DCA chief Steve Seibert is leaving the Jeb Bush administration. The governor's choice of a replacement will reveal much about the future of growth management in Florida.

As Community Affairs Secretary Steve Seibert becomes the first state agency head to depart before Gov. Jeb Bush's second term, Bush has a chance to clear up some confusion about development and growth. Is the state planning to do more or less to control it?

The signals in the first term were mixed:

In his first year, Seibert called for a multiyear review of growth laws, emphasizing the need to hear from citizens. But by the 2000 legislative session, he and Bush were cooperating with a House-led assault on growth management. The Senate stopped it.

Following that 2000 session, Bush appointed a 23-member commission to study how to streamline and improve growth management laws. But most of the members had ties to the development industry, and their recommendations, including the elimination of regional development plans, went nowhere.

Seibert called for a smarter approach to regulation, dropping small development issues so the state would have more time for the big ones. But the result was that the DCA largely became a green light. Throughout the 1990s, the state rejected roughly one in every six changes to local growth plans. In the first three years under Bush, that ratio dropped to one in 43.

In this election-year legislative session, Bush engineered the only real growth bill of his first term. But the law he called "historic" asked only that county commissions and school boards try to cooperate when new development might require new schools. Says Richard Gentry, lobbyist for the Florida Home Builders Association: "Much of it is basically a restatement of what's already in the law."

Seibert, a former Pinellas County commissioner, took an earnest approach to his job. But his devotion to a stated philosophy of local government control, while undoubtedly genuine, was out of synch with an administration that was all too eager to tell cities and counties and school boards precisely how to do their jobs. Seibert found himself at one point arguing with developers who wanted county commissions to have the right to raise taxes to support new construction. Parroting his governor's antitax rhetoric, he said: "I just cannot abide taking away the people's right to vote on a special tax." So much for trusting local government.

Bush asked all his department heads to submit resignations in an unusual transition procedure for his second term. Seibert's is the first to be accepted, and his departure shines a spotlight on the governor's growth plans. Bush, a former developer, used to say that he would consider abolishing DCA. Some critics claim that he is doing so incrementally, gradually reducing professional planning staff to the point that it can't possibly monitor growth with any effectiveness.

What will the governor now do, given the chance to appoint a new DCA chief? Whom will he consult? Will he consider professional or political credentials? Planning expertise or development connections?

In the same election that gave Bush another term, a group of residents on the overdeveloped barrier islands of Pinellas County voted to take growth matters into their own hands. Treasure Island government can no longer sanction taller buildings or increased density unless voters approve the change in a referendum. That citizen initiative affects only one small beach community, but its symbolism is potent. People want action on growth management, and how the governor replaces Seibert will demonstrate whether he grasps that political reality.

Bush was re-elected easily, but not on a platform of gutting growth management.

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