Next week the Miami-Dade County Commission will vote on the America Dream Mall; one of the largest, if not the largest, malls in the United States, to be built in the northwest corner of Miami-Dade County. From the point of view of traffic and infrastructure burdens on taxpayers, it is a predictable nightmare.
Before Gov. Rick Scott, citizens had a place -- state administrative court -- and a roadmap, through the Florida Department of Community Affairs, to challenge development schemes that were manifestly against the public interest. A good example, from the 1990's, Wayne's World: the dream child of the late Wayne Huizinga. Blockbuster Park, its formal name, was planned just across the county line in Broward -- not far from the America Dream Mall site. It speaks worlds that an ill-conceived regional development could be halted in the mid 1990s but not in 2017. Some call that progress.
Gov. Scott delivered the coup de grace to the DCA, consigning the agency and its mission to a Tallahassee broom closet. At the same time, developers gained the upper hand by imposing massive costs on citizens with the temerity to challenge local zoning decisions. And, the USSC Citizens United decision opened the door to unlimited campaign contributions by corporations and provided further energy to the dark money pools that are making a mockery of democracy.
In other words, a lot of stuff had to be broken for a plan like the America Dream Mall to make it through. Behind it, in the pipeline, more predictable nightmares: the extension of SR 836 into the last remaining farmland and open space in Miami Dade, the construction of another Walmart in the county's last remaining pine rocklands, and further attempts to move the Urban Development Boundary.
The Florida Department of Community of Affairs, through its development of regional impact programming, was never completely aligned with the public interest in sound development and growth. It was born, however, out of a bipartisan consensus in the state legislature in the 1980's; a time when an older generation of electeds agreed that a system of checks and balances was needed to stop the profit motive from wrecking what Floridians held of value and in trust for future generations.
The development supply chain, industry trade associations like the Florida Chamber of Commerce and Associated Industries, and Big Agriculture fought DCA from the start. Gov. Jeb Bush, through establishment figures like Al Hoffman and the Council of 100, used DCA for target practice. For citizens, and the few civic organizations that plunged into the turbid waters of the state's overdevelopment, challenging developments of regional impacts offered a ray of hope.
Gov. Rick Scott squashed that hope; a fact voters might want to remember this November as if the land clearing, bulldozers, and site development of America Dream Mall will not be enough.
Before Gov. Rick Scott, citizens had a place -- state administrative court -- and a roadmap, through the Florida Department of Community Affairs, to challenge development schemes that were manifestly against the public interest. A good example, from the 1990's, Wayne's World: the dream child of the late Wayne Huizinga. Blockbuster Park, its formal name, was planned just across the county line in Broward -- not far from the America Dream Mall site. It speaks worlds that an ill-conceived regional development could be halted in the mid 1990s but not in 2017. Some call that progress.
Gov. Scott delivered the coup de grace to the DCA, consigning the agency and its mission to a Tallahassee broom closet. At the same time, developers gained the upper hand by imposing massive costs on citizens with the temerity to challenge local zoning decisions. And, the USSC Citizens United decision opened the door to unlimited campaign contributions by corporations and provided further energy to the dark money pools that are making a mockery of democracy.
In other words, a lot of stuff had to be broken for a plan like the America Dream Mall to make it through. Behind it, in the pipeline, more predictable nightmares: the extension of SR 836 into the last remaining farmland and open space in Miami Dade, the construction of another Walmart in the county's last remaining pine rocklands, and further attempts to move the Urban Development Boundary.
The Florida Department of Community of Affairs, through its development of regional impact programming, was never completely aligned with the public interest in sound development and growth. It was born, however, out of a bipartisan consensus in the state legislature in the 1980's; a time when an older generation of electeds agreed that a system of checks and balances was needed to stop the profit motive from wrecking what Floridians held of value and in trust for future generations.
The development supply chain, industry trade associations like the Florida Chamber of Commerce and Associated Industries, and Big Agriculture fought DCA from the start. Gov. Jeb Bush, through establishment figures like Al Hoffman and the Council of 100, used DCA for target practice. For citizens, and the few civic organizations that plunged into the turbid waters of the state's overdevelopment, challenging developments of regional impacts offered a ray of hope.
Gov. Rick Scott squashed that hope; a fact voters might want to remember this November as if the land clearing, bulldozers, and site development of America Dream Mall will not be enough.
