SOLD" price or the last "SOLD" price before the foreclosure? The reason I ask is the obvious: should the MLS be massaging the foreclosure sales (or not even reporting them) then median and average prices reported to Case/Shiller's Miami's Index is way above what it really is." I agree. I've sent an email to Case/Shiller to ask for clarification of its data source. "This smells very fishy to me. Before you say "case closed" I think you'd do Miami Dade watchers a real service to see if the local MLS is reporting accurate sales data too." Agreed.

Are Case/Shiller statistics and other indicators of the housing market performance picking up bad data? Data that is purposefully being skewed to cancel out the effect of foreclosures? Beyond the personal misery and effect on neighborhoods, a wholesale revaluation of property would require--as the first commenter notes-- increased taxes to cover government budget liabilities "... if 80% of the homes were ... short sales, at what point do the foreclosures start to become relavent to appraiser's numbers." Exactly.

The second commenter: "The bottom line is that the numbers are the numbers. The PT office needs to go back a few years and start correcting the numbers. We can analyze where we go from there when we know WTF we are in all this mess. If we don't fix those numbers now, we will lose all integrity in the data base."

Contaminated data bases are popping up everywhere in the effort to paint the economy as "recovering", along the lines of former US Senator and UBS co-chairman Phil Gramm's "mental recession". The blow-up of the housing market has inflicted deep pain on consumers and consumer demand. One cannot help but feel that the thinking behind the understatement of foreclosures is to make the housing markets seem "less bad" than they are in fact. But this also has the effect of compounding consumer anxiety, especially the middle class where the lack of liquidity, mobility, and stability continues to weigh heavily. The Treasury Department Inspector General has issued a report condemning the lack of transparency in the distribution and effectiveness of TARP distribution to banks and financial institutions. Only a few days ago, a raft of news reported "stabilization" of housing sales and the stock market took off like a butterfly. But no information about the role of foreclosures in the faint signs of life. How can anyone have confidence in capital markets under these circumstances?

The stock market continues to hyperventilate on any whiff of positive news. Yet job cuts continue to outpace economic decline (Wall Street Journal, July 23, 2009) The doubt accumulates for thinking investors who no longer laugh themselves to sleep about others who put gold coins under their mattresses. There is another name for investments based on bad data: speculation. Isn't that just where we have come from?

Also see: July 26 - Property Appraiser’s Records Are NOT Accurate in Florida