The Political Whore

From March on Politics:

he Florida Supreme Court has just approved the latest financial impact statement from Hometown Democracy petitioners, after rejecting their previous two submissions.

The high court has already approved the HD ballot question for the 2010 statewide ballot; the proposal would require voters to approve local land use plans. But without a valid financial impact statement, the question would have appeared with a notation indicating that no such information was available, according to the Secretary of State’s office.

The court rejected HD’s prior two impact statements on grounds that they were misleading and/or vague. The new one, according to a court opinion released today, is “clear, unambiguous, consists of no more than seventy-five words, and is limited to address the estimated increase or decrease in any revenues or costs to the state or local governments,” and therefore passes legal muster.

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.

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Photo Credit: kwalk628 Flickr.com

By Kelly Cornelius
PoHo contributor & R-LAND activist

No ceremonial photo-op for this signing, probably because nobody wants to see the Governor bending over for special interests but in my opinion that is exactly what he did by signing SB 360. This bill guts Florida’s growth management laws (yes, we had some) and everyone but special interests and their politicians are against it.

The only good news? This should be exactly what we need to get Florida Hometown Democracy approved by the voters in 2010.

For those tracking the grandaddy of bad growth management bills in this year’s Legislature, Mary Ellen Klas (@meklas) of the Miami Herald just tweeted:

Crist hints at a veto of HB 1171 the so-called State Farm bill, deregulating well-capitalized insurers, but sign growth management Sb 360.

Photo credit: amerune at Flickr.com

OR

Photo credit: Daquella Manera at Flickr.com                   YOU DECIDE!

By Kelly Cornelius
PoHo contributor and R-LAND activist

As if the past dirty deeds and developer-driven agendas of many of our Hillsborough County commissioners wasn’t proof enough (yes, we mean you Team Sprawl) now the Florida Legislature has shown you exactly why we need Florida Hometown Democracy (FHD). FHD is a citizen-driven initiative that would allow voters to make growth decisions instead of leaving it in the greased and dirty hands of politicians. To help make the case for FHD, there is this year’s legislative session.

Where to begin?

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Dan Waite e-mailed me to tip me off to his first effort to make and post a political video, and it is a good one, explaining how Senate Bill 360 that is on Gov. Charlie Crist’s desk is a bad one.

Watch the full video after the jump:

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Here is a video that was the winner of The Congress for New Urbanism CNU 17 video contest, a film that looks at the connection between suburban sprawl and environmental degradation. From independent filmmaker John Paget.

h/t to Kelly Cornelius, PoHo contributor.

Watch the full video after the jump.

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Not to surprising but the tone was amazing. Today in the Florida House of Representatives, Republicans led a hog-slaughtering of Florida’s growth management laws and opened vast areas of rural property to sprawl by approving its version of the controversial SB 360.

The bill was so bad that the Republican governor’s top growth management official, Tom Pelham, said yesterday that it would “seriously undermine Florida’s growth management laws.”

And that pissed off Republican leaders:

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Speculative real estate buying is what got Florida in this current economic mess. We’ve got an unsold inventory of an estimated 300,000 homes. So what is some lawmakers’ answer to this economic crisis? More unfettered, unfocused and unrealistic growth.

Craig Pittman at the St. Petersburg Times reports this morning on a new bill unveiled yesterday that would abolish the state’s growth-guiding agency, the Department of Community Affairs. Its responsibilities would be shifted to the unelected Secretary of State’s Office (which was once held by Katherine Harris).

Under Crist’s pick as secretary, Tom Pelham, the agency has blocked such controversial projects as the mammoth Wiregrass development off Bruce B. Downs Boulevard in Pasco County and a Taylor County development proposed by St. Petersburg surgeon J. Crayton Pruitt.

Pelham’s agency blocked the Wiregrass development – which promised 12,000 homes or apartments, three elementary schools and enough stores to fill two major shopping malls – because Pasco officials failed to nail down road improvements to accommodate all that growth.

And in Taylor County, Pruitt had proposed destroying 58 acres of wetlands adjacent to a state aquatic preserve in order to build 624 condominium units, an 874-unit hotel, 280,000 square feet of commercial space and a golf course. Pelham contended those plans went far beyond the state’s plans for how the coast should be developed and failed to protect the fragile environment.

Read the full story here.

The movement that would put local land-use decisions directly into the hands of voters is fighting for its life again, this time against a developer-and-business-sponsored lookalike initiative that Florida Hometown Democracy says would “do nothing.” Organizers are asking for a rehearing at the Florida Supreme Court, a motion that is rarely granted.

This from the civic movement over the weekend:

Hometown Democracy to ask for rehearing on Florida Chamber of Commerce sponsored, “Vote on Nothing” petition.

In a close, 4-3 ruling, the Florida Supreme Court narrowly upheld the constitutional amendment proposed by “Floridians for Smarter Growth.”  That Chamber-backed petition was created to foil Florida Hometown Democracy, the people’s reform constitutional amendment that would allow local voters to approve or reject comprehensive growth plan amendments approved by their local elected officials.

In contrast, the Vote on Nothing proposal allows a referendum on a growth plan amendment only if 10% of the electorate travel to the office of the supervisor of elections to sign a petition within 60 days of the date of the first signature on the petition.  The Hometown Democracy sponsors predict that, because of those impossible logistical hurdles to clear, a referendum occurring under those circumstances would be highly unlikely, which, they assert, is the Chamber’s plan in the first place.

Florida Hometown Democracy will seek rehearing.

The full opinion is available at this link:

http://www.floridasupremecourt.org/decisions/2008/sc08-318.pdf