Charlie Crist, Florida’s growth and his reputation (as it was) ruined
June 2, 2009 at 6:45 am by Wayne Garcia
Yes, I know, it is a wonky issue. SB 360. Most Floridians don’t give a crap about growth management. Just get the economy going and cut my taxes to near nothing while boosting public services, parks and investments in infrastructure, they figure.
Right.
But Charlie Crist’s cowardly signing Monday of the bill that the St. Petersburg Times says sets back Florida’s growth management by 20 years. He didn’t have a public signing, opting instead for a 5 p.m. news release from his flacks. How shameful not only to do the wrong thing but to hide like a guilty 5-year-old while doing it.
How do you sign a “growth management” bill that even the wildly pro-growth Hillsborough County Commission opposes???
Signing SB 360 leaves Crist’s legacy as a popular governor who didn’t fight the tough fights and who made his decisions on a matrix of how many influential Floridians and/or voters would love him for it. On that scale, SB 360 had lots of upside (campaign contributions for his Senate campaign in 2010) and no downside (the handful of environmentalists and planners who give a crap about such things doesn’t amount to enough to elect the local dog catcher).
And this man wants to be our next U.S. senator? What a chickenshit.
According to the Governor’s Office:
The Community Renewal Act was taken up as a means to stimulate Florida’s economy and create jobs for our people. The Community Renewal Act does the following:
1. The bill incentivizes entrepreneurs to undertake economic development projects in designated urban areas.
2. The bill directs a study of a mobility fee system to replace proportionate share payments paid by developers for transportation impacts.
3. The bill also allows economic development projects to stay “in the pipeline” by extending the validity of development permits for two years.
4. The bill makes changes to our affordable housing programs to ensure affordable homes are available for those in need, including young adults leaving the state foster care system.
5. Finally, the bill encourages green building and storm resistant construction.
The reality is that the bill opens vast new areas of Florida’s undeveloped lands to wholesale commercial and residential development without the reasonable review an growth-management limits of local and state government. The equals more and faster unfettered sprawl in a state that is drowning in red tape from building roads, sewer lines, etc. out to non-urban, far-flung subdivisions.
Monday was a dark day for Floridians who want a better, cleaner, more urban future in a state that seems determined to wreck the paradise that is the Sunshine State in pursuit of cheap profits and campaign checks.
(photo credit: Steve Cornelius / flickr.com)
