Orlando mayor named Fla. secretary of state

Since Gov. Jeb Bush moved to Tallahassee nearly four years ago, the office of governor in Florida has evolved from one of the nation's weakest to one of the strongest.

Bush added even more muscle Saturday.

The governor appointed Orlando Mayor Glenda Hood as Florida's next secretary of state. Hood will be the first to hold the appointed position, which has been part of the elected state Cabinet that voters agreed to downsize.

But Bush also wants to add significant responsibility to Hood's new job.

In addition to overseeing state elections and licensing, Bush wants the secretary of state to take over responsibility for growth management. Managing growth and community planning, a challenging mission in a still-growing state where environmentalists and developers regularly battle, has frustrated governors and state legislators for years.

"It is a huge responsibility as we take this whole department with the merger to a very different level," Hood said Saturday.

For Bush, the change would concentrate even more power within the insular governor's office. After gaining new powers in the appointment of judges and the oversight of public education and universities, Florida's governor would gain broader discretion to make growth management a higher priority or bury it beneath other issues.

The Department of Community Affairs, which oversees growth management now, is an agency whose secretary is appointed by the governor. But heads of state agencies often become powerful figures within their areas of expertise. By moving responsibility for growth management to an appointed secretary of state, Bush could steer the agenda more closely without coping with a large bureaucracy easily influenced by legislators and special interests.

The governor announced Hood's appointment Saturday after a meeting of his economic advisers in Miami. Hood, who became Orlando's first female mayor in 1992, has been a strong political supporter for the governor and his brother, President Bush.

"Over the years, Glenda has shown her dedication to Orlando and Florida, always answering the call to serve," Bush said. "She has been a great mayor and will be a great secretary of state."

Hood, 52, will be paid $117,000 a year and start work in February. Ken Detzner, chief of staff for Secretary of State Jim Smith, will serve as interim secretary between Jan. 7 and when Hood arrives.

She will oversee two high-profile, often contentious areas.

Katherine Harris, the last elected secretary of state, became an international celebrity following her role in the 2000 Florida recount of the presidential election. Harris was elected to Congress last month, and the state's ability to efficiently manage elections remains under scrutiny.

As Hood takes on that responsibility, growth management will add a dimension to her job that promises to be just as difficult.

Hood's fellow mayors think she's up to the job. They say that running a city like Orlando for 10 years has given her invaluable real-world experience dealing with growth.

"People are coming to Florida whether we like it or not," Tampa Mayor Dick Greco said. "Glenda is a reasonable person. She understands that good growth is necessary, and that unbridled growth is not good. She has faced those problems, which will make it easier for her to balance it out."

St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker expects that Hood will follow the governor's philosophy that more growth-management decisions should be made at the local level rather than in Tallahassee.

"Every tiny thing does not need to be reviewed on a statewide basis," Baker said.

However, Hood's political foes offer pointed criticism of how she has managed Orlando's growth as mayor for the past decade.

"She is someone who believes in growth and who is part of the growth machine," said Doug Head, chairman of the Orange County Democratic Party. "One of the things she is most proud of is the annexation of vast regions of previously undeveloped farmland in the hinterland of Orange County. Orlando is now struggling mightily to deal with the resulting sprawl."

Head also criticized how Hood is redeveloping the closed Orlando Naval Training Center into a residential area to be called Baldwin Park.

"She got taken to the cleaners and sold it for a pittance to a private developer," Head said. "It could have been a college campus, and it's just another housing tract."

But at least one prominent Florida environmentalist is a fan of Hood's philosophy, especially her vision for Orlando's abandoned naval base.

"She's redeveloping that property within the existing urban footprint as an alternative to sprawl that eats up the countryside," said Charles Lee, senior vice president of Audubon of Florida. "If Glenda Hood's leadership brings about a movement to do more of that, it would be a very good thing."

Handing growth management to the new secretary of state would require approval next spring from the Republican-led Florida Legislature. Hood's appointment will require confirmation by the state Senate.

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