Our view: Legislation hurts Longboat

The Legislature violated in the past session one basic governing principle but upheld one unfortunately universal law — the law of unintended consequences.

And it is going to be a problem for Longboat Key unless town leaders can get legislators to amend a law they just passed.

The problem starts with the massive bill re-writing the state’s growth-management laws. The overall law and its intentions were exactly what was needed in Florida. For too long, the 1984 Growth Management Act had allowed unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats in Tallahassee to veto — and at times, effectively dictate — what would and would not be allowed in comprehensive plans from Broward to Manatee to Leon counties.

The new law pushed the decision-making responsibility and accountability back down to local elected officials in counties and cities where it should reside, plus it cut red tape and bureaucracy, saving millions of dollars and streamlining the development process for the economic rebound — should we ever see one with the debt load we are now carrying.

But in one area of the re-write, the Legislature got it backward for Longboat Key and perhaps other municipalities. It wanted to prevent disastrous repeats such as St. Pete Beach, where that city’s form of Hometown Democracy required developers to spend enormous amounts of money and time upfront before sending a development to vote in a local referendum at the end. That killed development and redevelopment in the Pinellas County city.

But the new state law accomplished this by prohibiting local governments from holding referenda on any comprehensive plan amendments.

This portion flies in the face of the principle that the government closest to the people is the government that is best. And it causes a big problem for Longboat Key, where there had never been a problem before, because Longboat is the opposite of St. Pete Beach.

The town has been holding referenda on comprehensive-plan amendments since 1984 — interestingly, a few months before the original Growth Management Act was signed into law. But the town charter calls for a referendum to be held up front, asking voters what maximum changes they would allow to a property, and then the developer and Town Commission work within that boundary. This is what Town Attorney David Persson calls the “Mother, may I?” method.

It substantially reduces risks for the developer, and so more positive development tends to go through. In fact, Longboat voters have approved every change brought by a private developer, the latest being for Moore’s Stone Crab Restaurant & Marina. But just because voters approve the maximum increase does not mean that is what the Town Commission will approve. It can, and has, approved less.

The referendum system has worked on Longboat, but because of the new legislation, it is nullified, and essentially the town’s growth opportunities are capped with what is on the books right now.

Essentially, the town cannot hold any more referenda on comp-plan amendments, which mostly affects development densities on the island. What had been approved by voters earlier is still on the books, such as the 2007 referendum granting the town an additional 250 tourism units and the Longboat Key Club and Resort’s Islandside expansion project. But no future ones will be allowed.

There is a solution. The town needs to persuade local legislators to sponsor an amendment next year that will grandfather in those municipalities that were doing it like Longboat. There are not many, but without such an amendment, the legislation actually works exactly contrary on Longboat to its stated goal of local government decision-making and more development — fulfilling the law of unintended consequences.

“It creates the reverse thing that was intended for Longboat,” Persson said.

Should be an easy fix. But it needs to be done.

What others are saying

Entitlements sentiments
“But it took me longer to get the hang of the word ‘entitlement.’ You don’t hear it in political discussions in most of the rest of the West, even in Canada. There’s talk of ‘social programs’ and ‘benefits’ and ‘welfare,’ but not of ‘entitlements.’ I knew the term only in its psychological use — ‘sense of entitlement’ — in discussions of narcissistic personality disorder and whatnot…

“‘Entitlements’ are unrepublican: They are contemptuous of the most basic principle of responsible government — that a parliament cannot bind its successor. Which is what entitlements do, to catastrophic effect…

“Whether or not government ‘entitlements’ are debts, they very quickly become a psychological disorder — and a ‘sense of entitlement’ is harder to dislodge than almost anything else. Government entitlement breeds psychological entitlement breeds a utopia of myopia…

“‘Entitlement is an ingenious word, a brilliant coinage for both a pampering state’s generosity and the debilitating consequences thereof.”

Mark Steyn, author who immigrated from Great Britain, writing in National Review.