Opinion: Everglades bill's dirty tradeoff

Gov. Jeb Bush would have you believe the Everglades funding bill he signed into law Wednesday was the best way to guarantee steady funding to restore Florida's River of Grass, that the poison pill in the legislation making it harder to oppose bad development was no big deal and that the number of people opposed to the measure was small and largely uninformed. None of that is true. The governor should have vetoed the measure and brought the Legislature back to pass a clean bill. He didn't, and it's fair to ask: Why not?

The short answer is that Bush wanted to have it both ways. By signing a law to finance Everglades restoration, the governor can claim this election year that the environment is a priority of his administration. That denies the Democrats a campaign theme and broadens his own political base. Yet the provision in the law that makes it harder for citizens to challenge overdevelopment is a bone to real estate lawyers, developers and business. Bush was quick to call attention to the minority of environmentalists on his side, but most of them supported the bill only because they saw the tradeoff not as benign but as the price of doing business.

That's a sorry commentary on the state's support for a restoration plan whose public benefits are obvious. Florida, after all, has been making the case to Washington for years that the Everglades is a national treasure and deserving of federal financial aid. Half the cost of restoring the ecosystem is coming from federal taxpayers. With so much at stake in the complex, long-term restoration plan, the state should not be sending Congress a message that the Everglades is fair game for politics.

Bush sensed the backlash his action would cause and tried to downplay the effect the law would have on citizens' rights. The law allows only people who are personally affected by a project to file a challenge to development. Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth, a Democrat, and many environmentalists urged Bush to veto the measure. Butterworth said the law "would silence the people's voice in the arena of environmental protection." Bush argued that most challenges to permits are made under a less restrictive section of the law, and David Struhs, Bush's environmental secretary, said the change will not close complainants' legal access, but rather will force them to get "a better lawyer."

Struhs' office will study the new law for a year and report back to the governor. That will provide a partial record, but how can you count people who decline to complain because they believe the rules are stacked against them? That's the rub for many -- the insensitivity surrounding this entire issue. Struhs dismissed the critics as "a couple of statewide environmental organizations and a handful of editorial writers" who "have either not read or not understood" the law. We hope, but don't see how, that view won't influence his report.

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