Originally Published: 20 September 2007
The Daytona Beach News-Journal
FLORIDA VOICES

It was heartening to see Tom Pelham, secretary of the Florida Department of Community Affairs, admit that the comprehensive planning system, which his department is supposed to regulate, has become a worthless sham. (Op-ed Sept. 13) Pelham describes very well the explosion of comprehensive plan amendments that have allowed developers to build at will with almost complete disregard for the state's Growth Management Act.

The secretary admits that something must be done, but suggests that the Florida Hometown Democracy initiative, which would put all comprehensive plan amendments to a local referendum, is too extreme. Instead, he calls on the Legislature to make other changes that might limit the number or nature of comprehensive plan amendments which can be passed.

Pelham's ideas are good and might work, but his article misses two points.

First, it is the Legislature's refusal to make changes like the ones he suggests that made the Hometown Democracy initiative necessary in the first place. When elected officials will not act responsibly, it is reasonable to pass the decision to the local voters.

Second, most of the bad plan amendments that have driven urban sprawl and decimated our landscape violate the Growth Management Act and could easily have been stopped but for one thing: they were approved by the Department of Community Affairs.

The Growth Management Act makes it very hard to challenge amendments when they are approved by the DCA. Pelham could stop the run of bad plan amendments tomorrow with no legislative action, simply by not approving them. This will not happen either, however, because even a well-meaning DCA is limited by political and bureaucratic realities.

A better solution, therefore, is for the Legislature to change the burden of proof so that, when a plan amendment is challenged, the advocates of the amendment must show that it is consistent with the GMA, whether it is approved by the DCA or not.

Finally, Pelham asks, Do we want a referendum on every gas station? One answer is that a comprehensive plan that took 10 years of public input to develop should not be changed in a quick vote to accommodate a gas station. Another answer is, when that gas station is going to change the entire fabric of the comprehensive plan, maybe we do want a vote.

Pelham claims that Hometown Democracy will create "chaos" -- but it is the present system which has created the chaos, and until the process is fixed, Hometown Democracy is a reasonable and necessary response.

Morgenstern, an environmental attorney, lives in Seville.