Home rule has been dying a death by a thousand papercuts. The architect wants to move in for the kill.

Florida Senator Stan McClain (R-Ocala) is a residential homebuilder. He's responsible for sponsoring many of the preemption bills that have made it much more difficult, and in some instances impossible, for local governments to determine their own growth policies. Senator McClain says he's tired of having to sponsor all of these preemption bills and even questions whether it's "healthy" for local governments or the state legislature.

It certainly isn't healthy for local governments, as we've learned all too well here in Manatee County. But McClain's idea for ending the onslaught of preemption is far more frightening. During a recent conference organized by a think tank, McClain said that he would like to "build consensus around what are things that can be administratively approved," because he would prefer to incentivize local governments to "do the right thing." McClain lamented that "it just seems that every year I'm having to go and fix a problem and a challenge that somebody's having in their community, and so it’s just a piece at a time, piece at a time."

The problems he's fixing that somebody is having in their community amount to developers who aren't getting complete acquiescence from their local governments. By "do the right thing," he seems to mean take the pesky public and the elected officials they might seek to hold accountable out of the process by making more and more land use decisions subject to administrative approval, which means staff would simply see if it matched the criteria laid out by the state and then, assuming it did, be obligated to approve it. 

McClain authored the "Blue Ribbon Projects" bill in this year's session, whose failure was celebrated by sustainable-growth advocates, only to learn that the bill's worst elements were tucked into HB 399 as a last-minute amendment. 

The common elements in such bills sponsored by McClain include restricting how local governments can define or regulate "urban sprawl," limiting the ability of counties and cities to block or slow development projects, standardizing rules so local governments cannot impose stricter requirements than state law, "streamlining approvals" for development and requirements forcing local governments to approve projects more quickly by reducing reviews, studies, and hearings.

Now McClain wants to rewrite Chapter 163 of the Florida statutes, the core of the state's growth management policies. He noted that it still references the Department of Community Affairs, a state land use planning agency eliminated by the GOP-controlled legislature and then-Gov. Rick Scott in 2011. It turns out that the loud vocal critics of that move—myself among them—have been proven right in terms of what it would ultimately mean for sustainable growth policies.

The DCA enforced Florida’s growth management system, focusing on coordinating development projects with the infrastructure they would necessitate, while giving thoughtful consideration to environmental protection and how decisions made by one community might have downstream negative impacts on neighboring ones. You know, like how eliminating critical wetland protections in one county might affect the watersheds and coastal waters of other counties that do not have a vote on the policy.

Cities and counties had to submit long-term land-use plans (housing, transportation, utilities, conservation) to the DCA for review to ensure consistency with state law, while ensuring that large developments did not outpace the capacity of roads, schools, water supply, and sewer systems. These were referred to as concurrency requirements. Believe it or not, the agency actually weighed in on development affecting wetlands, coastlines, aquifers, and hurricane evacuation routes.

McClain seems to want to force cities and counties to allow developers and their minions in the legislature to decide what gets developed, but then leave them on the hook for figuring out how to magically keep pace with all of the infrastructure and environmental mitigation such unsustainable growth necessitates. This, at a time when developers are fighting tooth and nail (with the help of preemption bills) to avoid paying adequate impact fees, and Republicans are trying to eliminate all but school property taxes. 

If this sounds like a disastrous plan, that's because it is. Home rule is a critical element of local government. It also used to be a foundational principle of Republican politics—at least until developers threw enough money around Tallahassee to convince a majority of our elected representatives to abandon politically inconvenient attributes like principles and integrity.

Dennis "Mitch" Maley is an editor and columnist for The Bradenton Times and the host of our weekly podcast. With over two decades of experience as a journalist, he has covered Manatee County government since 2010. He is a graduate of Shippensburg University and later served as a Captain in the U.S. Army. Click here for his bio. Mitch's next novel, Fish Kill, is scheduled for release on April 20. His other books can be found here. He can be reached at editor@thebradentontimes.com.