Dance of the Reptiles (14 page)

In contrast to his predecessor, Gov. Charlie Crist says he’s got no problem with the concept of public payouts to help the Marlins build a new, publicly owned stadium. House Speaker Marco Rubio of Miami is gung ho for the idea, too.

In the Senate, Alex Diaz de la Portilla of Miami introduced the latest incarnation of the frequently spurned package that would award the Marlins $2 million annually over the next 30 years.

“It’s a question of pride for our whole community,” said Diaz de la Portilla, who has either conveniently forgotten or never bothered to read the Senate’s own 2005 analysis of publicly financed arenas and stadiums. “These kind of activities do not yield a net economic benefit,” concluded economist Ross Fabricant, who reviewed 40 national studies for his report.

Team owners, not their communities, reap bankable rewards from stadium subsidies. Taxpayers are already on the hook for not one but two Miami basketball arenas, neither of which sparked the promised revitalization of the downtown area.

A $60 million handout would supposedly help seal the
deal for a new Marlins ballpark, the total cost of which will easily surpass $500 million. The remainder of the financing would come from Miami-Dade taxpayers and team owner Jeffrey Loria, though in what proportion is uncertain.

We’re constantly warned that the Marlins can’t survive financially without a new stadium—but what they can’t survive without are ticket buyers. Whether the seats are old or new doesn’t matter if they’re empty, which is the prevailing situation at home games.

Except for a small devoted core, South Florida baseball fans are easily distracted and even more easily discouraged. Three summers from now, if the club’s in fourth place and fighting to reach .500, the new stadium will be as quiet as the county morgue and possibly less crowded.

But a lavish morgue it will be, complete with retractable dome.

One GOP legislator who opposed the Marlins legislation last year now says that such double dipping would help all nine major-league franchises in the state. Sen. Mike Fasano of New Port Richey has filed a bill that would give every team, including his local Tampa Bay Lightning, a second $60 million sales-tax subsidy.

Either Fasano is auditioning to be a comedian, or he’s in dire need of a math tutor. At a time when legislators are discussing drastically cutting or even abolishing homeowner property taxes, this guy stands ready to kiss off $540 million in future state revenues.

If Fasano’s bill passes, Floridians will involuntarily increase to more than $1 billion their total gift to rich sports owners such as Huizenga and Loria. When you think of how many schoolteachers could be hired with that money over the next 30 years, it’s enough to make you hurl your ballpark hot dog.

While past polls have shown strong public opposition to sports subsidies, the Marlins and other teams are counting on Gov. Crist’s support to turn the tide.

In an early display of optimism, the Senate Commerce Committee last week unanimously approved Diaz de la Portilla’s bill, and also one filed by Sen. Rudy Garcia of Hialeah.

Hurdles to full passage lie ahead, but without Jeb around to drive another stake through its greedy heart, the monstrous stadium giveaway might finally claw its way into law.

Note: The stadium got built, at an ultimate cost in public funding of more than $2 billion
.

February 17, 2008

Our Reputation for Flakiness Is at Stake

In a move that could endanger Florida’s flaky backwater reputation, the state Board of Education is poised to endorse the teaching of evolution as a science.

This is a dangerous idea—not the presentation of Darwinism in schools but the presentation of Florida as a place of progressive scientific thought.

Over the years the Legislature has worked tirelessly to keep our kids academically stuck in the mid-1950s. This has been achieved by overcrowding their classrooms, underpaying their teachers, and letting their school buildings fall apart.

Florida’s plucky refusal to embrace 21st-century education is one reason that prestigious tech industries have avoided the state, allowing so many of our high school graduates (and those who come close) to launch prosperous careers in the fast-food, bartending, and service sectors of the economy.

By accepting evolution as a proven science, our top educators
would be sending a loud message to the rest of the nation: Stop making fun of us. Is that what we really want?

On Tuesday, the Board of Education is scheduled to vote on a proposed set of new standards that describe evolution as the “fundamental concept underlying all of biology” and “supported by multiple forms of scientific evidence.”

Certainly that’s the position of every reputable academic group on the planet, including the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Science Teachers Association.

But forget the fossil record, okay? Forget DNA tracing. Forget the exhaustively documented diversification of species. This battle is about pride and independence; about boldly going against the flow, in defiance of reason and all known facts.

In recent weeks, the Board of Education has been swamped by e-mails and letters from religious conservatives who advocate teaching creationism or intelligent design, and who believe evolution should be discussed strictly as a “theory.” For those who wish to see Florida standing still, if not sinking, this is a fantastic strategy. In fact, it could be expanded to revise other educational doctrines.

Let’s start teaching gravity as a “theory,” too. And don’t forget the solar system—what proof do we really have, besides a bunch of fuzzy, fake-looking photos, that Mars really exists?

At a recent public hearing in Orlando, opponents of evolutionary teaching rose one by one to assail the proposed curriculum standards. Some had traveled all the way from the Panhandle, and were, like presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, exclusive believers in the Bible’s version of creation.

According to
The St. Petersburg Times
, one speaker compared Charles Darwin, the father of evolutionary science, to Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, well-known tyrants and mass
murderers. Such loony gibberish is actually good for the anti-evolution crusade, providing the best evidence that the human species has not advanced one iota in the last 100,000 years.

With this in mind, several school boards in North Florida have passed resolutions opposing the teaching of evolution as fact. True, students in those same districts have produced some of the worst science scores on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, but who needs Newton or Copernicus when you’ve got the Corinthians?

The notion that humans descended from apes has never been popular among fundamentalists, but what of the apes themselves? Given the gory history of Homo sapiens on earth, no self-respecting chimp or gorilla would claim a genetic connection to us.

The outcry against evolutionary instruction has been so heated that 40 members of the committee responsible for the new science standards felt compelled to sign a letter stating, “There is no longer any valid scientific criticism of the theory of evolution.” Caving in to groups that question the soundness of science, the letter warned, “would not only seriously impede the education of our children but also create the image of a backward state, raising the risk of Florida’s being snubbed by biotechnology companies and other science-based businesses.”

Nice try, pinheads, but there’s no sin in being a slightly backward state with extremely modest expectations for its young people. That’s been the guiding philosophy of our tightwad lawmakers for years, and the degree to which they’ve succeeded is illuminated annually in the FCAT charade.

If snubbing is to be done, Florida should be the snubber, not the snubbee. Keep your elite biotech payrolls up north and out west—we’ve got hundreds of thousands of
low-paying, go-nowhere jobs that require little training and minimal education.

Should state officials vote this week to put evolution on the teaching agenda, it will be a small yet radical step out of Florida’s backward-thinking past.

Resistance is not futile. We’ve worked hard to keep ourselves so far behind in education, and we must stay the course.

October 10, 2010

Running Scared over Amendment 4

Major homebuilders are uncorking a bombastic media blitz to scare Floridians away from voting yes to Amendment 4. The same people who helped ignite the housing crash and mortgage meltdown are absolutely terrified of giving citizens actual control over growth in their own communities.

The so-called Hometown Democracy Amendment would require local voters to approve any significant changes to a county or city “comprehensive land-use plan,” the map by which municipalities evolve.

If the measure passes—and it needs the support of 60 percent of voters—no massive housing subdivision or commercial development could be built without the project first appearing on a ballot.

It’s not exactly a radical concept, but the opposing special interests will do just about anything to kill it. They’re scared because they know Floridians are fed up with lousy planning and overbuilding and the high taxes that always result.

They’re scared because they know Floridians are sick of watching elected officials cave in again and again to developers, making a farce of land-use regulations.

But mostly they’re scared because, if passed, Amendment 4
has the potential to disrupt the influence peddling and outright corruption that have made it so easy to subvert the will of the public. As things stand now, development interests can thwart opposition to projects by simply buying off the politicians whose votes are needed to make it happen.

Typically, that’s achieved by hiring connected lobbyists, who then approach a receptive county commissioner or city council member. In many cases, the lobbyist has raised money for the officeholder’s election campaign, so a favor is perceived to be owed.

And a threat is implied, too: If you don’t line up behind the project, don’t expect any donations for your next campaign.

Occasionally, if the elected official is exceptionally greedy and dimwitted, a cash bribe or some other illicit benefit is arranged. Public hearings are often a formality, a minor road bump. Plenty of earnest folks show up to question the impact of a proposed subdivision or shopping mall upon their neighborhoods and lives, and the politicians pretend to listen. By that point, though, the deal is already sealed, the necessary majority of votes secured.

This cynical charade has been going on since the beginning of statehood. It’s the reason so many Florida cities look like they were planned by chimpanzees on LSD. It’s also the reason we now have an estimated 300,000 homes and condos sitting vacant statewide, while leading the nation in foreclosures as well as mortgage fraud. The term “growth management” is a joke.

Amendment 4 isn’t a perfect solution. Much will depend on how the language is interpreted—for instance, determining how large a project must be before it goes to a vote.

Many thoughtful people, including some professional planners, fear that the amendment will generate an endless
spate of elections in fast-growing counties. They’re also worried that deep-pocketed developers will be able to sway the outcomes with slick advertising campaigns.

Another issue is the wisdom of holding a countywide or citywide referendum on a building project that might affect only one neighborhood. At the very least, the amendment is bound to spawn lawsuits until the courts clarify its reach.

Despite such concerns, it’s hard to imagine a system for managing growth that could possibly be more dishonest, or deaf to the public interest, than what we have now. Nobody with half a brain believes that development pays for itself. Study after study shows that residents are the ones who pay big-time for sprawl, which is why taxes are so brutal in Florida’s most densely populated counties. So is the cost of living. Clogged highways, overcrowded schools and jails, water shortages—we pay for all of it.

Opponents claim that Amendment 4 will actually raise taxes, one of many straight-faced lies that will saturate the airwaves between now and Election Day. This is well-financed desperation. While the amendment’s supporters have raised only about $2.4 million, the opposition had a war chest of $12 million by midsummer.

The biggest donor is the Florida Association of Realtors—what a shocker—followed by some of the biggest homebuilders on Wall Street.

Here’s the killer: Many of the companies bankrolling the ad campaign against Amendment 4 are recipients of a congressional bailout, in the form of humongous tax refunds earlier this year.

According to an industry magazine (headline: “Builders Cash In on Tax Refunds”), Lennar Homes has already taken $251 million in taxpayer-funded relief. Yet somehow the
firm scrounged up $367,000 to fight the Florida Hometown Democracy movement.

Pulte Homes accepted $800 million in federal bailout refunds while kicking in $567,000 to a political action committee opposed to Amendment 4.

So, when you see all those dire-sounding, fright-filled TV commercials, remember who’s paying for them. You are.

These guys are using your money to keep your voice and your vote out of the neighborhood planning process. Think about that when you’re standing in the voting booth on November 2.

Do the thing they dread the most: Read Amendment 4 and decide for yourself.

February 26, 2011

Pill Mills Thrive as Governor Scott Nixes Database

Last week, as drug agents secretly prepared to raid more than a dozen South Florida pill mills, Gov. Rick Scott reaffirmed his staunch opposition to a statewide computer database that would track prescriptions of Vicodin, Percocet, and other dangerous narcotics. Said Scott: “I don’t support the database. I believe it’s an invasion of privacy.”

His statement raises numerous questions, none of them comforting.

Has Florida finally elected a certifiable wack job as governor?

Is Scott himself overmedicating? Undermedicating? Why would any sane or sober public official go out of his way—very publicly—to protect pill pushers and crooked doctors?