State seeks better way to handle growth

By Joe Newman, Sentinel Staff Writer

After decades of struggling to keep up with Florida's booming population, state officials concede their 20-year-old system of overseeing how local governments manage growth needs a major overhaul.

The answer, state officials say, is to shift focus to places in most need of attention -- areas with sensitive environments, such as the Wekiva River basin and Florida Keys, and mostly rural areas where local governments are being overwhelmed by growth, such as the Florida Panhandle.

Officials with the Department of Community Affairs -- the state agency that oversees growth management -- also say it's time to give more power over growth to local governments.

What's more, some legislators who agree that it's time to tackle growth management are talking about letting counties levy a 1-cent sales tax to pay for roads, schools, water and other growth needs.

The call for change stems from a belief that growth management hasn't worked in Florida.

"Our schools are overcrowded; our roads are overcrowded," former DCA Secretary Tom Lewis said this week during a panel discussion on the subject at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

The new plan, which still is taking shape and will be considered during the upcoming legislative session, should not surprise anyone who has followed Gov. Jeb Bush's views on growth management. Since he first ran for election, Bush has championed giving more control to local governments.

But this is the first time he has put a legislative package together that would essentially rewrite the state's landmark 1985 Growth Management Act, which requires local governments to develop detailed growth plans that must go through a strict series of state and regional reviews.

Some of the ideas that may make it into this year's bill have been talked about for years.

"There's an evolution sometimes that's needed before ideas become ripe," said Thaddeus Cohen, a Delray Beach architect whom Bush appointed last year to run the Department of Community Affairs. "You can be too soon with an idea."

To critics of the state's growth-management efforts, however, changes are long overdue.

When the state passed the growth act 20 years ago, the law was hailed as a much-needed antidote to local governments gone wild over development. During the 1970s and 1980s, many local governments had approved far more development than they were prepared to handle.

The growth act, for the first time, required local governments to make sure that certain things, such as roads and utilities, were in place before officials could approve large-scale developments.

The state never gave local governments a way to help finance the cost of those improvements, however. The result was frustration at all levels, from the local officials with no money for the roads and utilities, to state officials caught up in seemingly endless reviews, to the residents who found themselves stuck in traffic each day.

Some environmentalists and growth-management advocates fear that Bush's fix may make matters worse. Many of them still are wary of the governor, who just two years ago wanted to abolish the Department of Community Affairs, merging most of its growth-management functions into the Secretary of State's Office.

Now, some of those critics say giving more control to local and regional agencies could benefit developers, who often wield a lot of influence with city and county commissions.

An early draft of the DCA proposal includes:

• Streamlining the way people can appeal state and local land-use decisions. Under the current system, some challenges are heard by a state administrative hearing officer while others are filed in Circuit Court.
• No longer requiring local governments to include plans for parks, water, wastewater and garbage disposal in the growth plans that they submit to the state. Those needs should be coordinated on a local level.
• Increasing the role of the state's 11 regional planning councils. The boards would take on greater responsibility in approving local comprehensive plans, the maps that show how a city or county will grow. The "comp plans" show the locations of future residential, commercial and industrial uses, among other things.
• Requiring that local governments prove their growth plans are economically feasible. For example, if a county wants to change its plan so a large agricultural area can become a subdivision, it will have to show that it has a way to pay for the new roads and utilities that the homes will require.

"I don't know quite what to think about it," he said. "I think we've got an awful lot of people who not only want to change the system but dismantle it.

"I think that is absolutely ill-advised. I think that's a major, major mistake."

DeGrove served as DCA secretary under Gov. Bob Graham and also attended last week's panel discussion, which included seven of the nine DCA secretaries who have served since the 1985 growth act was passed.

Charles Pattison, executive director of 1,000 Friends of Florida, a watchdog group, says he is keeping an open mind to some of Bush's proposals. He worries, however, that the entire package could unravel if essential parts of the plan don't make it through the Legislature.

Pattison says he also is concerned about the logistics of shifting authority for some development approvals to the regional planning councils, where members are appointed by local governments and the governor. Most of the regional planning councils would have to greatly enlarge their staffs to take on the extra work.

"Where's the money?" said Pattison, whose statewide organization pushes so-called "smart-growth" principles. "Where's it all going to come from?"

One possibility is that the Legislature may give local governments the power to levy a 1-cent sales tax to pay for growth needs.

Senate President Tom Lee, R-Brandon, who has long said that managing growth is more a problem of financing than planning, likely will push some sort of growth-management reform this year. But how closely his plan resembles the one being crafted by DCA is yet to be seen.

"Rearranging the permitting process or land-use process and declaring some kind of political victory in having reformed growth management will not happen," Lee said. "End of discussion."

Lee's greater concern is finding a way to pay for new roads, schools, parks and water resources. If the state doesn't address those needs it will "undoubtedly kill the goose that lays the golden egg for long-term economic development," he said.

Some of those watching the growth-management debate say they would be surprised to see such a significant reform package make it through the Legislature because of all the special interests that are tied to growth and the environment. Finding something that can please everyone may be an impossible task.