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A Personal View Of Growth Management

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By ERNIE PADGETT

Special to the Tribune

Published: March 22, 2009

A bill being considered in the Florida Legislature would do away with the state's growth management agency, the Florida Department of Community Affairs. The result of the debate will determine how Florida manages future development.

Allow me to put a personal perspective on this critical issue. In November 1980, I was sworn in as a county commissioner in Jackson County. The agency had been established at that time and had "review and comment authority" relative to county and city comprehensive plans for growth.

In 1985, the state adopted the Florida Growth Management Act. The act gave the agency "review and approval authority" over city and county comprehensive plans.
Local governments could still write and adopt their own plans, but the state had to give final approval before the local plan was effective. This was unnerving to many local governments.

Staff Was A Challenge

The 1985 act met with considerable resistance from many cities and counties.

My position at the time was the same as many local elected officials. I strongly opposed the state having approval authority over our growth plans.

Many (not all) of the planning staff members at the agency were antagonistic and rigid when they were dealing with us "lowly" local officials. Of course, this played right into our hands, giving us another reason to challenge the terrible agency.

After the Growth Management Act of 1985 was enacted and into the early 1990s, some of the agency staff certainly left something to be desired. Sometimes, their staff would rattle the sabers about the possibility of withholding state revenue from a city or county if we didn't do exactly what they wished.

I served as county administrator in Santa Rosa County from 1990 to 1995. Now that was an interesting era in dealing with the agency. In 1991 or '92 some local residents paid for large billboards that simply said, "DCA ... Department From Hell."

In the 1990s, things started changing for the better. Local governments and the agency slowly began to develop better relations. Those of us in local government realized that the agency was there to assist. Its staff evolved also and realized they could not continue to be seen as the enemy.

The agency has been managed by some excellent department heads such as John DeGrove, Bill Sadowski, Linda Shelley and Jim Murley.

Interestingly, the current head of the agency, Tom Pelham, served as its head in the late 1980s and was hard to like at that time. Looking back, he had a hard tour of duty during those early days. Today, I think Tom Pelham is doing an excellent job leading the agency.

Starting in 1987 and until I retired two years ago, I served as administrator in three Florida counties. In 21 years, I experienced a tremendous amount of interfacing between local and state government relative to growth planning.

Bad Legislation

I finished my career in Manatee County, population 320,000. We were one of the fastest-growing counties in the state during the 12 years I was there. Florida's growth management worked. The agency staff was responsive and assisted my planning staff every step of the way.

Overall, state and local planning officials have grown together through the years and things are working well.

Granted, there is definitely some streamlining that needs to occur, and development permits need to be expedited.

But support for the dismantling of the Department of Community Affairs is nothing more than lawmakers catering to a few special interests.

They are supporting bad legislation under the guise of helping the state economy.

Enactment of this scheme most likely will allow developers to escape paying for the infrastructure made necessary by their projects.

So who would pay the infrastructure bill? You would!

Lawmakers would let developers off the hook while sticking it to taxpayers. The Senate and House, along with Gov. Charlie Crist, should put an end to this farce.

Ernie Padgett is a former administrator of Manatee County.

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