Florida Growth Management
Planning Law Hasn't Eased Growing Pains
By Bill Kaczor
December 5, 2008
TALLAHASSEE - It seemed like a good idea for controlling urban sprawl: Require ample road capacity be in place before a new neighborhood or commercial development could be built.
The concept known as "transportation concurrency" is part of Florida's landmark growth management act passed in 1985 and then modified in the past 23 years.
But it didn't work: The road capacity provision not only didn't stop sprawl, it encouraged it. Developers found it cheaper and easier to build in outlying areas with extra capacity or where road-building costs are lower than in urban centers.
"The people still get into their cars and drive right back into the city to work," said state Community Affairs Secretary Tom Pelham, who enforces the act. "So the urban area loses the development but still gets the traffic congestion."
Hailed nationally when it was enacted, the growth management act requires cities and counties to have comprehensive plans covering what kind of growth should take place and where. Pelham's agency looks at any changes. The law also has various requirements that are supposed to ensure that new communities have enough schools, water, sewers, drainage, parks and recreation and solid waste disposal as well as roads.
No one questions that the act has made development more orderly statewide, but it's had problems, including:
Pelham's department winds up doing what local governments should have done because they often submit plan amendments just as developers wrote them - including some that are inconsistent with the municipality's own plans.
While new developments may pay their own way, the state hasn't reduced the shortage of schools, roads and other infrastructure that existed before the planning law was passed.
Planing amendments are often adopted before citizens have been given a fair chance to object.
Smaller cities competing to attract development and expand their tax bases have contributed to sprawl by annexing rural areas.
"Growth has been somewhat managed," said Eric Draper, deputy director and lobbyist for Audubon of Florida. "It hasn't been controlled."
Overall, the law has made a positive difference, Pelham said, but he acknowledged it's become a "mess."
Pelham ought to know - this is his second time heading Community Affairs. He led it from 1987 through 1991, then he dealt with it as a lawyer specializing in land-use issues before Gov. Charlie Crist reappointed him last year.
"It's now a very long and cumbersome act," Pelham said. "It's had a lot of exceptions and loopholes written into it."
Environmentalists and developers agree there are problems, but they're often at odds over what they are and how they should be solved.
Developers complain about duplicative state and local requirements and time limits that force them to resubmit plans and repeat the approval process if construction doesn't start on schedule.
"It's badly bent," said Wade Hopping, lobbyist for the Association of Florida Community Developers. "It's become very bureaucratic."
Charles Pattison, president of 1000 Friends of Florida, a growth management group, said the law is needed because "history shows that you cannot just hope that people do the right thing."
Both houses of the Legislature considered major changes to the law this year, but none passed after Pelham and environmentalists opposed provisions sought by builders, developers and other business interests.
"There was a great deal of what I would call pure special interest proposals that got incorporated," Pelham said.
A key disagreement was over Pelham's proposal to add a "Citizens Planning Bill of Rights" to the law that would give people a better opportunity to voice objections.
Pelham offered it in response to the Hometown Democracy citizen initiative that appears headed for the 2010 ballot. If adopted, that initiative would require voter approval of local plan changes. Pelham said that's too extreme and hoped the bill of rights would offer a more practical way to have a say on growth management.