Lawmakers’ Deadly Passion for Developers

When people talk about the great love stories of history, they often mention such figures as Marc Anthony and Cleopatra, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and Johnny and June Carter Cash, who got married in a fever hotter than a pepper sprout.

But this roll call of romance leaves out one contemporary match made in Florida that I contend contains far more passion than all the rest.

I am speaking of our fine Legislature and our rapacious development industry. They love each other SO much! And they’re willing to do just about anything for each other. It’s so sweet!

Case in point: Last month, the Florida Legislature held a special session in Tallahassee. Their glorious purpose was to further burnish the presidential credentials of Gov. Ron DeSantis. For instance, one major drive involved banning the state pension fund from investing in companies that do business with Iran, which is definitely the No. 1 priority of every insurance-paying homeowner in Florida.

But they snuck in a little surprise gift for their developer darlings, too.

In a bill to supply aid to the victims of Hurricane Ian and Idalia, lawmakers told local governments in counties hammered by the storm that they were not allowed to make “burdensome” changes to their land-use or growth plan regulations for three years.

No learning from their mistakes and trying to avoid repeating them. No sir! The Tallahassee tyrants decry that kind of education as much as learning that anything negative ever happened during Black history.

As one House committee was discussing the bill, one of our fine lawmakers, Rep. Bob Rommel, noted that section with approval, and then added, “There is nothing more important than protecting private property rights.”

Yes, that’s MUCH more important than protecting people’s lives.

Is it kookypants-crazy to claim that property is worth more than human beings? Sure it is. But you say crazy stuff like that when you’re madly in love.

I think I am safe in calling what occurred on Florida’s beaches prior to Hurricane Ian a “building frenzy” — as in “a temporary madness.”

Developers were determined to take advantage of a hot housing market and thus built soooo much stuff along the state’s fragile barrier islands, way more than they should have. They were in such a swivet to meet demand that they far exceeded the density limits in most of the state.

State law says that in coastal areas, the density of development is not supposed to exceed an evacuation time of 16 hours for a Category 5 storm.

A month before Ian hit, Lee County officials admitted in a hearing that their evacuation time was 96 hours — in other words, 80 more hours than it should have been. And they said that only nine of the state’s 45 coastal counties could claim to be faster.

Then Ian slammed into the Southwest Florida coast and killed 148 people.

An objective person might look at what happened and say, “Hey, let’s not build back exactly where the storm surge knocked down houses and drowned people. And maybe we should try to stick to the evacuation times in the law.”

But there’s no one like that in our Legislature, where the official anthem appears to be Steely Dan’s “Do It Again.”

Senate President Kathleen Passidomo told Politico Florida that the goal of this moratorium on making changes is — I am paraphrasing here — to help builders rebuild in exactly the same way in exactly the same place that was wiped out before so it can be wiped out again.

“The aftermath of a hurricane isn’t the time to impose new costly, burdensome, bureaucratic requirements and might inhibit the ability of a family or business to rebuild on land they have owned for generations,” she said.

Madame, I would submit that that’s EXACTLY the time to steer builders away from places prone to deadly flooding. Otherwise, their customers may not survive the next storm.

Paul Owens, president of the smart-growth group 1000 Friends of Florida, and lobbyist David Cullen of the Sierra Club were the lone naysayers. Both tried to convince lawmakers to take that section out of the hurricane relief bill.

When I talked to Owens, he pointed out that the bill “takes the authority out of the hands of the local governments to … say maybe we need to reassess what kind of development is appropriate in these areas in the wake of these storms.”

Blocking the locals from even considering improvements for the next three years “is a bad idea made worse,” he said.

But Owens and Cullen’s objections had as much effect as yelling them into the teeth of a howling hurricane.

That’s what you get when the people who are supposed to represent us in Tallahassee decide they love their campaign contributors in the development industry more than life itself. Their passion for pleasing developers is like a fever hotter than a pepper sprout — a fever that should make us all feel sick.

Craig Pittman is a native Floridian and 30-year veteran of the Tampa Bay Times who has authored six books and currently co-hosts a podcast called "Welcome to Florida."