Orlando firm to take pro-development 'jobs' strategy statewide
By David Damron
When the Innovation Way East development proposal came before the Orange County Commission earlier this month, its backers shrewdly recast what opponents saw as a debate over growth into a referendum on creating jobs — or losing them if the 6,343-residential-unit project was voted down.
That strategy revived the controversial IWE project — regarded as dead just months before — and divided commissioners enough that a final vote was postponed until next month.
That same job-creation argument is one that all Florida voters will hear in political ads leading up to a Nov. 2 vote on Amendment 4, the so-called "Hometown Democracy" amendment. If approved, it would take big projects such as IWE out of politicians' hands, and give voters a final say.
In the developers' corner for both fights is Orlando-based Consensus Communications Inc., a political-lobbying and consulting and public-relations firm.
That's the firm that made news for being paid more than $380,000 by Florida's Blood Centers for public-relations work from 2005 to 2007. Recently, President Anne Chinoda resigned amid controversy over her $605,000 salary and six-figure contracts between the center and companies that employed members of its board of directors.
Consensus co-founder John Sowinski is regarded as an expert on state ballot initiatives and has helped earn the firm about $720,000 in the past three years for crafting a strategy to kill Amendment 4. The Florida Chamber of Commerce, developers and businesses such as Publix are funding the opposition.
Sowinski's Consensus colleague, Roy Reid, is helping lead the public-relations effort to pass IWE in Orange — including providing the "Jobs! Innovation Now" buttons that sprouted on supporters' chests the day of the IWE vote.
Sowinski would not discuss issues related to the firm's "jobs-killer" strategies in these fights, but Ryan Houck, executive director for the group opposing Amendment 4, said employment issues will be trumpeted in most political campaigns this fall, so the message is not unique.
"There are literally dozens of reasons to be against Amendment 4. And they are all good," said Houck, executive director for Citizens for Lower Taxes and Stronger Economy. "But right now, in this economy, the main reason to oppose Amendment 4 is because it's a job-killer."
A Ron Sachs/Mason-Dixon poll this month showed 61 percent of respondents backed Amendment 4, but that's just barely over the 60 percent needed for a constitutional amendment to pass. Houck said the more voters learn about possible job losses, the more they will oppose it.
Backers of the measure say this job-loss argument is misleading and a key reason voters are so fed up with politicians' inability to regulate growth.
When developers come armed with dubious job claims in one hand and campaign donations in the other, those claims frequently go unchallenged, said Lesley Blackner, the lawyer behind Hometown Democracy. And that's why politicians can no longer be trusted to make honest growth decisions, she said.
"It really smacks of desperation," said Blackner of the "job-killing" claims for the amendment, "and it is nothing but a shell game. People are tired of the lies and the commissioners who fall for it."
Blackner said it's especially surprising that Orange commissioners would even consider IWE, which would be built in an environmentally sensitive area in eastern Orange County outside of the "urban services" area equipped with county water and sewer mains.
One commissioner — Mildred Fernández — was recently charged with asking for campaign donations in return for supporting development projects, Blackner noted. And another, Bill Segal, was reported to have voted for unrelated projects that his land-development business partner was involved in, without disclosing their partnership.
"You can see why people are so appalled by the political class," Blackner said.
But Amendment 4 opponents say handing those growth decisions to voters would be unwieldy and potentially kill Florida's economy.
"It has the potential of delaying opportunities," said Wayne Rich, the lawyer for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormon Church, the developer behind IWE.
That project found new life with a last-minute pitch that it could help bring new jobs to Orange.
County Mayor Rich Crotty had said in January he could not vote for the project, given that it was so far outside the county's utility service area and inside the sensitive Econlockhatchee River region. Plus, Orange County and Orlando already had approved nearly 100,000 residential units that are still unbuilt, he and other critics said. A majority of other commissioners agreed.
But days before the May 11 hearing on the 4,625-acre IWE project, developers and other booster asserted that a massive and unfolding economic-development opportunity — code-named "Project Transform" — may hinge on the fate of IWE.
That project, cloaked in confidentiality agreements, wouldrequiretens of millions of dollars in as-yet-uncommitted state and federal incentives for a private business consortium that wants to set up solar-research and manufacturing opportunities in Brevard and Orange counties.
IWE's developers say they could help deliver Project Transform if their project were approved.
The developers also said they would pull out of a $31 million proposed BeachLine interchange to be built in that area. They had previously agreed to fund about one-third of its costs.
Those job- and road-project ramifications put Commissioner Segal — a previous vote against IWE in January — back in play. Another "no" vote, Fernández, was suspended after her arrest. The development comes back for a vote June 25.
Blackner said Project Transform is just a "smoke screen" to get politicians to back a bad project.
