Citizen's Planning Bill of Rights Author Hopes to Restore Public Confidence in Florida's Comprehensive Plans

Calling their attention to ''growing citizen dissatisfaction with the way we're dealing with growth-and-development issues,'' Florida Department of Community Affairs (DCA) Secretary Tom Pelham urged state legislators to pass his Citizens' Planning Bill of Rights, which could restore public confidence in the effectiveness of comprehensive plans and defuse the increasingly assertive Hometown Democracy movement's push for a referendum on a ''draconian'' constitutional amendment that would make any major plan changes dependent on a community vote.

Even if the movement misses the February 1 deadline for placing the amendment on the 2008 ballot, residents are likely to continue such efforts ''at the local level all over our state,'' Secretary Pelham cautioned the Senate Community Affairs Committee, stressing, ''They think the plans are changed willy-nilly. They think the commissions are in the pockets of developers.''

The commissions, reports Orlando Sentinel writer Aaron Deslatte, amend local plans 12,000 times each year, with a record of 208,000 single-family home permits issued in 2005 declining to 146,000 last year and probably further now.

Under the secretary's proposed bill, he writes, the state would review large residential projects that include affordable housing within 40-50 days rather than in several months, steer more growth to urban areas by easing or removing requirements for greater developer-ensured road capacity, require local governments to give residents more notice before proposed comprehensive plan changes, and ''let cities and counties change their comprehensive plan less often -- and require a supermajority vote to approve the changes.''

Hometown Democracy co-founder Ross Burnaman, a Tallahassee lawyer who helped Secretary Pelham implement the state's 1985 growth-management law during his earlier DCA tenure in the late 1980s, doubts lawmakers' receptiveness.

''I don't trust the Legislature,'' he said. ''Since 1985, the Legislature's done nothing but butcher a good piece of legislation.''

Others question whether the proposed reform could appease the public.

''There's a general frustration by people who come down to the county commission meeting to speak about something they think is important, then get three minutes at midnight,'' observed longtime developer lobbyist Wade Hopping. ''They end up feeling like it's not a fair deal. That's going to be a hard thing to fix.''Source : http://www.smartgrowth.org/