America Dream Mall: A Totally Predictable Nightmare ... by gimleteye

Next week the Miami-Dade County Commission will vote on the America Dream Mall; one of the largest, if not the largest, malls in the United States, to be built in the northwest corner of Miami-Dade County. From the point of view of traffic and infrastructure burdens on taxpayers, it is a predictable nightmare.

Before Gov. Rick Scott, citizens had a place -- state administrative court -- and a roadmap, through the Florida Department of Community Affairs, to challenge development schemes that were manifestly against the public interest. A good example, from the 1990's, Wayne's World: the dream child of the late Wayne Huizinga. Blockbuster Park, its formal name, was planned just across the county line in Broward -- not far from the America Dream Mall site. It speaks worlds that an ill-conceived regional development could be halted in the mid 1990s but not in 2017. Some call that progress.

Gov. Scott delivered the coup de grace to the DCA, consigning the agency and its mission to a Tallahassee broom closet. At the same time, developers gained the upper hand by imposing massive costs on citizens with the temerity to challenge local zoning decisions. And, the USSC Citizens United decision opened the door to unlimited campaign contributions by corporations and provided further energy to the dark money pools that are making a mockery of democracy.

In other words, a lot of stuff had to be broken for a plan like the America Dream Mall to make it through. Behind it, in the pipeline, more predictable nightmares: the extension of SR 836 into the last remaining farmland and open space in Miami Dade, the construction of another Walmart in the county's last remaining pine rocklands, and further attempts to move the Urban Development Boundary.

The Florida Department of Community of Affairs, through its development of regional impact programming, was never completely aligned with the public interest in sound development and growth. It was born, however, out of a bipartisan consensus in the state legislature in the 1980's; a time when an older generation of electeds agreed that a system of checks and balances was needed to stop the profit motive from wrecking what Floridians held of value and in trust for future generations.

The development supply chain, industry trade associations like the Florida Chamber of Commerce and Associated Industries, and Big Agriculture fought DCA from the start. Gov. Jeb Bush, through establishment figures like Al Hoffman and the Council of 100, used DCA for target practice. For citizens, and the few civic organizations that plunged into the turbid waters of the state's overdevelopment, challenging developments of regional impacts offered a ray of hope.

Gov. Rick Scott squashed that hope; a fact voters might want to remember this November as if the land clearing, bulldozers, and site development of America Dream Mall will not be enough.

Traffic, traffic, traffic ... by gimleteye

An interesting Letter to the Editor in the Herald this morning on traffic related to the MEGA MALL planned in Northwest Dade made me do a U-turn on my morning rounds. It's worth a brief look at our archive on traffic. We sure spend enough time there.

Judging from the hard right turn of state and national politics, we are all about to spend ALOT more time in traffic, especially those who live in the western, southern, and less developed sections of the county.

Once upon a time, citizens had a platform to protest unreasonable development. It was called the Growth Management Act. I'm not even sure that voters are aware that Republicans in the state legislature, under Gov. Rick Scott, put Growth Management -- and hopes of citizens to protect their quality of life -- in a broom closet in the state capitol.

That happened. Fact, not fake.


Cautionary tale warns of mega mall traffic

The mega mall that is being considered by the Miami-Dade County Commission ignores residents’ quality of life. This fact is overshadowed by the dollar signs the county envisions.

I live off of Ives Dairy Road in North Dade. We are the pathway to Aventura Mall. From 7-10 a.m. and 1:45-8 p.m. or later, there is complete gridlock. You might think, “Big deal.” Well, it is when 4,000 cars enter our neighborhood to avoid Ives Dairy Road every day. Lucky for us that WAZE re-directs motorists that way.

These unwanted visitors speed through our streets, regardless of stop signs, pass other motorists on two-lane roads — even around curves — just to get to I-95 five seconds earlier. And we are not allowed to keep them out because these are public streets. Our desire for speed bumps or humps has been rejected several times because they would slow down emergency vehicles. Aventura Mall is in the midst of a major expansion. Yet, there is no plan to address the increased volume of traffic. When questioned, we are told there is no way to ease traffic.

The neighbors to be affected by the proposed mega mall will, for sure, have their quality of life severely compromised. Their concerns should supersede monetary greed.

As our neighborhood has learned, once the go-ahead is given, all promises by the builder are null and void. No one from the county ever checks up on promises made, and the residents suffer.

Regardless of how terrific a major attraction, hotel and a mall could be, they do not belong in a residential neighborhood. Comparison to Disney World does not work here. Disney was built in an uninhabited area.

I totally sympathize with our western neighbors. No one is listening to them because none of those who will benefit from this monstrosity live in their neighborhood.

TRUDY LECHNER, MIAMI

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/article121884408.html#storylink=cpy

"Are you now or have you ever been a ... scientist?" ... by gimleteye

"Are you now or have you ever been a communist?" was the signature question by the House Un-American Activities Committee, lead by the late Senator Joe McCarthy. HUAC both defined the Cold War for generations of Americans and also set the bar low for political witch hunts that needlessly destroyed reputations, careers, and lives.

Back when we lived in Key West, a hero -- now gone twenty five years -- had been called to testify, or, to rat out his friends and colleagues. In this aging brain, the Cold War rattles with many ghosts that have been revived by the election of Donald Trump who holds a ruthless president and former KGB agent, Vladmir Putin, in high esteem. That is not all.

The Trump transition is following a path established in Florida with respect to the imposition of predetermined conclusions on science. Here is the Florida version.

Growth management in Florida was crafted from a bipartisan consensus in the 1980's. Its original mission was based in consensus, forged equally by Republicans as Democrats, that balancing development with the environment was good business and good policy.

Its success beyond the first handshake depended on good will of successive generations of elected representatives. There was a problem: human nature.

The premise pitted the profit imperative against deliberative science. Florida governors, from Lawton Chiles onward, began to erode the mission of growth management -- ignoring science -- in favor of big campaign donors.

Those donors cared less about what had been lost in terms of quality of life and the environment than next quarter's profit.

Donald Trump is a businessman/politician -- much like Florida's Governor Rick Scott -- whose presumed genius ("I'm, like, smart.") conflated with a vision conferred by private jet at a cruising altitude of 30,000 feet.

Over time in Florida, growth management critics with a less exalted view -- they understood perfectly well whose pockets were being lined by zoning variances and building permits in defiance of science-based wetlands or coastal protections  --  formed a chorus in the state capitol.

"Government is inefficient and wasteful and can't do its job," went part of the chorus. Another part: "Environmental regulations kill jobs."

The part that voters and taxpayers missed: that Florida's growth management agency had been slowly and deliberately hollowed out from within, even as citizens and community activists hoped for the protections in state law.

Now Trump inherits federal agencies who have also been starved from within, by the same cast and characters and motivations as in Florida, but on the federal level.

Consider the US E.P.A.

The rampant politicization of science at the E.P.A. began in the George W. Bush White House. Global warming policies were strung out and eroded by Bush appointees to federal agencies from the Beltway. During this time, just like with the Florida Department of Community Affairs -- the growth management regulatory agency -- , Republicans formed a chorus: the agency needed to be stopped, scientists needed to be turned away from global warming missions.

Bush White House operatives lead by Karl Rove prevented scientists from speaking to the public and the press except under circumstances where they controlled the message. For scientists who depend on state research dollars, the effect was extraordinarily swift and chilling.

President Barack Obama did his level best, through executive authority, to reverse the damage to federal missions to protect the environment. Now, Donald  Trump.

This is context for the alarm when Trump's energy transition team headed down the same road as Florida Governor Rick Scott, prohibiting state employees from using the terms in public meetings, "global warming" and "climate change".

With its recent "questionaire" to federal agency scientists on climate change, the Trump White House -- and its appointment of the ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson to Secretary of State -- is either heading to a public witch hunt, or, a more carefully obscured effort to weed out fact.

It is not what a majority of American voters wanted, and not even what a majority of Trump supporters endorsed, given his victory by a hair-breadth. But, who is measuring the weight of anything except those fingers tipping the scales of justice?


First Look
Trump team's 'intrusive' memo alarms federal climate scientists
Seeking the names of employees who attended climate change talks 'feels like the first draft of an eventual political enemies list,' said an employee with the Department of Energy.
By Rowena Lindsay, Staff DECEMBER 10, 2016
Christian Science Monitor


Donald Trump’s transition team has sent a list of 74 questions to the Energy Department (DOE), asking, among other things, for the identity of all employees and contractors involved in international climate meetings and domestic attempts to cut carbon emissions.

The questionnaire specifically asked for the names of all DOE employees who attended the United Nation’s annual climate talks for the past five years, employees who helped develop the President Obama’s social cost of carbon metrics, and which programs are essential to President Obama’s Climate Action Plan.

Ferocious Traffic: what comes next? … by gimleteye

In Miami during the summer, traffic is a breeze compared to what comes next. As schools return and the fall weather improves, traffic turns titanic.

What is happening downtown, these days, at rush hour and beyond defies elaboration. There is only one word for the blaring horns, lane restrictions, the gridlock at successive street lights: ferocious.

The traffic is ferocious for a reason.

image at 8:21 AM

When you are stuck in Miami traffic this December, remember: you voted for the elected officials -- in the city of Miami, the city of Miami Beach, in Miami-Dade county, the state legislature and Governor's Mansion who made this happen.

Many of these public officials are still in office. Many are looking for a way back in.

Will voters ever hold them accountable for the destruction of quality of life that goes along with community-stifling, business-deadening traffic? Not yet.

There is every indication (Ludlam Trail, anyone?) that our elected officials will continue to vote for "compromises" that impose even greater traffic burdens on taxpayers and residents.

Massive construction and development of downtown corridors preceded any response by elected officials to estimate, plan and build infrastructure adequate to the need.

Sure every zoning and permitting hearing is clogged with expert consultants, using charts and graphs to show how their client's project will not increase traffic.

Complainers -- civic activists for better transit, for public parks and the environment -- are derided, dismissed, marginalized or otherwise politely pushed away by technicalities.

Builders during the boom and even after the bust are glorified. Their names get put on buildings, while the mess they helped created is absorbed as the natural order of things. Jorge Perez, for example. Mayor Manny Diaz, for example.

When you want "growth at any cost", the way the Chamber of Commerce or Club for Growth or Associated Industries or the South Florida Builders do, taxpayers are left with exactly this: ferocious traffic.

These days one begins to hear voices from the business sector in advertiser-sponsored media, lamenting we "could" kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Ex-cuse me?

For distant investors -- that describes the vast majority of owners in downtown Miami -- all that matters is that their assets are safe and secure. The rest of us -- the commuters, the downtown residents imagining they are moving into a sophisticated city -- are fuel pellets for growth.

You could ask, wouldn't it be a good idea to make traffic improvements concurrent at the same time or in advance of construction and development?

At the state level, the idea of comprehensive land use planning was destroyed by the Republican legislature after more than thirty years of work and bipartisan consensus. Was Gov. Scott held accountable for putting the Florida DCA, the agency once charged with reviewing traffic concurrency, into a capital broom closet?

As all the Miami condo canyons were being created and making mortgage investors, insurers, banks and their shareholders very wealthy on Brickell and downtown, of course they knew that the roadways would not be able to hold the traffic.

We've been planning badly for transit to accommodate growth for so long that, now, there is no elasticity whatsoever in car movement along Miami's roadways and interstates. At rush hour, any -- and I mean, ANY -- glitch in traffic flow causes a massive logjam that can easily double or triple normal transit times.

The other evening, trying to find the fastest route downtown -- imagining to be on the far side of rush hour -- I looked at my Google map and every road and artery downtown was a solid red line. It was a representation of cardiac arrest.

Ferocious traffic is not destiny. It is what we chose at the ballot box. 

St. Pete Times: How Growth Management Works Now? ... by gimleteye

Florida is a different state, depending on one's experiences. In Miami-Dade, the loss of growth management -- thanks to the most clueless governor in Florida history, Rick Scott -- threw planning and zoning decisions to the level of government least likely to represent the public: the county commission and mayor. For history, read our blog archives.  I've attended our version of 13 hour county commission hearings. Too exhausted by these issues to revisit them now.

Controversy over Manatee County development shows how growth management works now
Craig Pittman, Times Staff Writer
Friday, September 6, 2013 6:10pm

Carlos Beruff is one of Florida's most powerful people. He has run a major development firm for 30 years, donated heavily to Gov. Rick Scott and other politicians, and is chairman of the Southwest Florida Water Management District, which controls the region's water supply.

Update on the EAR meeting. By Geniusofdespair

Will Rebeca Sosa be Miami Dade County's Next Mayor?

I wrote about the Evaluation and Appraisal Report (EAR) earlier this week.  I was home sick and could not stomach watching a County Commission meeting on TV. I was doing enough up-chucking.

I asked a bunch of people who watched it on TV what they thought.  Most said the hero of the meeting was County Commission Chair Rebeca Sosa.  She showed leadership for not cancelling the meeting due to the funeral of Lincoln Diaz-Balart's son (some Commissioners were absent because of it, like Barreiro). Chair Sosa said that the County Commission's first duty was to the residents of Miami Dade County.

My friends were impressed with the questions Sosa asked and overall had great things to say about Rebeca. Also mentioned favorably was Juan Zapata. Some liked his questions.

The consensus was that the worst one on the County Commission during this meeting was Pepe Diaz.  That doesn't surprise me at all. Forget about that miraculous transformation I was hoping for when he was faced with a brain tumor.  No epiphany for Pepe. He was more concerned with the property owners than with the county as a whole.

The County Commission advanced the Staff recommendations, ignoring the changes recommended by the PAB that I did not like (that added in Lennar's Parkland). Thank you County Commissioners.

Commissioner Dennis Moss,  voted against transmission, afraid that this transmittal will create another "camel's nose under the tent" situation. In other words, that the transmittal will create a lobbyist feeding frenzy while the EAR is in Tallahassee for review. I agree this will probably happen. I would suppose that if anyone had an epiphany after adversity and can see things more clearly, it is Dennis Moss.

Am I surprised by this vote? You bet I am.  What do I attribute it to? I don't know but I am left with two options that I will pose as questions: Is Rebeca Sosa's leadership helping to create a  climate for better voting on global issues, such as growth management, by County Commissioners? Is Sosa helping her colleagues see the bigger picture to sustain the health of the County's natural resources?

One last thing, my condolences go to Lincoln Diaz-Balart's family for their loss.

The Evaluation And Appraisal Report: Rebeca Sosa, Xavier Suarez and Juan Zapata LISTEN UP. By Geniusofdespair

The EAR is on Wed., May 22nd at 9:30 a.m. in the County Commission Chambers. Can the 3 of you: Juan Zapata, Xavier Suarez and Rebeca Sosa rally to support the Everglades Coalition position as outlined in the letter below? I know this is just the transmittal hearing on Wednesday (meaning it goes to the state before it comes back to the Commission for adoption) but it is still important for us to send the right message to the State.

The staff is recommending an adjustment (contraction) of the UEAs in order for them to come into compliance with the policies now in the CDMP. While being inside the UEA still requires a UDB amendment, it makes it one step easier since the CDMP gives preference to land inside the UEA for UDB expansion.

The Commission just needs a simple majority to change the land use map. This is a land use map change. It will be a majority vote.

 I DO NOT WANT THE UEA PAB RECOMMENDED ADDITION - NO WAY! They don't know what they are doing on the PAB.  Just ignore them, they were swooned into a trance by the lobbyist Jeffrey Bercow.

You three Commissioners appear to be the swing vote. Swing our way please!  If you add that property in the blue box (see map below) to the UEA, you will be very sorry it makes the UDB change much easier.  If you think traffic is bad now, just wait--there is a development of regional impact called Parkland that just happens to fit in that blue box..  Your vote for the PAB plan would open a door that will cripple our growth management. I can give you a hundred other reasons not to do it...but I am so tired of this same fight. You have a choice, you can kiss Lennar's ass and do it or you can all do the right thing. I have given up on a lot of the Commissioners (Bell, Diaz, Barreiro, Souto, Jordan and Bovo), I have hope for others (Heyman, Moss, Monestime, Edmonson).  But you three: I worry about on this issue. I hope you come through.

Get that blue box off this map!!!! If the Commission approves this map that the PAB put forth, this UEA would go from SW 66th Street, down to SW 152nd Street and make it easier for developments such as Green City and Parkland to request a recommendation for inclusion into the UDB.

To read the letter easier hit on it and will enlarge.

Wayne Rosen and Homestead City Councilman Jimmie Williams ... by gimleteye

Wayne Rosen

The investigation by the Miami-Dade Ethics and Public Trust Commission took an entire year: to decide whether Homestead City Commissioner Jimmie Williams was unduly influenced and "engaged in conflicted or exploitative behavior relating to his business partnership with Wayne Rosen, a real estate developer with extensive land holdings and other economic interests in the Homestead area."

The conclusion (K# 11-090) was, no.

Rosen has a long history of business before the local city government in Homestead and also Miami-Dade County. With various partners, including major developers, he is/was a large land owner of property outside the Urban Development Boundary, including wetlands.

It is curious that Rosen tried to set up Williams in a fast food franchise far from Homestead.

The ethics commission does not explore the notion that a wealthy, savvy business investor like Wayne Rosen would need to diversify his real estate empire by investing in a low-end restaurant serving urban tastes.

Nor did the commission inquire how a sophisticated investor would be "misled" by a third partner, the so-called operator with experience. Rosen, in his deposition to the ethics commission, offered his recollection that the third partner said he owned 17 restaurants but the chain's website only claims to operate 10 restaurants. So this sophisticated investor, Wayne Rosen, was a victim of fraud or simply failed to due diligence? If you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

The ethics commission was not inquiring after Rosen's business practices. It is well known that land speculators in the suburbs are "on the same team". It is all part and parcel of what EOM calls the Growth Machine. After all the mortgage fraud and foreclosures ripping through Homestead -- turning the area into the poster child for ghost suburbs -- one would think that political practices and skating in the gray areas of the law would have taken a breather.

There is a broader context to this disturbing report that exonerates Wiliams. Florida Hometown Democracy -- the state-wide referendum effort by citizens to take land use decisions away from local corruption -- was slapped down by Florida land speculators. As the Miami-Dade ethics investigation shows, any assumption that cooler heads would prevail in its aftermath, and the aftermath of the destruction of the Florida Department of Community Affairs, the state's growth management authority killed off by Gov. Rick Scott in early 2012, would be wrong, wrong, wrong.

It is always about testing the edges, by the Growth Machine, and the edges always can change depending on the political weather. It was a big change in weather when the Growth Machine destroyed the chance of accountability with Florida Hometown Democracy. It was an even bigger change of weather when Florida DCA went the way of the dodo bird, leaving the Growth Machine to have direct access to major changes through local elected officials to land use at the municipal and county level. Wayne Rosen was testing the edges. That's all.

All the world in a grain of sand: how the Growth Machine ate the Florida Department of Community Affairs. By Gimleteye

All the world in a grain of sand: How the Growth Machine Ate The Florida Department of Community Affairs
... the following appeared yesterday, on the website Counterpunch. It is a long essay: take your time.


John DeGrove was the father of land use planning in Florida and the principal architect of the state land use agency, the Florida Department of Community Affairs. The agency was established in 1985 to oversee compliance with the Growth Management Act. Most Floridians are unlikely to know either what the Department of Community Affairs did or what its disappearance means. Fewer still understand the challenges to design and implement a regulatory framework for rationale growth and development in one of the nation’s fastest growing states, or, how DCA and DeGrove’s mission was a target of anti-government, pro-property rights zealots from the first.

Why this matters is simple. Presupposing the failure of government regulatory authority virtually guarantees it will happen. The notion that government cannot do anything that private industry can do better, cheaper, and faster including protecting public safety, health and welfare has spread its toxic roots far and wide. Florida provides more than its share of examples of government-designed-to-fail.

These didn’t happen overnight. DCA was caught up in a thirty year war against governmental regulation of land use and the environment. Initially, the agency’s work enjoyed broad bipartisan support. By the time the agency was frog-marched to the platform and guillotined by the Florida legislature and an indifferent governor, it had already mostly surrendered to “regulatory capture” by special interests. When the final blow was delivered, no one was quite so surprised as the insiders to watch decades of history simply wash away.

The Urban Development Boundary: When is a legal covenant, a promise to be broken at will? by gimleteye

The promise of the Urban Development Boundary is that it would provide some friction slowing the spread of cancerous suburban sprawl to the edge of the beleaguered Everglades. I don't use the term "cancerous", lightly. Sprawl and the devastation of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression go hand-in-hand. The one could not have occurred without the other.

Local land use policies incorporating the Urban Development Boundary at the fringe of Miami-Dade were created decades ago to protect farmland, open space and the Everglades. A generation of leaders, including then county commissioner Harvey Ruvin, embraced the notion that government can balance economic development with a sustainable environment. It was a high principle that was chipped away, year after year, by low politics and greed.

Until the Republican-led Florida legislature gutted the Growth Management Act this spring, approved by incurious, indifferent Gov. Rick Scott, the Florida Department of Community Affairs provided pressure against local county government from doing what powerful lobbyist/law firms and their speculator clients wanted: strip malls, commercial centers, and platted subdivisions wherever and whenever they could find bank financing.

Judging from the Florida landscape, they got what they wanted. But in Miami-Dade County, for civic activists the presence of the Urban Development Boundary and the fact of the friction against stupid growth it provided was like the tattered flag above Fort Sumter in 1814: "O say can you see, by the dawn's early light ..."

Yesterday's vote by the unreformable majority of the Miami Dade County Commission fulfilled what we predicted here at Eyeonmiami for years: that once state authority for land use policy was removed, the friction inhibiting cancerous sprawl would dissolve like a cube of sugar in a silver pot of hot coffee.

Yesterday's event was monumental. It sent a signal to the speculators that anything goes. Make a covenant, break a covenant.

Mark Woerner, planning chief for Miami Dade County, shrugged to The Miami Herald, "Things change." He meant that statistics used by staff showed a future deficit of housing stock in the specific area of Kendall that includes the Brown property. But everyone knows the county real estate market is a full bore disaster; if there was ever a moment to take a policy position on the the low density scatter sprawl that wrecked the quality of life of Miami Dade County and much of Florida, this was it.

The immediate result of yesterday's vote is "to transmit" the application by the developer to what remains of the DCA: an office in a broom closet at the end of some hallway in Tallahassee. The application will be returned with a stamp of approval: a big smiley face.

To say that things change is disingenuous. The county commission has always been about removing the friction that inhibits big campaign contributors from the speculator community. Nevertheless, things do change. Because the legislature and Gov. Rick Scott used "jobs" as a rationale, growth management is finished. And for county commissioners -- except for Dennis Moss -- the logic goes something like this: if you are going to be in a race to the bottom, you might as well win.

More, on Growth Management and John DeGrove ... by gimleteye

In response to one of my recent posts, "Gov. Rick Scott and John DeGrove: Gone", an anonymous reader wrote: "Gimleteye, John DeGrove... visionary, diligent defender of quality, value, and the relationship of good planning to higher quality of life. He will be missed. Unfortunately, I can't see your railing against our current governor, anyone with money and an interest, or against general free enterprise having a positive impact on adopting policies of good growth..." As a general matter I don't respond to invective, but in this case:

Governor Rick Scott and John DeGrove: gone ... by gimleteye

Most Floridians never heard of John DeGrove, who passed away recently at age 87. DeGrove was the father of land use planning in Florida and the principal architect of the state land use agency once called the Florida Department of Community Affairs. In 2011 the DCA, as it was known, vanished through the hand of the Florida legislature and Gov. Rick Scott. DCA provided a line of defense for Floridians against lobbyists and speculators who control local government permitting and zoning decisions. It was a porous line of defense and not at all the "bogeyman" claimed by Associated Industries and other lobbyists.

DeGrove was secretary of the Florida Department of Community Affairs when it was formed in 1985, a state agency created by the Florida legislature. At the time, there was broad recognition by both political parties that Florida's unique quality of life and environment was likely to vanish unless some restraint was imposed by common sense and good planning principles at the state level. From virtually Day One, the agency that John DeGrove led was targeted as an example of over-reaching state authority by developers and speculators.

Nationally, its underlying legislation -- The Growth Management Act -- was hailed as the most forward-thinking effort to responsibly manage and account for growth and development. In the late 1980's, I was an activist in the Florida Keys, learning about the capacity of state law through the Area of Critical State Concern designation application to Monroe County and the requirements of state land use planning that even then had wealthy and influential developers fuming. The Florida Keys were the test tube for land use policies and thresholds like hurricane evacuation time standards. As a result, DCA was set upon by the Great Destroyers from the first-- chipped away and eroded through the influence of special interests and lobbyists. It took an economic calamity to destroy it.

Back then, I believed that voters would come to their senses when overdevelopment in Florida blew up the economy. The storm clouds were on the horizon long before Lehman Brothers collapsed. After all, that was the case in the Great Depression whose children were very much the leaders of the environmental movement at the time: Dagny Johnson, George Kunst, and Grace Maniello in the Keys. In 2010, under the pressure of the withering economic crisis in construction and development-- a crisis largely spurred by over-development that the state agency could have but didn't dare to curtail-- the life accomplishments of John DeGrove were lost to the rage of the Tea Party and the clamor against "bogeymen" like DCA.

In fact, the reverse is true. In key respects, growth management in Florida was a paper tiger. That tiger was useful to the radical right, supported by the Wise Use Movement in the late 1980's, that used Florida as a proving ground for property rights. Their goal-- embraced by Big Sugar and Big Ag-- to push for development wherever and whenever the case could be made and financed that it was only providing "what the free market wants". It is the story of the Keys, of Wellington and Coral Springs, of Orlando and the suburbs of Doral, Sweetwater, West Miami Dade, and Tampa and formerly rural enclaves like Homestead-- where the crack cocaine of the housing boom left a trail of ghost suburbs, crime, and reeling voters who trusted elected officials and now see nothing but destruction in their wakes.

With the perspective of history, from the beginning of DeGrove's time of influence in policies regulating Florida sprawl, it was one step forward and two steps back. Under a Democrat, Governor Lawton Chiles, growth management had a small window of opportunity to regulate the loss of Everglades wetlands to sprawl in Broward County. Its failure set the stage for ascendency of growth-at-any-cost policies of Governor Jeb Bush and, eventually, the collapse of federal resolve too.

DeGrove was as powerful as the political will of legislatures to support laws and rules that had been carefully worked out by that earlier, wiser generation of Florida's leaders. The power of money, even after the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression, was too great. In a time of diminished capacity of the mainstream media to investigate and to report, what happened in the inner clock-springs of agencies fated to influence Florida's quality of life and environment were relegated to hotel conference rooms hosting planning events, the rubbing of shoulders and interests, the revolving door between regulated and regulators as though no one cared.

Today, Florida's voters are shell-shocked and misled by arguments that growth management is a "jobs killer". What would they know?

The erosion of federal and state authority to protect our quality of life and environment pushes permitting and zoning decisions straight onto the backs of local officials. It is at the level of local city and county commissions where the Great Destroyers always could use their advantages through a diseased campaign finance system to exert leverage.

All the structures to keep the public good in view were rickety and jerry-rigged and held together by the slimmest of legal thresholds requiring citizen activists to test again and again in lengthy, exhausting and costly administrative court challenges. Now they have been torn down to be replaced by something new, that already looks like what always has been. We see how this works out at the Miami-Dade Urban Development Boundary and the careful planning of the Great Destroyers to again test; searching for the new limits same way tiger sharks use the murk to probe the vulnerability of prey. The extension of the Dolphin Expressway into lands owned by politically influential local power brokers, the exchange of lands and speculation in the Bird Drive Basin and South Miami Dade: these are all concrete examples.

Still, gratitude is owed to DeGrove and to land use planners who attempt to maintain the highest standards of their profession against fraud above their pay grades. Had Governor Rick Scott ever heard of John DeGrove before he bought his way to the Governor's Mansion? Is he even aware of what growth management is, now? DeGrove could tell you if he were still alive: it's gone.

The Urban Development Boundary: New Developments to Wreck What Is Left of Miami Dade ... by gimleteye

County Commissioners Jose "Pepe" Diaz & Joe Martinez

Pepe Diaz and Joe Martinez, charter members of the Unreformable Majority of the Miami-Dade County Commission, put their stamp on a plan for a "working group" to decide "once and for all" (Diaz' words) a "democratic" way to change the Urban Development Boundary and the policy for the UDB that has been in the county master plan for decades.

We have blogged at length about the UDB. Use our search feature to isolate posts related to UDB issues. (I am a founding member of Hold The Line, the group that organized nearly ten years ago to attempt to stop the repetitive incursions by developers against the line, separating areas served by county-funded (ie. taxpayer) infrastructure from areas where development is restricted-- mainly for environmental reasons.)

At yesterday's meeting, the Latin Builders Association, the South Florida Builders Association, and Jeffrey Bercow-- on behalf of developer clients-- all supported the plan to create a "working group". Before the meeting Diaz promised would be fair and balanced, "3 to 3", but his own arithmetic is indecipherable only to him. The builder lobbyists also all voiced doubt during their comments; "skepticism" that any agreement could be reached with environmentalists. They had obviously rehearsed their lines together.

The notion of a "working group" was first floated to me by Joe Martinez in the early 2000's when a whole raft of developer applications to move the UDB sought to catch the wave of the housing boom. Bercow and his cohorts (ie. Neisen Kasdin) made the rounds of downtown business groups with a powerpoint presentation predicting that skyrocketing demand for housing would never end. They derided professional county planning staff in public forums including the county commissioner chamber. In comparison to Hold The Line, they were given deference and "respect" by Martinez and Diaz and Barreiro and the rest of the Unreformable Majority. At the same time, Hold The Line members were attacked by commissioners themselves from the dais.

It was clear to Hold The Line ten years ago, and to conservationists twenty years ago, that big agriculture and developers (basically the same, since big ag obtains bank loans based on the developable value of its land) want one thing: to build whatever they want, whenever they want so long as it makes a profit. Since risk is involved in making a profit, the balance tips to speculation where the crucial factor involves the manipulation of public policy and decisions by elected officials.

So, why a "working group" now? Simple.

In the last session of the Florida legislature, Gov. Rick Scott let the lunatics loose in the asylum. They succeeded in eliminating state regulatory authority through the Florida Department of Community Affairs. (At the local level, the same has occurred: the Miami Dade Department of Environmental Regulatory Management -- DERM-- was also stripped like a stolen vehicle in a chop shop: all on the premise that environmental regulations and enforcement hurt "jobs".) Laws that provided an appeal process for changes to county development plans that were nominally supervised by DCA have vanished in the blur of the economic crash and the disappearing act of accountability. Nothing means anything.

Yesterday on the dais, Pepe Diaz summoned the bitter memory (in his mind, at least) of the 2009 application to move the Urban Development Boundary for a new Lowe's at the urban fringe. He decried the loss of a "free" high school a charter school operator had pledged to build. All because environmentalists wouldn't let Lowe's build "three hundred feet" into the Urban Development Boundary.

Environmental groups-- once the Unreformable Majority passed the Lowe's plan over the objections of a state review-- took the issue to state administrative court. After the kind of protracted and costly legal battle that characterized these conflicts, environmentalists won. And it is because environmentalists had an appeal process that could, on occasion, result in victory, the developer lobby was further inflamed to go after the state authority in the legislature. Because Gov. Scott was clueless about the long history of land use battles in Florida, he simply nodded his bald dome and handed the keys of the granary to the thieves. This is the "democracy" that Diaz is trying to summon like a magician waving a wand over a top hat.

Eliminating state authority for land use changes had the immediate effect of putting the county commission on the hot seat: voters will now get to see for themselves exactly who is responsible for the ongoing destruction of their quality of life, communities, and environment. The burden rests squarely on the shoulders of the county commission.

To create plausible deniability for the massacres to come, the builders and developers encouraged Diaz and Martinez to form a "working group" that they of course would control and devise "recommendations" to change the Urban Development Boundary policy in county law. They want to do whatever they want, whenever they want. (This notion of a "permanent" boundary is nonsense. It is "permanent" until the next generation of county commissions ascends the glorious dais.)

Yesterday, environmentalists who contributed to Hold The Line said they would respectfully decline to participate in what is bound to be a sham exercise.

They also raised the pointedly relevant observation: prior county commissions have already spent tens of millions and thousands of county staff hours on studies and recommendations relative to the Urban Development Boundary. The last -- the South Miami Dade Watershed Study-- was the most comprehensive localized, science based analysis for water use planning and development ever undertaken in the United States. The builders killed the study because they didn't like the results. It was a shame. Years earlier, the county commission had buried the results of the Agriculture Retention Study, also involving the UDB, because they didn't like those results either. In response to the bad PR from killing the Watershed Study, the Unreformable Majority sought cover from the US EPA who was invited to review the UDB and because the EPA endorsed the UDB, that study was shelved, too.

So there you have it. The county commission just can't say, no. As far as the developer lobby goes, you can't paint stripes on that horse and fool anyone into believing it is a zebra. And, the "working group". Let's just say, that dog won't hunt.

The Urban Development Boundary: whatever developers want it to be ... by gimleteye

If Miami Dade voters had a chance to vote on the Urban Development Boundary and whether it should be protected from rapacious development, an overwhelming majority would vote to Hold The Line. Unfortunately, Miami Dade voters are dumb as ox, returning to the state legislature, the governor's mansion, and to the county commission decision-makers who hate holding the line because doing so is perceived as a brake on campaign contributions; the mother's milk of politics.

The Miami Herald reports on the importance of the upcoming mayoral election in Miami-Dade today, relative to the UDB. This is territory Eyeonmiami and readers know very, very well.

"The legislation takes the power from Tallahassee and puts it more in the hands of local officials,” said T. Spencer Crowley III, a land use attorney at the law firm Akerman Senterfitt in Miami. “It doesn’t mean the UDB will automatically be moved, but it will be easier because of the state’s limited involvement in objecting to changes." Easier?

Just watch. The floodgates will spring open like the ones restraining the swollen Mississippi because the local officials know that there is no penalty holding them back. None at all. In the past, it took vast amounts of civic effort, energy, and money cobbled together from disparate sources to fight land use changes to the UDB that developers sought. (I know, because I have the callouses to show it.) Now those developers are deep underwater in their investments purchased at the top of the real estate bubble; investors who sometimes even built banks like US Century (we have also written about) to fill their wallets at the expense of our quality of life and environment.

They need to be bailed out, before the government comes in and closes their banks and their mortgages down. Watch how fast the UDB disappears, now that the legislature and our barely legal governor hacked state regulatory authority into pieces like chunks of tarpon thrown to a hungry hammerhead. And remember at the ballot box: "R" is for race to the bottom.

(uncredited photo of recent Islamorada tarpon catch ending with a hammerhead attack)

Who lobbied for Genting Berhad, owner of Miami Herald property? It's no mystery ... by gimleteye

The sale of The Miami Herald property to a Malaysian gambling magnate, for three times the next comparable sale on Biscayne Bay, points to Florida's future: full scale casinos. Tempting as it is to draw a wan observation about the games of fortune taking over mainstream media, the $239 million deal speaks for itself. The convent for casinos both tears the Christian conservative base of Florida's GOP and is a hymn to the party's impenetrable majority in the state legislature. The path to casinos is also highlighted by a wealthy governor who bought his way to the executive office in a campaign that denied access to newspaper editorial boards. In other words, if no one is listening and everyone is looking the other way, what you say to appease the God-fearing Christians and Tea Party acolytes in your base is just words. Do what you want and get what you can, now. That is the ethos the Malaysian Chinese are betting will prevail in Miami. Based on recent history, it is a very good bet.

In an interview with FloridaEnvironments.com, Associated Industries of Florida CEO Barney Bishop admitted to this mindset. Florida's GOP, goaded by the Chamber of Commerce and Bishop, aimed and succeeded in eliminating the state land use planning agency based on statements that regulations inhibiting development in Florida were wrecking the economy. They glided over facts that from 2007 to 2010 -- in the midst of the worst economic recession since the Great Depression-- "the state agency had approved 1.5 billion square feet of commercial development in addition to nearly 600,000 new housing units and nearly 1 million acres of land use changes." Bishop affirmed the party line and gospel to the GOP faithful. According to the St. Pete Times, "DCA was that bogeyman for us... so we essentially got rid of that." And so it will be with barriers to full-scale gaming in Florida.

The Republican base that deployed right-wing, "Christian" values to marginalize opposition and secure a lock on the state legislature is now prepared to vault a long history of legislative bars to full casino operations in the state, even if cracking the code means elevating the mysterious economic benefits of gambling over the mysterious benefits of faith.

The pro-casino forces tested the waters for change in this session of the Florida legislature. Genting Berhad, the Malaysian corporation that bought the Miami Herald property, is one the entities registered to lobby at the legislature. So who are the lobbyists and what are their connections? If you wanted to build an effective team to launch tall ladders against the church walls, you would need a senior strategist first who had the full confidence of the dominant players in the GOP.

1000 Friends of Florida offers its analysis of the Frankenstein Environmental Destruction Bill ... by gimleteye

The land speculators who wrecked Miami Dade County and county politics through their obsession with rezoning wetlands and farmland for suburban sprawl have been hoisting the Crystal and Moet since the close of the legislative session: they got what they wanted -- the chance to drive a stake through the heart of environmental protections in Florida but especially here, where the Urban Development Boundary prevented them from recouping losses suffered through massive purchases of land outside the UDB at the height of the housing bubble. Here is an interesting post from the blog, Homestead Is Home: that the crime rate in the most scavenged areas of the county, where ghost suburbs are the rule thanks to the influence of builders and developers who influenced the city and county commissions to get what they wanted, is off the charts in comparison to other similarly sized and located cities. 
Although there is no demand for housing or construction, the builders and developers in the Florida legislature used the economic crisis to undo decades of efforts to restrain unwise growth. It seems Florida's motto is, "Fail and Fail Again."


Preliminary Outline of the Growth Management Bill 7207.   SB 2156 includes the “restructuring”  of the Dept. of Community Affairs.  (1000 Friends of Florida prepared the following outline. Explanatory comments in blue for those not familiar with some of the terms used were provided by Sierra Club.)

I Can't Express How I Feel With Words. By Geniusofdespair

I have no words right now on the bloodbath in Tallahassee because I am so sad...and angry. If you need words...see what Gimleteye wrote below and read the Miami Herald's article Environmentalists are furious with Florida lawmakers for approving measures that would end decades of growth-management laws.

A State Run By Liars: have Florida voters given up on Florida? ... by gimleteye

The worst legislative session in Florida history is all but done. GOP legislators-- the most conservative in modern history-- wiped out more than 30 years of environmental protections with scarcely a debate in the Senate. Is this what Florida voters wanted, when they elected Rick Scott as governor and a legislature that clearly meant to use the economic crisis to impose a final solution on environmental rules? Those are the same special interests that pushed the economy built from housing and construction off a cliff with support for fraudulent growth schemes sold to gullible buyers as "what the market wants".

One thing is for certain: the land speculators who control Miami-Dade County are thrilled that the Florida Department of Community Affairs is gone: now it will be up to the county commission to allow more platted subdivisions and strip malls all the way to the Everglades. Just like Broward. And Palm Beach, on behalf of the billionaire Fanjul sugar barons, is not far behind. What is nauseating, more, is that they didn't even wait for the legislative session to finish before setting the gears in motion; using county commissioner Linda Bell to pick up where disgraced and recalled Natacha Seijas left off-- hobble the county's environmental regulatory agency, DERM.

This is the catastrophic result of an economic crash, unequalled since the Great Depression through which no accountability was ever assessed. If the perpetrators had been held to account, then voters might have some clue about who was responsible and what is needed to reverse a course that has already shifted millions of middle class Americans into what appears to be a permanent state of fear and uncertainty.

The GOP in Florida successfully exploited this climate of fear. But what about Florida's Democrats? Where was the leadership to explain to Floridians how voters' pockets were thoroughly picked during the boom and now their possessions sold to carpet baggers during the bust? Where is the Democratic voice standing up for protecting Florida's natural resources and communities from lobbyists like Associated Industries and other so-called business leaders who betrayed thirty years of effort to control the rampant sprawl and over-development of Florida?

In fact, the elimination of robust Democratic leadership in Florida has marginalized moderate Republicans, too. What is left is the radicalized, extremist version of the GOP that turned this legislative session in Tallahassee into a bloodbath against environmental protections and the very notion of the public commons.

Environmentalists are back to square one in Florida, but the baseline of natural resources shifted long ago to something unrecognizable. Florida's waters are more polluted, degraded, and filled with toxics like mercury and still voters are passive, compliant, and mute. Republicans charge that environmentalists are "sensationalizing" the impact of this session's revolution. At best they have blinded themselves. At worst they are shameless liars, doing what they do to maintain their standard of living. Honestly: their programs can't be based on principle, because if the record of the last fifteen years shows us anything it is that empowering corporations and private industry to "take over" the functions of government does not work, pure and simple. They gave us a government designed to fail. Florida belongs, now, to the scavengers.

Gutted by the Florida Legislature: Growth Management ... by gimleteye

This is what "a major overhaul of the state’s growth management laws" looks like. And barring a last minute miracle, the extremists in the Florida GOP will get what they want: the opportunity to use the economic crisis to make it easier for speculators to kill off what remains of Florida natural heritage and quality of life. Yesterday GOP radicals attached the growth management destruction bill to the budget, even though the Senate has not heard the measure. The radical extremists in the Republican majority feared that public pressure would water it down and so they attacked.

The bill will make citizen plan amendment challenges more difficult, remove the option for smaller local governments to have full state review of plan amendments, significantly increase thresholds for DRIs, and exempt mining and industrial development from DRI reviews. In other words, the victory obtained by citizens in Miami-Dade to stop a Lowe's Home Improvement store from being built at the edge of the Everglades (County Commissioner Pepe Diaz and Joe Martinez and former VNS Natacha Seijas pushed it through, consuming the county attorney's office) will now be thrown out the window. The political payoffs will reward US Century Bank (rated ZERO by Bauer Financial Rating) board members Ramon Rasco, Rodney Barreto, and speculators like Ed Easton and Sergio Pino who benefit from the gutting to make their illiquid investments attractive to the next speculator in line.

Please contact key legislators as soon as possible, even this weekend if possible, as some will be at their offices then:

Please contact the Budget Conference Chairs:

Sen. J.D. Alexander, 850-487-5044, alexander.jd.web@flsenate

Rep. Denise Grimsley, (850) 488-3457, denise.grimsley@myfloridahouse.gov

As readers of our blog know, neither G.O.D. nor I have time to mince words. We are simply writing what we know, based on many years of volunteerism without any expectation of benefit. That Lowe's battle at the Urban Development Boundary consumed precious community resources, involving public interest attorneys like Richard Grosso and the Everglades Law Center working for a fraction of the money poured by a major corporation into the effort to reverse public policy based on sound planning principles. Rick Scott will go down as Florida's worst governor in history, if only for the destruction caused by the legislature under his watch and approval in only his first year in office. Scott knows nothing of Florida's political history related to development, quality of life and environment. And that is what a barely legal fortune has bought us.

Nathaniel Reed was there at the start, in the 1970's when a broad bipartisan consensus among Florida elected leaders held forth that wrecking Florida to serve private profit needed rules.

An OPED by Mr. Reed from this week's St. Pete Times is printed, below. It is worth noting that Linda Bell, the county commissioner representing South Dade is determined to wreck DERM (Department of Environmental Resource Management) on behalf of political interests who long ago tangled with environmentalists and Reed: millionaire farmers like James Humble whose consortium held up the government acquisition of The Frog Pond in Southwest Dade for years, until he and his investor associates could extract the last dime from the federal government. Humble is one of the interests who apparently believe that in return for propelling Bell into the county commission seat occupied earlier by the commission's only reliable environmental vote, that Bell should be the spear tip for their radical agenda: eliminate DERM. Their revival of the 8.5 Square Mile Area, in geographic proximity to The Frog Pond, is just the latest provocation in a 30 Year War against the environment in South Florida, and one that is emblematic of the incessant demand by speculators to dominate government.

You see: they are not even waiting for the carcass of growth management to cool before gutting it at the local level, where the GOP trusts government authority the most. They hate federal government. They are dismantling state regulations. They want power vested at the lowest common unit of authority where it costs least to deform democracy. We've seen this movie before, but read on:

Don't let Florida revert to abuses of past:

Gov. Scott's Proposed Budget: The Growth Machine's Wet Dream ... by gimleteye

Floridians are about to see what they voted for, last November. Yesterday, Scott released his proposed budget far from Tallahassee in a carnival-like atmosphere manufactured for the purpose of showing just how radical Gov. Scott intends to be. A note from one observer: The Florida Department of Community Affairs – Loses $668 Million and 318 positions. Almost completely gone. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection – Loses $148 Million and 120 positions. The Florida Wildlife Commission – Loses $23 million and 97 positions

Florida is now defenseless against the job creation myth of the Growth Machine and fully in the hands of the Creation Myth embraced by the radical right. The grand experiment started by Gov. Jeb Bush in 1998 is now unveiled on steroids and the hopped up Tea Party/ Religious Right/ Corporate Welfare. Here is the Miami Herald: "Scott’s initial budget roll-out in Eustis had the look and feel of a highly partisan, heavily scripted campaign event. The venue underscored Scott’s eagerness to make what is normally a staid, policy-laden event into one that turned the budget into a political declaration. Inside the cavernous First Baptist Church of Eustis, Scott stood in front of a made-for-TV backdrop that said "Reducing Spending & Holding Government Accountable." The church, which seats 800, was filled to overflowing, and people waved miniature American flags and sang God Bless the USA and God Bless America. Warm-up speakers criticized President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, and praised Roger Vinson, the federal judge in Pensacola who last week struck down the Obama health plan as unconstitutional. Before the public event, Scott hosted a private lunch for tea party activists at a nearby civic center. Activists said they would push for Scott’s budget in the same way they fought health care reform. Read more.

As I've written before, the corporations supporting the Tea Party don't care about health care or even taxes as much as they slather for the elimination of environmental regulations. Even though there is no demand for construction, the Growth Machine thrills at the prospect of regulators flushed down the drain. In a good economy, the Growth Machine chafed and roared against government regulators. In a bad economy the Growth Machine triggered, they have their wet dream. But wait, who will the lobbyists have to fight against if the most conservative legislature in Florida history passes the governor's budget? How will the lobbyists be able to gin their fees, once environmental regulators are gone? From the point of view of the environment, Gov. Scott's budget proposed blasts Florida back to the Stone Age. No clean water, no growth management, open hunting season on everything that is left. Congratulations, Tea Party: you got what you asked for.