Managing growth will be new group's focus

Orange County politician Mel Martinez, who angered developers earlier this year, will lead the state commission.

By CRAIG PITTMAN

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 4, 2000

Gov. Jeb Bush picked a politician with firsthand experience in confronting the thorny problem of Florida's growth to lead a study of state growth management laws.

Bush chose Orange County Commission Chairman Mel Martinez -- who angered home builders earlier this year with a controversial proposal to help overcrowded schools -- to preside over the new 23-member Growth Management Study Commission he appointed Monday.

The commission, charged with finding ways to improve the state's system of dealing with sprawl, must hold its first meeting by Aug. 15. It is supposed to come up with proposals by February, in time for the next session of the Legislature to act on them.

"Floridians deserve to be part of a growth management system that not only preserves their quality of life but is less complex, less regulatory and more community-based," Bush said in a news release announcing the appointment.

Commission members include retiring state Sen. Jim Hargrett, D-Tampa; former Pinellas County Commissioner Steve Seibert, now secretary of the Department of Community Affairs; Agriculture Commissioner Bob Crawford; former gubernatorial aide Allison DeFoor; four builders or developers; an architect; a school board member; four local government officials; two attorneys; two state representatives; another state senator; a University of Miami real estate expert; and the vice president of the Audubon Society of Florida.

The list of appointees did not include representatives of two groups active in battling the efforts of some lawmakers this spring to junk current growth management laws: 1,000 Friends of Florida and the Florida chapter of the American Planning Association.

And the one person Bush chose from the Naples area -- where the state had to step in last year and slap a moratorium on development to force local officials to do a better job of managing growth -- was the president of the Economic Development Council.

But in Martinez, Bush has picked a chairman who already has the home-building industry howling and advocates of tougher growth management laws cheering.

Orange County has 142 schools to educate 144,000 students. More than 85 percent of them are crowded, yet another 20,000 residents a year flood in.

So this spring Martinez proposed that, in areas where a school is already overcrowded, the county should not allow land to be rezoned so that developers can build homes or apartments that would put more pressure on the school. Builders and developers in Orange County reacted with horror. The furor over Martinez's proposal came as some lawmakers were calling for taking the state out of development regulation altogether. In the end, the Legislature was unable to agree on what to do.

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