On the Urban Development Boundary: taking issue with The Miami Herald ... by gimleteye

There are several points to follow up, on yesterday's public hearing to consider changes to the Miami-Dade comprehensive development plan. When Florida Hometown Democracy, Amendment 4, passes next November, the public would vote on these changes to the master plan, not only county commissioners. For example, FPL would have to go to the public to prove its case that a new four lane road-- approved by 12-1 vote over the concern of the water management district-- in the middle of Biscayne wetlands does not conflict with the hundreds of millions spent to protect Biscayne Bay and salt water intrusion into our drinking water wells. But these are other stories for other days. Now, I want to focus on a single sentence in The Miami Herald editorial against moving the UDB; a position that I support. The Herald wrote, "... the commission majority keeps on approving applications to amend the county's comprehensive development master plan expand the UDB in Southwest Miami-Dade -- even though these approvals invariably end up in court at county taxpayers' expense."

Let's be clear. All county taxpayers end up shouldering the expense of County staff defending applications to move the UDB that are rejected by the state of Florida, but only a few -- mostly members and activists in conservation organizations or civic groups-- are required to pay lawyers and expert witnesses to prove the case: that the county commission approval violates the law. This is not a minor distinction: the Herald is blind to the role that citizens play and the difficulty of waging battles against local government.

This issue of inequity never appears in The Miami Herald. As to the critics of this blog who carp, "Why don't you recommend or do something positive?"; I believe that requiring government to follow its own laws is pretty positive, don't you? But why does the cost fall on a few people or groups that are chronically underfunded? Why does the Herald fail to acknowledge the uneven playing field, or, the volunteerism and civic commitment shown by volunteers and a few paid staff who are earning a fraction of what the high paid lawyers make for defending the indefensible? It is as though Tropical Audubon or Friends of the Everglades or Clean Water Action or Sierra Club or any of the volunteers for civic associations in Kendall only exist as footnotes. These "special interest groups" deserve support by the mainstream press, don't you think? And the absence of fair and balanced is why it is so hard to listen to commissioners like Pepe Diaz say how much respect he has; not for everyone, but for some, in the opposition. What respect?

One speaker, yesterday, elicited laughs from the county commissioners when he said that they were "enemies of the environment". But isn't that the case? Isn't that what ten years of litigation on rock mining in the Lake Belt proved: that Miami-Dade county commissioners have put the drinking water and environmental resources of the county at severe risk in order to facilitate private profits? They laughed, but isn't it true? Isn't it true when the county commission trashes the most thorough report on a watershed in the nation-- the South Miami Dade Watershed Study-- that it is an enemy of the environment? This is not a trivial grievance.

Has the Herald, once, ever written a report acknowledging the imbalance? Nope. Nope and Nope. Earlier this week, the Herald noted the absence of leadership for Miami's future, but has the newspaper ever once considered how its absence of coverage of civic engagement-- issues like the UDB, for example-- simply reinforce the public perception that "other people" will take care of the shape and form of our communities?