Friday, January 25, 2019
United States of America v. ROGER JASON STONE, JR. -- Video of FBI Felony Arrest in Ft. Lauderdale This Morning
Thursday, January 24, 2019
Y-12 workers produce unit for nuclear weapons ahead of schedule. (The Oak Ridger, Oak Ridge, Tenn.)
Disgusted by what GateHouse has done to the The St. Augustine Record, a/k/a The Mullet Wrapper (founded 1895 by Henry Flagler's frontman -- whose greedy grandson, landowner Pierre Thompson, destroyed a bald eagle nest tree on October 8, 2001, leading to successful criminal prosecution in United States of America v. Thompson Bros. Realty (result: $300,000 fine and 16 acre remediation).
Yep.
Repulsed by shallow coverage of the St. Johns County Sheriff and other local burghers?
Well, for context, below is a dopey, dupey 323 word story from GateHouse's East Tennessee outlet, The Oak Ridger, that incurious excuse for a daily newspaper in the midst of the Oak Ridge Oligarchy of Atomic Blunderers.
Reads like a government press release, because it probably is.
The Oak Ridger, like The St. Augustine Record, was founded by a frontman for the power elite.
The Oak Ridger, an exponent of "Oak Ridgedness" was founded circa 1948 by the U.S. Government, with frontman Thomas Hill and Editor Richard D. Smyser, a de facto press release for the government.
The Oak Ridge Y-12 Nuclear Weapons Plant's evil works and pomps were proudly exposed by we band of brothers (and sisters) at The Appalachian Observer, 1981-1984, including winning U.S. Department of Energy declassification May 17, 1983 of the latest mercury pollution event in world history (4.2 million pounds), which ended up in creeks and groundwaters and workers' lungs and brains, resulting in billions of dollars for cleanup and compensation a/k/a "CONpensation without consequences "
Was this mercury pollution a sin, a crime, a tort or a war crime? You tell me.
It all would likely have remained forever secret if our small alt-weekly did not compete with the :Chain Gang Journalism" of the dull Knoxville and Oak Ridge daily newspapers.
From The Oak Ridger, 323 word GateHouse story on new nuclear bomb, unadorned by any critical thinking or journalistic enterprise:
By Special to The Oak Ridger
Posted at 11:59 AM
OAK RIDGE, Tenn. — The Y-12 National Security Complex has completed a major milestone in efforts to refurbish components for a strategic nuclear weapons system described in a press release as vital to the U.S. nuclear deterrent.
Special to The Oak Ridger
OAK RIDGE, Tenn. — The Y-12 National Security Complex has completed a major milestone in efforts to refurbish components for a strategic nuclear weapons system described in a press release as vital to the U.S. nuclear deterrent.
The first production unit for the B61-12 was certified at Y-12 a little over a month ago on Dec. 6, 2018.
This work is part of the B61 Life Extension Program (LEP), according to the news release from Consolidated Nuclear Security LLC (CNS), which operates Y-12 and the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas. The B61 is a nuclear bomb that can be carried on several types of military aircraft. The B61 LEP will extend the life of this strategic weapon for 20 years.
Y-12′s role involves the manufacture of the canned subassembly or secondary — the second stage of modern thermonuclear weapons. The canned subassembly is shipped from Y-12 to the Pantex Plant for final assembly.
Geoff Beausoleil, National Nuclear Security Administration Production Office manager, stated, “This milestone is critical to the modernization of the nuclear gravity weapon stockpile and ensures the safety, security and reliability of our national deterrent.”
Bill Tindal, CNS vice president and site manager, praised the teamwork that facilitated the early production of the unit.
“It took all parts of the factory working together to achieve this milestone ahead of schedule. By doing so, Y-12 has worked to ensure the success of this vitally important program,” he stated.
The next milestone for the program is shipment of eight nuclear pilot production units to the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, by March 2019. The recently certified unit is one of those eight. The first complete B61-12 weapon is on schedule for production by March 2020.
I LOVE IRONY -- HERE'S A ROSE BETWEEN TWO THORNS -- St. Augustine's Own "Iron Lady," Reform Mayor Nancy Shaver between ex-Mayors LEN WEEKS and JOE BOLES
From Folio Weekly, August 2014:
THE BLOGGER, THE LEASE AND THE ST. AUGUSTINE MAYOR'S RACE
An activist is raising hell about a lease agreement he says enriched the mayor at the public’s expense
Posted
When a storm blows across Florida, it happens suddenly and violently. Dark clouds gather in the sky. The rain pours down in blinding sheets. Claps of thunder sound like cannon fire. It feels like the end of the world. When St. Augustine’s Ed Slavin takes on a fight, he comes on like a Florida thunderstorm. The only difference is that Florida thunderstorms start brutally and end quickly, while Slavin’s torrents seem unceasing.
The bespectacled St. Augustine blogger and activist dresses nattily in oxford shirts and khakis with a mad professor mind-of-its-own shock of gray-and-black hair hurtling about his head. Slavin possesses a brilliant mind, a finely calibrated sense of outrage, and the mental acumen to both thoroughly investigate and mightily agitate. His partner referred to him as “the pest that never rests” in a letter recommending Slavin for the University of Florida’s law school.
Slavin received his B.S. degree from the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He interned in the Washington, D.C., office of Ted Kennedy and at the U.S. Department of Labor. As the editor of the Appalachian Observer, he uncovered a massive cover-up by Union Carbide involving mercury poisoning in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He earned his law degree at Memphis State University and represented whistleblowers in landmark cases in Oak Ridge and Washington, D.C. He was disbarred in Tennessee in what he regards as retaliation, although he admits to calling an opposing lawyer a “redneck peckerwood,” and his disbarment involved charges that he harassed judges.
Neither that disbarment nor his relocation to St. Augustine in 2000 curbed Slavin’s crusading nature. He still slings arrows, does copious research, gathers records, wages public harangues, and knows how to layer hyperbole with exacting case law.
And he Just. Doesn’t. Stop.
Slavin’s current targets include St. Johns County Supervisor of Elections Vicky Oakes, for failing to provide early voting sites close to St. Augustine’s historic downtown; public officials whose publicly financed trips to promote St. Augustine’s 450th anniversary celebration in 2015 he thinks are a waste (his criticism led to cancellation of a $25,000 trip for commissioners in 2010); the St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church, for planning to demolish a 1926 Mediterranean revival building and put up a parking lot; the city’s dumping of solid waste and raw sewage in Lincolnville, the historic black neighborhood that encompasses much of The Ancient City’s southwestern peninsula; and the arrests and outlawing of street artists and musicians in the city’s historic district, as well as the continued employment and SWAT team promotion of a St. Johns County Sheriff’s deputy who was the subject of a blistering New York Times/Frontline investigation questioning whether he murdered his girlfriend (the official story is that she killed herself).
But most of all, the focus of Slavin’s ire of late has been St. Augustine Mayor Joseph L. Boles, who is seeking reelection this year. In Boles, Slavin sees remnants of the advantages that come with being part of the white hometown elite — vestiges of the good-ol’-boys network from which the city needs to untether.
Case in point: Slavin has hammered Boles repeatedly about the deal he and former mayor Len Weeks made 25 years ago with the St. Augustine City Commission to lease a prime piece of commercial real estate in the heart of the historic corridor. Slavin and others estimate that Weeks and Boles have netted between $2 million and $3 million in profit from the arrangement over the years. Slavin believes Boles and Weeks should end the lease, and turn over control of the property and, with it, the building they erected there. Boles and Weeks have both pointed out that is exactly what will happen when the lease permanently expires in 10 years. But Slavin says the city is losing money right now, money it could use for infrastructure, for historic preservation, for the city’s 450th birthday celebration, and the city’s mayor should act in the interest of the greater good, not personal self-interest.
“I think [Boles] ought to tear up the lease and let the city take back the property. Let the city make the profits instead of him and Weeks. I think of it as an exercise in fiduciary duty,” Slavin says. “I think people have a right to know how much they are making on the deal. I think the city has a duty to protect the taxpayers and the city, and we are being bamboozled by Boles and Weeks.”
The lease is perfectly legal — no one disputes that — but to Slavin, it’s an example of a public servant enriching himself at the public trough, something akin to the infamous deals worked out in the elder Mayor Daley’s Chicago. Ahead of next week’s mayoral primary election, Slavin’s banging that drum every chance he gets.
It’s about more than just the lease, really. Slavin sees Boles as a symbol of the old, connected and wrong; the lease symbolizes the way things used to be done between the families who had power and connections, a relic in a mayoral race that’s shaping up as a fight among a long-serving mayor and two relative newcomers.
St. Augustine historian David Nolan (father of former Folio Weekly staff writer Hamilton Nolan) agrees that Boles represents the homegrown St. Augustinian. For many people with roots in the city, he says, that’s a good thing.
“I think Joe is a candidate of the good ol’ boys,” Nolan says. “He’s certainly been around longer, and he is a lawyer and he has represented them and probably written the wills and done other legal work for all of the former mayors supporting him. He’s not as backwards as his predecessors, the ones who supported beating down Civil Rights demonstrators. But [the city’s old guard is] most comfortable with him.”
Joseph Boles has been the mayor of St. Augustine since 2006. (The city elects mayors to two-year terms.) His family moved here in 1967. In his first job as a St. Augustine teen, Boles dressed up as Ponce de Leon and rode a horse up and down St. George Street. If Boles wins, he will be the longest-serving mayor in the city’s 450-year history. But in this election, the hometown candidate faces a new guard of would-be change agents who say the city focuses too much on its tourists and not enough on its residents.
“The 450th is great, but what’s going to happen after 2015?” says Ken Bryan, one of Boles’ two challengers. “Meanwhile, the city is deteriorating.”
When the lease deal was struck in 1989, neither Boles nor Weeks had yet sought public office. Boles was an attorney specializing in estate planning and elder law. Weeks was a contractor and builder. In a city of just 11,575 people, they were both known quantities. Boles’ father was the director of the Lightner Museum. Weeks’ father ran Flagler Hospital.
The friends saw an opportunity on St. George Street. The state had been managing the city’s historic properties. When that ended, the state shut down all the public restrooms. The public and the St. Augustine Record railed about the lack of facilities for visitors to the tourism-fueled city. Boles and Weeks approached the city commission with a deal. If the city would lease them the vacant land at 81 St. George St., originally for $100 a month, they’d build a restaurant and other commercial space there — along with public restrooms. The city commission signed off. Boles, Weeks and another partner built and operated the Florida Cracker Café at the site, leased space there to Savannah Sweets, and included public restrooms behind the café as part of the construction.
Over the next 25 years, the rent for buildings along St. George Street skyrocketed; however, the 81 St. George St. lease amount stayed cheap. Weeks and Boles, who recently opted to renew the lease for another five years, pay $1,600 a month. The pair sold the Florida Cracker Café business for $150,000, but they still own the building it’s in and pay taxes on it. When the lease expires in 2024, the building Weeks and Boles built will become city property.
For that reason, Weeks and Boles see nothing wrong with the lease. In fact, they think they’re doing a public service.
“We were just normal guys who offered an opportunity to the city and the city thought it was a good deal for them,” Weeks says. “We took it on as entrepreneurs. I don’t feel guilty.”
Boles and Weeks have refused to disclose how much they earn leasing space to businesses at 81 St. George St. But by examining what the city of St. Augustine receives in rent for a comparable business, it’s possible to get a rough idea how much the Florida Cracker Café and Savannah Sweets might pay Boles and Weeks.
The Café del Hidalgo leases a 1,276-square-foot city-owned building in the historic district at 35 Hypolita St. for $6,596.55 a month, or $5.17 per square foot. If Boles and Weeks leased their 2,466-square-foot building at 81 St. George St. to the Florida Cracker Café and Savannah Sweets at the same rate the city leases space to Café del Hidalgo, they would charge a combined $12,749 a month. Subtract the restrooms’ square footage and Weeks and Boles would charge about $10,300 a month.
The $1,600 they pay the city is only for the land, however, not what they built there.
After a July 25 city commission meeting at which Slavin spoke out about the lease, Boles defended his arrangement with the city, explaining that he and his partners took a risk. When the lease ends, he added, the city will have an asset: “I make no apology for it. I think it is a win-win and the most perfect public-private partnership.” (Boles did not return calls for this story; instead he had Weeks call on his behalf.)
While Slavin often seems to be a crier in the wilderness — he and former mayor George Gardner are the lease’s fiercest critics — Bryan and fellow candidate Nancy Shaver have seized upon it, too. Bryan, who served on the St. Johns County Commission from 2008 to 2011, says that while the lease might not be illegal, it is unethical.
“If I were the mayor, I would have sold out my interest once I became mayor,” Bryan says. “It’s the only ethical thing to do to remove the appearance of impropriety; that is what one should be concerned about as an elected official.” He says he would seek an audit of all city leases and contracts if he wins the top city spot.
Shaver, a business management consultant who moved to St. Augustine about five years ago, says that the lease arrangement taints the mayor’s office. “I have no doubt that it is not illegal, but it is not something I would ever consider ethical or something that would be appropriate for an elected official in that position,” she says.
She’s especially critical of the fact that only Boles and Weeks — not the city — have the right to renew or terminate the agreement every five years until 2024. Shaver says that is “highly unusual, where the person who owns the property has no ability to terminate the lease.”
Still, despite his many criticisms, even Slavin credits Boles with helping to move St. Augustine into modernity. Boles, after all, commemorated the city’s violent and important role in the passage of the Civil Rights Act, extended retirement benefits to domestic partners, and recognized the annual Gay Pride celebration. And as his supporters point out, he has — whether it’s for the city’s ultimate benefit or not — worked tirelessly on the upcoming 450th anniversary celebration. They argue that he deserves to see it through.
“Truthfully, I hope Joe wins,” Weeks says. “I think he has done a great job as the face of St. Augustine in his eight years as mayor. I think he deserves to be mayor for the 450th because he has done so much to promote the city and to promote the 450th. He’s worked really hard. The 450th will be something to remember.”
No matter what happens on Aug. 26 — if no candidate achieves a majority, the top two will go to a runoff on Nov. 4 — the election will be historic, and not just because of the upcoming anniversary or Boles’ longevity. If Shaver wins, she’ll be St. Augustine’s second female mayor. If Bryan wins, he’ll be St. Augustine’s first black mayor. A victory by either would mark a new era in St. Augustine politics.
Regardless, Boles and Weeks will keep that lease at 81 St. George St. for another decade.
Florida Secretary of State Michael Ertel blackface firing illustrates Republican hypocrisy, by Ed Slavin
Governor Ron DeSantis rightly fired Florida's Secretary of State Michael Ertel this afternoon, January 24, 2019, for wearing blackface, in drag, portraying a Hurricane Katrina victim.
Blackface ceased to be funny decades ago, but some unenlightened people continue to ignore reality and insult our intelligence.
Yes, it was at a "private party" on Halloween, fourteen years ago.
But Ertel was then Seminole County Supervisor of Elections, appointed by Governor Jeb Bush.
In drag, Ertel appears pleased with himself (and plum pickled).
(Confession -- Halloween, 1987, Washington, D.C.: I dressed as Reagan's controversial Attorney General, Edwin M. Meese, III -- so persuasively that a woman I had never met before came up to me and said, "You're a fascist!" No photos survive.)
By firing Ertel, Governor Ronald Dion DeSantis continued his good start as Governor, including environmental and corruption issues. After having appealed to racist dog-whistles in his appalling campaign, DeSantis is now seemingly on the mend, trying to remake his image as a healer, not a heel.
But Governor DeSantis issued an Executive Order excluding GLBTQIA people from human rights protections, without giving any reason. (Agriculture/Consumer Services Commissioner Nikki Fried protected us in her order).
Among Republicans, there's some bipartisan support for amending Florida civil rights laws to protect us. But nationally, queer-bashing is still an article of faith. Republicans resemble what Lincoln wrote of the Know-Nothing Party in 1855, stating if they won, "I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty -- to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy [sic].
Fetishizing bigotry, some "Know-Nothings" in the Republican Party, a/k/a "Party of God" (American Taliban) demand to:
- Erode rights to Gay marriage, as in cake-baking cases, and Duval and eight other Florida counties ending Courthouse weddings -- out of spite.
- Demean Gays by forcing bullied kids to transfer schools, instead of ending bullying.
- Ban teachers from saying anything about homosexuality in public schools (as in Clay County), unless it is in the context of sexually-transmitted diseases. A teacher could be terminated for reassuring a Gay child contemplating suicide under misguided policies like Clay County School Board policy 4.51, subject of my cover story in "Out in the City" circa 2006, quoting former U.S. Senator and retired Admiral Jeremiah Denton, who denied Clay County's policy had anything to do with legislation that he and Senator Ted Kennedy passed on preventing pregnancy.). https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Hxa71Ukws3C4_gMbKFvm4Gz5GlbVVE1M/view
- Deny transgender rights to equal restrooms, as in St. Johns County's illegal policy, struct down by federal judge Matthew Corrigan.
- Erase rights for transgender soldiers, whom the Supreme Court's 5-4 procedural ruling leaves in limbo, allowing those who "out" to remain, those who are not to stay if they don't "come out," and forbidding further enlistment. Some 15,000 servicemembers' lives hang in the balance.
- Use tax money for religious schools that teach that Gays are evil incarnate.
These misguided misanthropic, homophobic politicians are a joke, and they remind me of one I first heard in Memphis:
Q: Is it better to be African-American/Black or to be Gay?
A. Black, because you don't have to worry about whether to tell your momma.
The first ""out" Gay man to speak to a Democratic National Convention, Professor Melvin M. Boozer, III, Ph.D., said in 1976: "I've been called 'n-----' and I've been called 'f-----," and I can tell you what then difference is: NONE."
In St. Augustine and St. Augustine Beach, GLBTQ people were added as protected classes in 2012-2013, long before Jacksonville, while Florida (and dozens of states), still had unjust laws/constitutions banning Gay marriage.
We did it with certainty, just as federal judge Henry Lee Adams, Jr., an African-American, ordered St. Augustine to fly 49 Rainbow flags (seven on the Bayfront and 42 on Bridge of Lions) in 2005. In 1989-90, winning equal spousal discount benefits for employees at 30 department stores in six states and the District of Columbia. I was invited to write the first article on Gay marriage for an American Bar Association publication in 1991
The difference between racism and anti-Gay discrimination is: "NONE."
Southern Democrats were once segregationists -- they evolved. As then-Minneapolis Mayor Hubert Horatio Humphrey said to the Democratic Convention in 1948: "The time has arrived ... to get out of the shadow of states' rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights." Florida legislators, please ban anti-GLBTQIA employment , housing and public accommodations discrimination. Now.
Investigative reporter-activist Ed Slavin blogs from St. Augustine. www.edslavin.com. www.gofundme.com/edslavin
Update: St. Augustine Record buried this story on page A3, unadorned by blackface photos.
KARMA: Florida official resigns after blackface photos emerge of him dressed as Katrina victim in 2005. (Gray Television Group/Tallahassee Democrat/Orlando Weekly)
Update: St. Augustine Record buried this story on page A3, unadorned by blackface photos.
Sometimes KARMA strikes fast, and furiously: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis saw the 2005 blackface photos of Secretary of State MIKE ERTEL, portrying a Hurricane Katrina victim. ERTEL resigned within hours on Thursday, January 24, 2019 (today). MIKE ERTEL was cruelly unfair in mocking Hurricane Katrina victims in blackface -- photos located by Gannett's Tallahassee Democrat. MIKE ERTEL was cruelly unfair to our 2008 Democratic Congressional nominee, Faye Armitage, on her ballot petitions. (I blogged about ERTEL last month.) ERTEL resigned January 8, 2019 as Seminole County Election Supervisor and resigned today as Florida Secretary of State. ERTEL is now a racist white Republican without a job -- perhaps Fox News will hire him to emit cant racist diatribes.
As I wrote last year about MICHAEL ERTEL, "Ambitious arachnid apparatchik deserves investigative reporting scrutiny. Now."
ERTEL got it -- he's gone, only sixteen (16) days after starting his new career as Florida Secretary of State, having resigned as Seminole County Election Supervisor.
As I wrote last year:
I wrote on this blog last month that:
I recall that Seminole County Supervisor of Elections MICHAEL ERTEL was cruelly unfair with our 2008 Democratic Congressional candidate, economist Faye Armitage, falsely claiming she was two minutes late (untrue) with her last batch of petitions, and refusing to transmit some of her indisputably timely-filed petitions to other counties in what was then the Seventh Congressional District for her race against then-Rep. John Luigi Mica.
Nasty man, this MICHAEL ERTEL.
As they say in East Tennessee, "I wouldn't trust MIKE ERTEL in an outhouse with a muzzle on."
He was just the man for Governor-elect RONALD DION DeSANTIS to try to steal the 2020 election.
Ambitious arachnid apparatchik deserved investigative reporting scrutiny. Now.
The position of Florida Secretary of State was once elected, but voters amended the Constitution in 1998 to make it appointed by the Governor.
FROM Gray Television Group:
Florida official resigns after blackface photos emerge of him dressed as Katrina victim in 2005
(Gray News) – Michael Ertel, the Florida secretary of state, resigned on Thursday after pictures emerged of him wearing blackface at a Halloween party more than a decade ago.
The Tallahassee Democrat newspaper obtained and published the photos, from 2005, which show Ertel wearing a racist stereotype costume of a Hurricane Katrina victim.
The Democrat reported it received confirmation from new Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ office that “the governor accepted Secretary Ertel’s resignation.”
Ertel, the former Seminole County supervisor of elections, was named to the secretary of state post by DeSantis on Dec. 28.
He was sworn in on Jan. 8 and had held the position for 16 days.
His biography on the Florida Department of State website has already been pulled down.
Copyright 2019 Gray Television Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
From Orlando Weekly:
Florida Secretary of State Michael Ertel resigns after photos surface showing him in blackface
Posted By Monivette Cordeiro on Thu, Jan 24, 2019 at 3:32 pm
Florida has a serious problem with right-wing extremists. (Orlando Weekly)
My late friend and mentor, KKK-infilitrating Florida civil rights hero Wm. Stetson Kennedy told me that every single KKK member in St. Johns County became a Republican. President DONALD JOHN TRUMP calls for violence and retaliation and against persons engaged in First Amendment protected activity and condones extremists as "fine people." Florida, we've got a problem.
From Orlando Weekly:
From Orlando Weekly:
Florida has a serious problem with right-wing extremists
Posted By Colin Wolf on Wed, Jan 23, 2019 at 1:11 pm
Turning the Toxic Tide: Florida must reinvent the way it manages growth. (USA Today network -- six Florida editorial boards)
Our rights to fight toxic pollution start with growth management. Growth management laws were decimated under Governor RICHARD LYNN SCOTT, but are fixin' to be restored under Governor RONALD DION DeSANTIS. We hope and pray
Donnie McMahon, 64, of Pensacola, started Pensacola Bay Oyster Co. following environmental tragedies. Leah Voss, leah.voss@tcpalm.com
Turning the Toxic Tide is a series of editorials published collectively by the six editorial boards of USA TODAY Network-Florida, with the goal of providing an environmental road map for the state's new governor, legislators and congressional delegation. This is the third in the series.
Florida’s two most western counties — Escambia and Santa Rosa— are literally divided by water.
The Escambia River serves as the county line, writhing south from the Alabama border and twisting off into a thousand creeks and streams until the waters eventually flow into Escambia Bay, then Pensacola Bay, and ultimately, the Gulf of Mexico.
On the Escambia side of the bay, an entrepreneurial oyster farming project has proven wildly successful in recent years. A culinary demand for high-quality, homegrown seafood combined with environment-enhancing aquaculture (the oysters actually clean the bay) made magic for the Pensacola Bay Oyster Company.
Meanwhile, across the bay in Santa Rosa County, mismanaged development and unfinished clay roads have regularly resulted in deadly runoffs that choke and kill seagrass and marine life in streams and bayous, including a dwindling number of natural oyster beds along the Santa Rosa coastline.
While this specific source of contamination hasn’t yet damaged the burgeoning oyster farms across the bay, the potential for harm is clear.
Turning the Toxic Tide, Part I: Florida is at a historic crossroads, leaders must act
Turning the Toxic Tide, Part II: State needs new approach to environmental regulation
That's how it works in Florida. Our waters don't recognize political boundaries; reckless water and development policies on one side can wreck ecosystems and investments on the other. Inconsistent county-by-county regulations are inherently unfit to preserve the larger, interconnected health of Florida’s crucial waterways.
Yet the authority to manage growth largely rests with individual counties and municipalities. The result has been haphazard growth; and as development pressures intensify, so do the impacts on our lands and water.
In recent years, Florida has seen red tide and blue-green algae devastate coastal communities and local economies, the blooms fed by nutrients from fertilizer and other sources running off pavement and agricultural lands.
In a recent report, half of Florida's most important springs were deemed to be in poor condition, with significant loss of ecological health.
And the conservation group 1000 Friends of Florida estimates that if current development patterns persist, by 2070 more than one-third of Florida's lands will be developed, water demands will double and water quality could further deteriorate.
Gov. Ron DeSantis now faces the same quandary as his predecessors: How do we balance growth and preservation?
How can we continue to accommodate some 1,000 newcomers per day — a city of Tampa added to Florida every year — without inflicting further damage upon our natural environment?
Given the interconnected nature of our waters and ecological challenges, comprehensive ideas are needed. The provincial approach simply isn't up to the task.
The state must play a greater role — as it has in the past.
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Clear waters at Silver Springs State Park in Ocala worth preserving
Florida was once a progressive leader in growth management. Beginning in the 1970s and culminating with the 1985 Growth Management Act, elected leaders sought to bring order to what had been a disorderly, fragmented process.
The 1985 act required all local government comprehensive plans and amendments be reviewed and approved by the state. The Florida Department of Community Affairs rode herd over the new framework, which was, as one author of the law wrote, an attempt to create "a truly integrated statewide planning process."
It didn't always work as advertised, and many chafed against the restraints, which were weakened over time.
Then came the Great Recession. With former Gov. Rick Scott characterizing the DCA as a "jobs killer," new legislation was passed; the Community Planning Act of 2011 greatly reduced the state's role in local planning and eliminated the DCA, outsourcing its tasks to the new Department of Economic Opportunity.
The philosophy in Tallahassee was that local governments knew best.
And, in a sense, it worked. Florida's economy rebounded.
Yet the fallout has been significant. While the smaller-government approach might have been an appropriate response to the economic challenges of 2011, today we face new challenges created, in part, by that philosophy.
We cannot fully resurrect the policies of the past; more bureaucracy isn't the answer.
But Cynthia Barnett, Environmental Fellow at the University of Florida's Bob Graham Center for Public Leadership, points out that growth management in
Florida "has always been a progression of tweaking what didn't work."
Florida "has always been a progression of tweaking what didn't work."
Now, she said, is an ideal time to build a new statewide growth management framework, one which retains the best of what we've built in the past "while thinking about what we can do better than we've ever done before."
In its recent "Trouble in Paradise" report, 1000 Friends of Florida reached a similar, more detailed conclusion.
"To protect the state's economy and water supply, Florida must once again take a meaningful role in managing growth," the report asserts. This, the organization wrote, should include reestablishing a "department-level land management agency and strengthening the ability of the department and citizens to enforce growth management laws."
Barnett and Graham Center Director David Colburn have called on Gov. DeSantis to convene thought leaders "to reach a consensus on the audacious ideas needed to clean up Florida's water today while preserving our last wildlands and the heritage crops now falling to rooftops."
This, then, might be the most audacious idea of all: Statewide problems require a statewide solution.
Floridians rightly cherish home rule, and any greater state role in growth management is likely to be a bitter pill. Yet it's one we'll need to swallow if we are to meet the challenges facing our waters, our lands — and all who depend on them.
This editorial reflects the opinion of the editorial boards of all six USA TODAY Network-Florida news organizations: FLORIDA TODAY, Naples Daily News, The News-Press, Pensacola News Journal, Tallahassee Democrat and TCPalm/Treasure Coast Newspapers.
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