Perspective: A stacked deck?

A Times Editorial

A stacked deck?

The governor wants to look at ways to overhaul growth management laws, but his study commission has too many builders and developers and too few environmentalists.

It would be hard to draft a tougher assignment than the one facing Gov. Jeb Bush's new growth management study commission. Though everyone agrees the laws need to be overhauled, the competing interests -- environmentalists, builder-developers, farmers and politicians -- are in bitter discord over how to do it. It is no help to the task that they are so unevenly represented at the governor's table.

Of the 23 people he appointed, only two are card-carrying environmentalists. But five are builders or developers and six, including the chairman, are local government officials with a potential stake in limiting the state's oversight, as the governor himself has long wanted to do.

In naming four legislators to the panel, Bush conspicuously overlooked the one who most deserved to be there -- Sen. Tom Lee, R-Brandon -- in favor of three who are among Florida's largest rural landowners: Rep. Paula Dockery, co-sponsor of last session's infamous land grab bill; Rep. J.D. Alexander, a bitter foe of rural housing density regulations; and Sen. Lisa Carlton, who announced (commendably) that she would abstain on Dockery's bill because its passage would enrich her family's holdings. Sen. Jim Hargrett, D-Tampa, the only urban legislator on the panel, voted in committee (as did Carlton) to preserve the Rodman Dam, whose removal is a defining issue for environmentalists.

There wasn't a place for Nathaniel P. Reed, Florida's pioneering growth management advocate and chair of 1000 Friends of Florida, but there was one for Paul Bradshaw, whose wife is the governor's chief of staff. Allison DeFoor, until recently the governor's Everglades adviser, claims environmental credentials, but they are clouded by his new role as general counsel of Tidewater Consulting Inc., which is partnering with Associated Industries in a campaign fundraising scheme aimed in part at defeating the Senate's leading environmentalist, Jack Latvala.

Contrary to some reports, 1000 Friends did get an appointment, but it went to a new board member who couldn't be expected to carry as many votes as Reed might. Bush also appointed his favorite environmentalist, the Audubon Society's Charles Lee, but snubbed the Florida Chapter of the American Planning Association, which had been more in the forefront of this spring's fight to keep the Legislature from dismantling growth management without a study.

"You can quote me," said Lee in a deft understatement, "as saying that I'm looking forward to the challenge."

It is possible, of course, that the commission will defy initial perceptions by recommending legislation that fairly improves growth management. It's a hopeful note that the chairman, Orange County Commission Chairman Mel Martinez, picked a fight with home builders earlier this year by proposing to block rezonings that would increase pressure on overcrowded schools. But overall, builders and developers have too many votes on the commission and environmentalists have too few. Writing a report may turn out to be the easy part, compared to persuading the public that it should become law.