A night in the growth management ring with Rich Glorioso, state representative and SB 360 supporter
May 28, 2009 at 6:30 am by George Niemann
By George Niemann
PoHo contributor and UCAN-Hillsborough activist
I got an invitation to attend a Town Hall Capital Update Meeting being hosted by District 62 Rep. Rich Glorioso in Plant City. Now some of you may be saying to yourselves, “That’s not my district, I don’t care what he has to say.”
Ah, but you should care what he has to say and here’s why.
Glorioso is an active proponent of SB 360. He has been an active proponent of eliminating Hillsborough’s Environmental Protection Commission. So, even though you may not live in his district, what he has done will affect us countywide (and perhaps statewide) in more ways than one. And anyway, I was anxious to meet this real live legislative supporter of SB 360 to see what, if anything, he was thinking when he hit the “yes” button.
I’d like to give a blow-by-blow description as to what took place at the meeting on Tuesday night. I will do my best at paraphrasing his response to questions. Some of the questions were interesting, and some of the answers were even more interesting.
The face-off began during the open forum question-and-answer period. I told Rep. Glorioso that I and many others were extremely disappointed in the fact that he voted in favor of SB 360 and that I couldn’t understand how he could sell out citizens just to benefit the development community. After all, even the Hillsborough Board of County Commissioners, many of whom are “developer-friendly,” sent an impassioned plea to Gov. Charlie Crist to veto that bill.
His answer: He said that even though the bill had bad parts that he objected to, it also had some good parts. He admitted that he didn’t actually read the entire bill … after all, the bill was hundreds of pages and there were more than 1,000 bills during this legislative session alone … in addition, there were so many revisions to the bill between the Senate and the House … how could anyone take the time to read the entire bill?
My response was, “so you voted for a bill that you didn’t actually finish reading and didn’t fully agree with??? He didn’t respond.
I brought up the fact that SB 360 has provisions in it that will allow a large-scale developer to rescind commitments to upgrade transportation that all parties previously agreed to (state/local/developer). Some examples might be Fishhawk Ranch and Lake Hutto subdivisions in eastern Hillsborough.
His answer: He said he wasn’t aware of that provision (oh, that’s right, I almost forgot, you didn’t read the entire bill before you voted yes). He didn’t want to dwell on the negative, though. He wanted to talk about the good parts of the bill that don’t get enough airtime. Like the fact that this bill will enable homeowners in deed-restricted subdivisions to plant any type of grass that they want. Today, he said, some HOA’s force you to plant only St. Augustine grass. If this bill passes we all will have the freedom to plant Zoysia or Bahia grass. I was thrilled that our legislature took the time to tackle some of these monumental problems while they were giving the store away.
He also felt that this bill offered a solution for the concurrency problem. The problem being that concurrency puts a drain on developers’ pocketbooks without any way of passing the cost onto anyone else. The answer is the Mobility Fee. The Mobility Fee charges the developer a (transportation) fee per rooftop built. It’s supposed to be more equitable to developers, but it is unclear how it would work. It is also unclear how local governments would manage and apply the Mobility money once they obtained it, or if they would consistently apply the fee in every case.
I reminded him that the only problem we’ve had with concurrency has been that Hillsborough never consistently applied it. When concurrency laws were first introduced, Hillsborough said it couldn’t implement them just yet because it would inflict a hardship on developers. As a result, Hillsborough pushed off stringent enforcement of concurrency laws until now. And, of course, now is too late. If they have a chance to push off the application of a Mobility Fee (in place of enforcing concurrency), I’m sure they will. His response was that that’s a local issue.
Other outrageous responses:
A constituent asked why there were no blacks or Hispanics at the meeting. He asked if Rep. Glorioso, as well as, the Republican Party were proactively trying to bring minorities into their fold.
His response: Glorioso said that he’s had a hard time in getting blacks and Hispanics to “come out” … he doesn’t know why they don’t get involved … they promise to attend meetings but don’t show up. That’s not the type of answer I would expect to hear from a politician that is trying to bring people into the fold.
Another constituent asked him for his views on term limits.
His response: If he were king for a day, he would extend term limits from the current 8 year limit to 12 years. The reason being there is so much for a legislator to learn and do, and 8 years is just too short.
Egads man, if you had 12 years, Florida would certainly be paved over!!!
