(return to media page)


Pensacola News Journal, June 29, 2008

Is Florida's growth plan perfect? No, but it could be a lot worse

As Floridians debate the controversial "Hometown Democracy" amendment, supporters are again claiming their plan will ease Florida's growing pains. But before swallowing the "Hometown" medicine,voters should carefully read the warning label.

By law, every community in Florida has a comprehensive land-use plan. Hometown Democracy leaders propose that changes to these plans be decided directly by voters.

At face value, the idea seems appealing. However, Hometown Democracy is just another Trojan Horse for the no-growth agenda. The dangerous side-effects of this amendment will ruin our state's planning process and end smarter growth altogether.

Hometown Democracy is fraught with unintended consequences and unanswered questions about its workability. If passed, it will require voters to decide literally hundreds of technical land-planning issues at the ballot box.

Communities planning new roads, better schools or workforce housing will find that Hometown Democracy makes planning virtually impossible. These important community endeavors often require changes to the local comprehensive plan. Lost amidst hundreds of other technical land-planning issues,many of these vital improvements will never make it through the Hometown Democracy approval
process.

The result: many local planners and elected officials will simply give up trying to manage growth and punt all tough decisions to voters.

Recently, the Volusia County Council adopted a long-term plan for preserving environmentally sensitive areas. This plan is the first step in the county's three-year-old smart growth initiative and encourages cooperation among cities, schools, businesses, environmental groups and residents to improve growth management. In the long-run, the plan will ensure that Volusia County maintains a strong economy, wellprotected wildlife habitat and a conservation corridor for future generations.

What's the catch? The plan adopted by the council required seven changes to the comprehensive plan. If even one of those changes failed to receive approval, the entire project would collapse.

More importantly, after several years of Hometown Democracy, few quality-of-life projects will be proposed at all. The time and expense of planning such community improvements will simply be too burdensome. As responsible growth management and planning becomes a thing of the past, political elites and professional campaigners will inherit control of the growth management debate.

At the end of the day, Hometown Democracy has stumbled upon a classic case of right problem, wrong solution.

Most Floridians agree that we can do a better job of managing growth. However, most Floridians also want smarter growth � a system that is well-managed and better planned. Instead, they are being offered a chaotic planning nightmare that will make the problem worse.

Its proponents are suggesting that we dismantle public planning altogether and replace it with a political campaign on each of the 10,000 comprehensive plan changes � most of which are quality of life improvements originating with local governments. That is a recipe for gridlock and sprawl.

As we debate this amendment, there will be a temptation to ask the question, "Is growth management perfect in Florida?" That's the wrong question.

Most of us can agree that growth management is anything but perfect. The right question is, "Will Hometown Democracy make the system better, or worse?"

Any reasonable analysis would conclude that Hometown Democracy would make the system far worse than what we have today.

Clarence Anthony recently retired as mayor of South Bay. He served as president of both the Florida League of Cities and the National League of Cities. He is president of Floridians for Smarter Growth, the statewide campaign opposing the Hometown Democracy amendment.