Burying public notification

(via Flablog)
Apparently, when the Legislature isn't trying to kill DCA they spend their time trying to do end runs around the public:

This legislation (SB 2292; HB 1477) by Sen. Ronda Storms, R-Brandon, and Rep. Juan Zapata, R-Miami, is the antithesis of open government and should be allowed to expire without further ado.

These proposals are, in fact, a great example of how government can labor in obscurity — and sometimes menacingly — if citizens, and the media, don't have ready access to information about city, county, school, state and federal agencies.

Legal notices are but one way, yet an important way, to be forewarned and thereby forearmed regarding proposed changes to your neighborhood, your street, your school zone or your wallet.

So, I think that public notification in newspapers is a good idea whereas the website approach is not as good. On the other hand, the view that says that your municipal planning staff is a Menace 2 Society is...uh...not exactly the most positive take.

Newspaper filler

There is a difference between knowing something and talking like you know something. Some people are good at the latter. Andrew B. Hellinger shows us he is not one of them:

Initiatives to lure suburbia's residents into Miami's urban core need to be considered to maximize what development has already occurred and to prevent Miami from becoming an urban wasteland. Given the scarcity of local, state and federal funds, this will be a challenge for our civic leaders.

I emphasized the words above because they make the author sound like he is knowledgeable. I am going to say that its a bluff, because someone who actually knows about urban planning in Miami would know that something along those lines already exists. But there is nothing substantive in Hellinger's "view" about that plan, or Miami's Comp Plan, or the many, many other plans that are available to the public to read regarding Miami. If Herald editors are hard up for planning analysis, I'd suggest that they solicit fewer Hellingers and request more opinions from people in the know.

Understanding the mechanics

I simply cannot overestimate the importance of understanding the mechanics of any particular regulatory or governing structure. It is step one. Step two, understanding the ways that stakeholders may use and/or abuse the system, needs to come after one understands the processes of government.

I like Eye on Miami, but gimleteye does not seem to be clear on how the Department of Community Affairs (DCA) operates when it comes to local decisionmaking.

Herald editorial writer Myriam Marquez says the [DCA] "keeps locals honest". The truth is murkier: local power brokers and their political hirelings, like the unreformable majority of the Miami Dade County Commission, continually shove-off zoning decisions that offend their campaign contributors, allowing the state 'to decide'. Once the public is gamed at the local level, then the blood sport moves to Tallahassee, where powerful lobbyists (we know who they are, and so do you, if your read our blog) strong-arm and otherwise pressure agency staff to do the wrong thing. They put enormous pressure on DCA by getting other agencies, from FDOT to the US Fish and Wildlife Service of the US Army Corps of Engineers , to do their bidding: some government agencies are just very, very cheap dates.

The DCA reviews Comprehensive Plan amednments. The way this works is that the DCA has a copy of the local government's approved Comp Plan. They then look at the State's criteria (FS 163 and FAC 9J-5) for a Comp Plan change alongside the amendment. If they determine that the amendment can be changed per the State's criteria, they then see if the amendment complies with the local government's own Comp Plan. DCA will do this for the land use portion of the amendment, but since amendments have effects on other portions of the Comp Plan other agencies will review sections relevant to their own expertise.

This is how local governments are kept honest...to their own Comp Plans. I am not going to say that gimleteye is wrong about the corruption. I am saying that the DCA is not where the buck stops. It stops with the writers and stewards of the Comp Plans, themselves.

Having said that, my position is that the DCA needs to stay.