To Manage or be Managed by Growth
In response to a growing frustration with the State’s inability to deal effectively with the needs of Florida’s rapid population growth, Governor Bush created the Growth Management Study Commission. Since Florida’s population is expected to increase by 50% in the next 30 years, with commensurate impacts to the State’s natural resources and public infrastructure, the Study Commission was to review the State’s growth management laws.
The task was daunting. In less than six months the Study Commission was to comprehend, distill and revise one of Florida’s most controversial laws, and simultaneously, mediate the passionate views from special interest groups. Senator Lisa Carlton worked meritoriously to represent Sarasota County as a member of the Study Commission.
Regrettably, the haste in which the Study Commission was operating produced a report not yet ripe for gubernatorial or legislative review.
The final draft deserves both praise and criticism. The laudable portion of the report is that it has accurately identified problems with the existing growth management system. Most of the shortcomings are found in the report’s implementation strategies. For example: today large-scale developments are reviewed by state officials in a process known as a Development of Regional Impact (DRI). DRI’s can be laborious, expensive and burdensome. The Study Commission recommended eliminating DRI’s and relegating the development review process to a regional board. The report offers inadequate levels of detail on how such a regional process would consider environmental, traffic and water impacts. Despite its numerous shortcomings, the existing DRI process is to some degree predictable. Replacing DRI’s with a yet to be defined process, has met with opposition from developers and environmentalists. It seems the devil we know is preferred to the one we don’t.
Another problematic recommendation in the Report is to replace concurrency regulations with a “true cost of growth” analysis. Existing law, known, as Concurrency requires that certain facilities such as roads and utilities be in place concurrent with proposed new development. The new policy would require an economic analysis to estimate the burden or benefit that new development would have on taxes. Presumably, only growth that generates a positive tax scenario would be approved, regardless of its impact on traffic, water supplies, etc. Requiring an analysis of the cost of development is long overdue. It is a valuable planning tool, but not a threshold for determining development approval. It fails to consider all of a community’s needs, such as affordable housing, schools, human services and the environment.
There is a trend to move government closer to home, and the Growth Management Study Commission report conforms to the trend. Unfortunately for local taxpayers, when responsibilities are moved from state to county governments, they typically come without a sustained funding source. The Study Commission’s report fails to identify the funding sources to implement their proposals, other than suggesting taking funds from other services, or raising local taxes.
Ironically the “highest priority” suggested in the report is “to achieve a diverse, healthy, vibrant and sustainable economy”. That’s a lot of adjectives to describe an economy, but is it really our highest priority, or an aspect of what should be a much higher priority, people?
We should measure growth management on a human scale, not economic. Sure, one could argue that having a strong economy provides funding for community needs. However it is possible that even with a strong economy, not all community needs are necessarily met. A community that achieves a high quality of life in human terms, such as a healthy environment, accessible and efficient transportation and quality health care and schools, needs not worry about its economy.