FLORIDA HOMETOWN DEMOCRACY

Blake Library – Stuart, Florida
October 26, 2009
Remarks by Nathaniel P. Reed

Before I began to address the merits - and demerits – of the Florida Hometown Democracy Amendment, I would like to take a few minutes to share an important personal perception of Florida. It’s a conclusion I’ve developed after 40 plus years of active involvement in Florida government, and one that shapes my view of the issues before us today.


All of you sitting here this evening know that Florida is in dire economic conditions, and far from recovery. Three days ago the Palm Beach Post reported that Palm Beach County anticipates a shortfall of ANOTHER $170 MILLION next year. Having raided their rainy-day fund for last year’s budget, and drastically cut many programs, they now face the specter of even less revenue income and even harder choices of how to balance income and obligations. How did Florida get here? Part of the answer is that we’ve all – whether Floridians, Carolinians, Californians: all of our countries’ citizens - been victims of gross financial mismanagement on a national scale as Wall Street greed trumped any sense of ethical behavior or sound financial management. But Florida is also suffering greatly from self-inflicted wounds, aggravated by the national economic collapse.


I would argue that much of our current dilemma is due to the fact that Florida has always been the ultimate ‘pyramid scheme’. Madoff may be the momentary title-holder, but Florida has actually been playing the Ponzi game far longer. The essential Ponzi premise is that as long as you can continually recruit new suckers to pay back the existing club members – you’ll be okay. This pretty much sums up the management strategy of Florida over my 40 plus years of observation and participation. I would invite you all to name one public program in Florida – transportation, education, public health, environmental resource management, where we have actually put the cost of meeting the immediate needs upon the immediate population. Florida’s history has been to expect that future growth will cover the cost of the current needs – next year’s new taxpayers will get the bill for existing infrastructure deficiencies – and their new demands will in turn be paid, not in full by them, but by their successors.


We’ve marketed ourselves as a low-tax, low-cost retirement haven. We have further convoluted the scheme with an absolutely archaic tax scheme, full of exemptions intended to provide short-term growth incentives, but with higher future costs – which will supposedly be covered by distributing those costs over a larger taxpayer base in the future.


Florida, from her very beginning, has embraced ‘growth’ -with almost no limits, as a mantra. Now we are falling victim to the downside; if we don’t keep growing, the pyramid can’t be sustained.


The Palm Beach Post - most appropriately in their 2009 New Years Day editorial – summarized brilliantly our past, and possible future: “For decades Florida and the officials running the state, counties, and towns have perpetrated the myth that growth will pay for itself and provide a prosperous lifestyle for everyone who buys into the myth. With special tax breaks for long-time residents, the expectation that an ever-increasing supply of newcomers, snowbirds and tourists would pay most of the bills was as enticing a Ponzi scheme as any that Bernard Madoff promised. Now, Florida’s growth scheme has collapsed. The growth myth should collapse along with it. Yes, the real estate market will come back – let’s hope in a more rational form. But unbridled growth never again should be seen as Florida’s perpetual money machine.”


Let’s look back at the recent history of growth management efforts. After the passage of the 1972 Land and Water Management Act, it became clear that land development specifically needed attention, and in 1975 the adoption of the Local Government Comprehensive Planning Act was adopted. Although this legislation laid a solid foundation for mandatory statewide comprehensive land use planning, the state’s oversight role was only advisory. A series of events, including rapid population growth and growing complaints about actual implementation led to the adoption of the 1984 State and Regional Planning Act and the 1985 Growth Management Act, which revised many aspects of the earlier 1975 law but gave the Department of Community Affairs – DCA- veto authority over local plans and amendments. In 1992, further changes to growth management laws, including the repeal of regional planning council veto authority over Developments of Regional Impact were adopted.


The years of Governor Jeb Bush led to great discontent within the environmental community regarding growth management. There was a distinct change of emphasis that stressed ‘cooperation’ and ‘alternative, marketplace solutions’ versus what some perceived as strict adherence to the law as written. Several unsuccessful attempts were made in the Legislature to weaken DRI and comprehensive planning requirements during this period. Rather than confront the large public and institutional support for growth management controls, the budgetary process has become the tool to curtail growth management.


In the early 1990’s - during the height of DCA’s efforts to implement the 1985 law - it had a staff of more than seventy professionals, two field offices, and three separate divisions. By the end of the Bush administration, the field offices were gone, one division had been reassigned to the Governor’s Office, and fewer than thirty professionals remain.


Over the past ten years, the mission and responsibilities of the DCA have been continually reduced until we’ve reached the point where, even according to current DCA Secretary Tom Pelham, the agency is barely able to fulfill its statutory mission.


Traditionally, when the economy has faltered, we’ve looked at incentives such as tax breaks, or the relaxation of governmental restrictions (look at President Bush’s proposals regarding air and water quality standards), to jumpstart the money machine. Some of the same interests who gave us the current market glut, today again raise the argument that they need unbridled freedom to respond to ‘market conditions’, that the ‘planning process’ takes too long, and that it will impede economic recovery. Private landowners who still believe that unrestricted property rights are a divine right will certainly join in any opportunity to eliminate growth management programs.


I think that all the discussions need to face the fact that sound development policy must be sound both economically and environmentally – or we’re just once again pawning the true costs into the future - with compounded interest!


The current economic catastrophe has placed us squarely at the crossroads of Ponzi Place and Sustainable Avenue. Despite all the voices saying we need to change direction, it remains to be seen if we will, or whether we will try to characterize the current situation as a ‘perfect storm’ that will never happen again once we just get going fast again – and try to make it back to ‘business as usual’.


We somewhat adopted the catchphrase ‘smart growth’ to imply greener, more sustainable efforts. It’s been perhaps most accurately considered a desirable ‘goal’.


I would argue that any growth that doesn’t pay for itself isn’t smart at all!


And unfortunately the current economic situation most local government’s face is that even when new development pays its fair share, the local government doesn’t have enough money to pay its share.


We can’t keep growing at the speed of light forever, why not slow down now and adopt truly sustainable policies? The challenge, of course, is that we’ve looked to the Ponzi float from new projects to keep us afloat for the moment. To abandon that economic model will require developing alternative revenue sources, many of which probably begin with a ‘T’.


The proponents of Hometown Democracy ask very reasonable questions and make critical observations that frankly ‘pain’ all of us that love this state and who have worked to keep it from becoming another example of the mish-mash of southern California.


I share their discontent and disillusionment. One only has to drive south down I-95, or the Florida turnpike, or drive north from Marco Island to Sarasota to be stunned by the amount of development- so much of it ill-conceived, ugly and out of place.


How could ‘we’- a collective ‘we’ ever allowed two of the most magnificent areas of shoreline Florida to become such broad strips of second rate development?


Faced with the realities of what damage has been accomplished during a period when our exalted growth management act was in force, it is fair to seek any potential solution to halt the run-away train of senseless, over-development.


So, having laid out my personal perceptions of where we are, and how we got here, let’s turn to the issue at hand: Where do we go from here? The Florida Hometown Democracy amendment has been proposed in an attempt to address what most of us perceive as a crisis. It proposes that we take a new path from the cross-roads.


Like any proposal, it has both strengths and weaknesses – absolutely nothing in government is ever perfect – and I don’t want to stand here today and try to tell you that this proposal is perfect. What I would like to do is share with you the key arguments in support of the proposal – the ‘pros’, and arguments against the proposal, the ‘cons’ such that you might have a better sense of the issues in this very, very, complex debate.


My reasons to support the Hometown Democracy Amendment include:

1) Failure of Local Government Efforts - We have collectively lost trust in our local governments and our elected officials not only to implement sound comprehensive plans, but to enforce them. Far too often development interests have persuaded elected officials to negate or modify comprehensive plans with decisions that are contrary to the public good. These are described as ‘gifts’ to a particular developer who may have had made significant campaign contributions.


A search of the files indicates far too many publicly elected officials - county and city commissioners - are residing in state and federal prisons as we gather here tonight. Palm Beach County has earned the moniker ‘Corruption County’ for the shady dealings that have recently jailed several commissioners. What is the most common denominator in their activities; special favors of land/development deals!


We have lost faith in our elected official’s ability to govern fairly and honestly!


What a terrible legacy!


2) Continued Failure of the Florida Legislature - The Florida legislature has been bombarded by the developers and their seeming unending supply of campaign contributions. Since 1985 the legislature has steadily weakened growth management programs with either exceptions or outright changes sought by developers. Look at the prosecution of Representative Samson for promoting an unbudgeted campus building that just coincidently fit the needs of a crony who wanted a place to store his aircraft!


Incredibly, the current legislature and its leadership have openly resented and resisted Secretary Pelham’s determination to enforce what remains of our once highly acclaimed growth management laws. They have zeroed out the most popular program of land acquisition in our state’s history and the Sadowski Affordable Housing Trust Fund.


3) Loss of the Public Voice - Although the Growth Management Act is supposed to encourage effective public involvement throughout the planning process, citizens are frequently ignored or belittled when they attempt to participate. The usual ‘extent’ of testimony allowed at public hearings statewide is three minutes. Any citizen’s legal challenge to an approved amendment is expensive, the ‘fairly debatable’ test is practically impossible to overcome.


The deck has been carefully stacked against any appeals of poorly conceived decisions at DCA or at the local scene.


4) Public Awareness - The strongest case for the Florida Hometown Democracy Amendment is a return to citizen participation. Our voices would be heard, heard loud and clear: a form of democracy that this state has not been a party to for too many years.


Citizens throughout Florida experience first hand every day the shortcomings of the current process. Even when schools are overcrowded, roads are increasingly congested, water supplies become limited, their governments continue to approve plan amendments that authorize even more development.


Although the media usually points out the deficiencies and the editorial boards and the Op/Ed pieces boldly produce forthright criticism of local governments’ foolishness, the public seems zoned out.


The Growth Management Act did not intend constant comprehensive plan changes. Supporters of FHD believe that once Amendment 4 is in the Florida constitution, the number of speculative plan change requests will drop significantly because developers will know that their proposal must be judged to ‘ be in the public interest’ – by the public themselves, and that the public must be willing to endorse the proposed change.


Sweetheart backroom deals that currently permeate Florida’s decision-making climate will become much less likely and far more difficult.


The Hometown Democracy initiative is an enticing proposition, offering a strong resounder to the present climate of the ‘public be damned’!


Now let me divide my time by enumerating several potential problems with the Hometown Democracy Amendment.


1) The Problem of Nimbyism - or - Not in My Back Yard! Local governments will find it much more difficult to adopt amendments that are controversial, but much-needed community projects such as affordable housing, schools, transit systems, landfills, prisons, and other public infrastructure will encounter resistance from citizens who might want them, but not if located anywhere near their home.


Local governments could be forced to undertake either far more costly or less desirable alternatives or eliminate much needed projects entirely.


2) Piecemeal Planning - FHD would remove the ‘comprehensive’ from the comprehensive planning approach, resulting in a series of uncoordinated, piecemeal decisions driven by popularity rather than necessity or thoughtful planning.


Additionally, FHD does not promote strategies to reduce sprawl: instead the proposal might limit responsible new developments in more populated areas seeking appropriate infill opportunities, forcing new development out into rural areas which have fewer people to oppose a proposed plan amendment.


3) High-Priced Media Campaigns - Debates on controversial plan amendments will likely turn into high-priced media campaigns favoring well-funded developers over homeowners associations and grass-root groups. Citizens will face the constant need to fund ‘War Chests’ to counter ill-advised amendments.


Think about this: the county and city commissioners can shirk their duty to eliminate bad proposals and poorly conceived amendments by simply stating in passing the proposal: “Let the citizens decide!”


4) Logistical Problems - FHD creates some real logistical problems. FHD would require all amendments to be voted on prior to adoption by local government, BUT there is no definite answer regarding whether such amendments are to be voted on individually or in a bundled package with many amendments. Then there is the real challenge of describing each amendment in 75 words or less on the ballot. Assuming that this could be fairly accomplished, will voters be able to effectively consider more than a few amendments in this fashion? Surely we don’t want to copy California’s ballots with dozens and dozens of amendments on each ballot.


What will local governments do – add the amendments to the regular elections or will special elections be required? If so, the cost of special elections could be staggering.


5) Planning Gridlock - I see real legal quandaries resulting in a voter-approved amendment found ‘not in compliance' by DCA, not to mention local plan amendments required in the future by changes in the act or amendments.


Consider for a moment the new requirements such as school concurrency, mandatory water supply coordination, capital facility improvements and many other important questions of comprehensive planning; the likelihood of gridlock is high.


This could all be exacerbated if the legislature, in the pockets of big time, highly financed developers, were to retaliate by redefining the definition of a plan amendment, or even make growth management programs advisory at both the local and state levels.


Will HTD put an end to those shenanigans or will passage of the amendment lead to an era of constant legal controversies?


If we want put on the brakes - and really slow down the runaway train of growth, and have time to take a rational measure of where we want our state to grow and mature, it is enticing to ignore the obvious flaws in proposed Amendment #4. If Amendment #4 fails, there will be other efforts made to encourage Florida to grow up and face its problems. Either way we will have that opportunity at the ballot box a year from this November.


I have a long record of being involved with growth management issues in Florida. I have served on countless study committees and commissions, followed the original conception of growth management in Oregon, and helped form 1000 Friends of Florida. At times I have been encouraged that this state’s leadership understood the forces that were destroying the assets that make Florida such a special place, but today I share your sense of being ‘dismayed if not disgusted’. The sheer numbers of new residents and the power of the developers have combined to undermine one of the most thoughtful, best conceived, and carefully crafted growth management acts in the country.


Now we face a crossroad. Amendment #4 is born out of collective frustration leading to discontent and a loss of confidence in government.


As I have shown you Amendment #4 has both strengths and weaknesses.


It is the only meaningful alternative before us for consideration.


When I am in doubt, I turn to a group of ‘old owls’ for advice: men and women, who have served in government, are notable planners and designers and even developers - the conscientious few that have produced lovely communities that all of us could be proud to live in.


They’re a split jury!


One verdict: It can’t get any worse, let’s try it!


The other verdict; “My God, you have no idea of what the unintended consequences of passage of Hometown Democracy will be.


I admit to being in an impossible personal position of not knowing at this time how I am going to vote on this issue. I think I am going to wait and watch the next session of the Florida Legislature to see if there is any hope that maturation of the leadership understands the critical nature of the decisions that must be made if we are to reverse or continue the era of the great Ponzi scheme.


My advice to each of you caring Floridians who care so deeply about the future of our beleaguered state: stay tuned, stay involved and knowledgeable. Keep up to date with the debate as it develops as the future of Florida well may at stake.


Thank you!

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