Palm Beach Post Editorial

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

There's too much control over growth in Florida. Developers need more freedom to build. Local elected officials don't need oversight from the state.

Those are the myths driving legislative efforts to abolish growth management in Florida. The most recent proposal, a committee bill to be heard Wednesday in the House Military & Local Affairs Policy Committee, would do away with the state's growth management agency, the Florida Department of Community Affairs.



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The department has been charged with protecting Florida from irresponsible growth since the Legislature passed the landmark Growth Management Act in 1985. If many residents believe that growth had been doing quite well until recently despite the act, they might be stunned to discover how much growth could be enabled without the law.

Without the current state and regional oversight of major projects, the mobile homes of Briny Breezes in Palm Beach County would have been converted to oceanfront high-rises that overwhelmed their surroundings. There would be a new town in the middle of the Loxahatchee Slough, which feeds a river still designated as wild and scenic.

Even with the Growth Management Act, Florida's population grew from nearly 11 million to almost 20 million. The state's economy is in trouble from overbuilding, not underbuilding. Opponents of growth management, though, are using hard times as the latest reason to undermine state oversight of development and leave it to local officials.

Senate Bill 360 would eliminate traffic concurrency, which requires that government build roads to keep up with development, and state and regional review of the largest projects. The House bill would dismantle the Department of Community Affairs and assign its land-planning function to the Department of State. If DCA survives this attempt, next year could be worse because the agency automatically will be phased out unless the Legislature reauthorizes it.

Ironically, the House bill has some potential. It calls for replacing traffic concurrency with mobility fees, an untried approach assigned to a task force. It would give developers a two-year extension on permit deadlines to offset tough economic conditions.

The efforts to do away with DCA, however, are nothing like the common-sense approach to speed local review of plans and building permits for critical state industries, such as bioscience. Those efforts, advocated by the Business Development Board of Palm Beach County as a way to recruit companies, deserve support from cities and towns.

The proposed shift of growth planning to local governments would take Florida back to the bad old days of feuding cities competing to attract the most growth with little concern for the environment or traffic. Thanks to the FBI, Palm Beach County residents have a clear view of what happens when local politicians wield too much power.

The Legislature is wrong to believe that most Floridians want a return to those days. The burdensome Florida Hometown Democracy, which would require public votes for every land-use change, is an option no developer wants. But in Tallahassee, developers are giving voters every reason to support it.

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