FLORIDA GOVERNOR LOOSEN HOLD ON DEVELOPERS

When the newly elected Florida Governor said he was going to make Florida business friendly, he did not waste any time. The below are some major steps in doing just that. It is better late than never.

By Zac Anderson
Published: Friday, January 7, 2011 at 1:00 a.m.
In a move with the potential to unravel decades of growth management and environmental policy, Gov. Rick Scott has named two agency heads who have strong ties to the state's development industry. Scott, who has promised to rid the state of "job-killing" regulations, named Billy Buzzett, a land-use lawyer who has worked for one of the largest developers in Florida, to lead the state Department of Community Affairs, the state's top agency for regulating developers. Scott has also indicated his support for diminishing the role of the DCA by merging it into several other agencies, including the Department of Transportation. At the Department of Environmental Protection, the state's top environmental agency, involved in issues including restoration of the Everglades and oil drilling, Scott tapped Herschel Vinyard, a lawyer and executive with a Jacksonville ship-building company. Vinyard has previously represented businesses in environmental cases. The appointments, which drew praise from some business groups like the Florida Chamber of Commerce, are an indication that the new administration may be ready to significantly scale back growth-management and environmental regulations, such as laws requiring developers to pay for new roads or requiring major developments to go through a regional-impact review. Growth control advocate Dan Lobeck calls Buzzett's pick to lead DCA a "radical" choice, arguing that a developer should not be in charge of development regulations. "If there every was a case of the fox guarding the hen house, this is it," Lobeck said. "This is a full-scale abandonment of growth management in Florida." Lobeck believes Buzzett is being brought in to systematically dismantle the DCA. "I expect it's not going to be long before he's known as 'Buzz-saw Buzzett' for seeking to cut down the remnants of growth management rules in Florida," said Lobeck, a Sarasota land-use attorney and president of the citizen's group Control Growth Now. However, some Tallahassee-based environmental lobbyists, who have worked with Buzzett, said he tries to balance development interests with environmental concerns. "He's a development lawyer -- and there are gradients of developers – I always viewed Billy on the green end of that spectrum," said Eric Draper of Florida Audubon. Vinyard – who previously worked in the same law firm as Florida Republican Party Chairman John Thrasher – is more of an unknown among the environmental community. However, Vinyard does serve on a DEP panel involved in the protection of the lower St. Johns River; Draper said those who have worked with him describe him as "very sharp and easy to work with." Vinyard has also served on the local chapter of the Trust for Public Lands, an environmental group involved in the acquisition of conservation land – a key role for the state agency that he will lead. "Our big job with the DEP, with this governor, is to convince them that in fact our environmental rules help the economy, they don't hurt the economy," Draper said. "We appear to be working against the belief system that environmental rules are bad for jobs." As for these new appointments' ties to industries that faced state regulation, Draper said such relationships are not unusual in Tallahassee. For instance, former DEP Secretary David Struhs left the agency to work for a paper company that had sought a major environmental permit from environmental regulators. Another DEP leader – Mike Sole – left the agency for Florida Power & Light, the state's largest utility. "It's not like there isn't a revolving door already," Draper said. In the case of the new DCA secretary, Buzzett spearheaded a number of controversial developments during his tenure with St. Joe, a real estate company that has rapidly reshaped the Florida Panhandle as the state's second largest landowner. He helped sell a plan opposed by many Gulf County residents to reroute U.S. Highway 98 away from the water in Port St. Joe so the developer could have more waterfront land for a condo project. The debate over a new airport built on St. Joe land outside Panama City was even more heated. Environmentalists strongly opposed the Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport because of the impact on nearby wetlands. A majority of Bay County voters disapproved of the project in a referendum but Buzzett helped steer it towards approval, increasing the value of nearby St. Joe lands. The airport opened last year. Water quality samples collected by Patrice Couch of the St. Andrew Bay Resource Management Association, a Bay County environmental nonprofit, showed stormwater runoff from the site is polluting the bay and creeks. "They muddied up the creeks and polluted them just like we predicted," Couch said. But even people who strongly opposed Buzzett's work at St. Joe call him charming and intelligent. They describe him as a gifted pitchman who was able to face public opposition with professionalism and a smile, never losing his cool. Said Couch: "He was a great front man for St. Joe." Buzzett grew up in the small Panhandle fishing village of Apalachicola. He retains an air of southern congeniality and likes to mention that he is a fifth-generation Floridian, said Linda Young of the Clean Water Network. Young was often at odds with Buzzett over St. Joe developments. "He can disarm people with his folksy good old boy I'm just one of you bubbas approach when needed but there's nothing slow or unsophisticated about that man," Young said. "He's sharp as a tack and he gets what he goes for." Scott's picks to lead the DEP and DCA still face a confirmation hearing in the state Senate – although that appears a given. In fact, in recent years, House leaders have been aggressive in their efforts to dismantle the DCA – although the Senate did not go along with the plan. Scott's agency selections follow a report from his transition team released late last month offering a blueprint for such a dismantling. That document recommends that Scott overhaul and, essentially, reduce the independence and power of agencies assigned to protect Florida's natural resources and control growth. The recommendation calls for merging the departments of Transportation, Environmental Protection and Community Affairs into a single agency Later, the report calls for "eliminating" some of the state's primary regulatory powers over major residential and commercial Developments. The report recommends ending a layer of oversight known as Developments of Regional Impact. This designation comes into play when developers seek to build massive subdivisions or business areas, or whole communities such as Lakewood Ranch. Because these developments affect not only local communities, but can drain water resources and increase traffic throughout an entire region, the regulation requires that state planners review the proposals to make sure they are compatible with communities outside the local government's jurisdiction. But Scott may end that oversight. And that is just the start. The report also calls for eliminating the requirement that developers plan for increased traffic and other infrastructure needs. Lobeck said eliminating so-called "concurrency" rules that require developers to pay for expanding or improving roads if they increase traffic and make other infrastructure upgrades would cripple the state's growth management law first enacted in 1985. "Concurrency has been called the linch pin of growth management," Lobeck said. "Which means if you pull it out everything else collapses." For the DEP, the transition report talks about "streamlining" the environmental permitting process. It raises the potential for the state regulations to pre-empt tougher local government rules and cites the possibility of easing regulations on the destruction of wetlands and stormwater runoff.