Originally Published: 2 September 2008
The Treasure Coast Palm
Some people get paid to pick up garbage; some people get paid to spread garbage around. Ryan Houck, executive director of Floridians for Smarter Group, is paid a monthly salary to trash Florida Hometown Democracy, the statewide initiative to give voters the power to accept or reject commission-approved growth map changes.
What do you do?
Remember rule No. 1: The developer machine will say anything to get what it wants. Floridians for Smarter Growth is a political action committee cooked up by the growth machine a year ago to keep Hometown Democracy off the 2008 ballot and defeat it in 2010. In a little more than six months, the National Association of Home Builders, National Association of Realtors, Florida Chamber of Commerce, Waste Management, Florida Home Builders and U.S. Sugar (just to name a few) dumped more than $3.5 million into this endeavor.
Floridians for Smarter Growth spent most of this money last fall and winter floating a bogus petition designed to do two things things: 1) suck away our paid petitioners and, 2) deluge certain county supervisors of elections so all petitions could not be timely validated. It worked.
Beginning last Jan. 2, Smarter Growth dumped more than 600,000 petitions in key counties around the state. Smarter Growth wasn’t on the ballot, but neither was FHD. That was the plan.
FHD has raised and spent about $1.8 million since it started in the fall of 2003. Yes, we’ve paid for petition collection and volunteers have sent petitions, like just about every other initiative campaign. But we never paid anywhere near $3 per petition like Mr. Houck alleges.
Mr. Houck calls me a “wealthy extremist” because I put my money where my mouth is. Fact is, I’ve spent my entire life watching the state I love paved over and ruined.
I and so many others waited decades for leadership and reform. It never came. In fact, Florida’s deterioration intensified over the past 10 years because our elected officials let developers go wild. I finally decided to do something about it and am grateful to be in a position to do so. It’s a tribute to the power of Hometown Democracy that the big boys are compelled to pile on against it.
Over the past decade, developers built to their heart’s content, crashing our entire economy, not to mention Florida’s natural heritage. Hopefully, everybody now understands that an economy run by and for developers sinks like the Titanic.
The current meltdown is such that even Mr. Houck admits “Our growth-management system is imperfect.” In reality, it works perfectly for the developer crowd. It gives them what they want: the control to build when, how and where they want. All they need is three votes out of five on the commission and they’re off to the races. That’s why they’re so crazed over FHD.
In full spin, Mr. Houck goes further and says we need reform, just not Hometown Democracy. The developer machine’s toy, the Legislature, chews new holes through our “growth management” laws every session. So don’t hold your breath for “reform.” And you’ll never see Floridians for Smarter Growth do anything other than bash FHD.
Hometown Democracy will grant people to vote on land use changes that change the face of their community forever. It will counterbalance developer control over local government and help ensure that growth truly reflects the public interest.
The developer machine knows that Floridians want voter accountability on land use. That’s why its mouthpiece, Floridians for Smarter Growth, will say and do just about anything to trash Hometown Democracy.
Lesley Blackner
President, Florida Hometown Democracy
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