Senate president Tom Lee views the problem as an economic issue, one his fellow Republicans must be willing to fund.
By JONI JAMES
Published November 26, 2004
TALLAHASSEE - As a teenager, Tom Lee would ride his bike from his Brandon home to a country club where he learned to play golf.
The trip included a couple of miles along quiet Bloomingdale Avenue, with only a few four-way stops slowing his path. Nearly three decades later, the rural road is a major, four-lane artery with commercial development lining both sides.
"You wouldn't let a kid ride a bike on those roads on the best days now," said the 42-year-old Lee, shaking his head. "You'd have to have some sort of death wish."
The impact of Florida's overwhelming growth on Brandon's quality of life underlies Lee's decision to make reforming the state's failed growth management laws one of his top goals for his two-year term as president of the Florida Senate.
But it is also personal: Lee makes a comfortable living building luxury homes in a business begun by his dad.
It may seem odd that a man who has made his living off Florida's land boom would tackle an issue usually associated with civic activists and environmentalists. Builders usually complain that growth management slows them down.
But Lee, who said he views the problem in economic terms, sees no contradiction.
"My frustration is that my industry can't see past their next project to the long-term damage we are doing to our industry by failing to construct a system that will provide for sustainability of growth," Lee said in a recent interview. "Instead it's, "Let's get all we can get now, and we'll leave the debt of those excesses to future generations to figure out how to pay for it.' "
Lee, a divorced father of two young children, laid out his challenge to senators moments after he was sworn in last week as the Senate's new leader.
"The more we grow, the further we're getting behind," Lee told them. "Without adequate transportation, classroom space, parks and water resources, we will undoubtedly kill the goose that lays the golden egg for long-term economic development."
But the big, unanswered question for the Tampa Bay area's first Senate president in 30 years: Can this home builder - a political maverick known more as a loner than a consensus-builder - accomplish what has flummoxed far more prominent politicians, including Gov. Jeb Bush?
Lee will have to persuade the Legislature, where tax cuts are far more popular than long-term planning, to spend the money needed. He'll have to lobby the building industries, including fellow home builders, to embrace meaningful change. And he'll have to win over House Speaker Allan Bense, a self-made millionaire and building contractor from Panama City.
Lee says he is convinced he has a shot. As Senate president, no legislation can move through his chamber without him. No senator can be heard from the floor unless he approves.
"It's not going to be easy. I'll have to spend a lot of political capital, no doubt about it," Lee said last week from his new corner office at the state Capitol. But avoiding the discussion because it's difficult is "just sticking our head in the sand," he said.
Florida's 1985 Growth Management Act required local governments to map future growth and adopt 10-year plans for affordable housing, recreation, open space, water and transportation. Major changes to the plans require state approval.
Everyone, from environmentalists to developers, seems to agree that growth management hasn't worked. But there is little agreement on what's broken.
Developers and home builders contend they must submit to meaningless, time-consuming and costly permitting. Cities and counties bicker over jurisdiction and annexation plans. School boards struggle to find financing and new property, with little control over where growth occurs. Citizens say they are largely left out of the process. And environmentalists say natural resources are too often compromised.
"Everybody knows Florida isn't going to go back to a no-man's land, that we have to figure out how to deal with this," said Charles Lee, senior vice president of Audubon of Florida, who is not related to the Senate president. "No one's been able to figure out how to get everybody to put their cannons down for a few weeks and ask the high-road question of "What do we want Florida to look like?' "
The last major push to amend the Growth Management Act was in 2001. Bush, having already tackled school reform, Everglades restoration and tax cuts, turned to growth management.
Months after appointing then-Orange County Chairman Mel Martinez to head a statewide task force on the issue, Bush presented a plan to lawmakers: Force local officials to say no to new residential construction in areas where schools were already overcrowded. Martinez, now Florida's U.S. senator-elect, had gotten a similar policy on the books in Orlando.
Bush also sought to create a system to put dollar figures on the public cost of new development to ensure adequate fees or taxes were collected. But in a rare defeat for Bush, the issue died on the final day of the 2001 session, with the House and Senate bickering over whether school boards should have authority to raise sales taxes to build schools.
The next year, Bush returned with a more modest plan requiring counties and schools to work together on growth plans. The 2002 law also required cities and counties to plan for water supply and long-term delivery of municipal services such as police and fire rescue. The full impact of the law, however, has yet to be felt because many of the deadlines for initial implementation don't hit until next year.
"One of the hardest things in this process is that in growth management there are no immediate impacts," said Sen. Lee Constantine, R-Altamonte Springs, who sponsored the 2001 and 2002 bills. "It's years before the rubber meets the road back home and we know how much impact we've had."
So far, Lee offers few specific changes. Local governments should make more decisions, he says. And land-use laws should provide incentives for desirable development, such as urban redevelopment. But Lee is adamant about one thing: money.
Already, he said, Florida has a $23-billion deficit in its 10-year road-building plan. And that's not money to improve roads; simply to keep them from getting any more crowded.
Lee says he's not sure if the money should come from new taxes or redirecting resources. He said he won't let his Republican colleagues, who have opposed increased government spending since taking over the Legislature in 1996, dodge the issue.
"The conversation we need to have with conservative Republicans is the difference between an entitlement and investing in Florida's future," Lee said. "As Republicans we can't have it both ways. We can't be proproperty rights, probusiness and proeconomic development and not be willing to construct a system that raises revenue for infrastructure."
Having both him and Bense from the building industries will help, he said. They know the system and what might work, he said.
"The chemistry I think is finally right," Lee said.
