Kick Ass (44 page)

Some of the projects in the doomed transportation bill undoubtedly would have improved transit, cut down on auto pollution and saved lives. Few would argue the need to widen bloody U.S. 27 in Palm Beach County.

However, prudent taxpayers might question other big-ticket items that would have received funds from the gas tax. For example, would the city of Fort Lauderdale really grind to a halt if A1A were not rebuilt to accommodate commercial development along the beach? This seems an odd priority, considering the plight of less glamorous neighborhoods where people can’t even get a simple pothole patched.

Another dubious item was the state’s plan to purchase the Sawgrass Expressway, which (like Metrorail) is now being called successful because it’s losing fewer millions of dollars than it once did.

Having paid for the Sawgrass once (and for the criminal prosecutions that followed), Broward residents would have been forced to pay again with the gas tax, this time joined by other drivers. That’s not progress, it’s larceny.

If the Martinez veto ultimately means less road construction for a while, that’s not so bad. The worst traffic jams in Florida are caused by road projects that never seem to end.

All of us love to drive on fast-moving, freshly paved freeways, but they don’t stay that way very long. They fill up, slow down and clog. The gas tax would have accelerated, not halted, this phenomenon.

Besides, there is something to be said for sitting bumper-to-bumper and contemplating the mess we’ve made of this state. The real problem isn’t roads, and most people know it.

Finally, a leader admits growth is choking state

September 4, 1991

Last week, Lt. Gov. Buddy MacKay uttered one of the most stunning comments ever to exit the lips of a Florida politician.

“In the past,” he said, “we’ve had a policy of trying to stimulate growth. We measured our success by the numbers of people who moved into the state. We can no longer continue to do that.”

What refreshing blasphemy! Finally, somebody in elected office has the guts to admit that Florida is drowning in its own humanity.

Every crisis facing the statewater, pollution, crime, health care, traffic, and budgetis the result of too many people, too few resources and gutless leader ship. The quality of life is deteriorating in direct correlation with population growth, but until lately you could find only a handful of Florida politicians willing to come out and say so.

More was always better. To challenge that philosophy was to jeopardize hefty campaign contributions from banks, builders and utilities. Unthinkable! That’s why officeholders always talk about “managing” growth instead of stopping it.

With the state government practically broke, the Chiles administration is promoting the theme of “growing smarter.” Translation: Help! What do we do now!

The statistics are chilling. Each day, more than 900 people stampede to Florida, and that’s not counting illegal aliens. Think of it as adding two entire cities the size of Hialeah every year.

Every day, more than 300 acres of green space are paved for shopping malls and subdivisions. Planners say that keeping up with such expansion requires two new miles of road, two new classrooms, two new prison beds, two new cops and two new schoolteachers hired each day.

In other words, there’s no way to keep pace. Nine hundred newcomers a day is insane and ultimately suicidal. Stopping the flow will take imagination and a radical change in the way we promote the state.

Pro-growthers say Florida’s got plenty of space to growjust look out the window when you’re on an airplane! And it’s true, you can actually see some empty green patches in the center of the state. Unfortunately, that’s not where most new residents want to go.

Until now, people who’ve migrated here were foolishly allowed to settle any place they wanted. Not surprisingly, the coastal cities were overrunfirst Jacksonville, Miami and Fort Lauderdale, now Boca Raton, Tampa and Fort Myers. A big mess. Glorified human ant farms.

One smart way for the Chiles administration to modify Florida’s metastatic growth is to channel itby decreetoward more thinly populated areas. Absolutely nobody else should be permitted to settle in Miami until North Florida fills up. It’s only fair.

Consider that the density of Pinellas County (anchored by St. Petersburg) is about 3,055 people per square mile, the worst in the state. Broward is second with about i ,026 people per square mile, and Dade is third at 958 per square mile. No wonder the homicide rate is so high.

Now think of Liberty County. Tucked snugly in the Panhandle and bordered by the misty Apalachicola River, Liberty County has the lowest density in Floridaabout six people for every square mile. Paradise!

Or Lafayette County, kissed by the quiet Suwanneeand only 10 human beings per mile of riverside. Or spring-fed Gilchrist County, which grows some of the world’s juiciest watermelons, and does it with only 22 people per square mile.

Why do they deserve all the peace and quiet? It’s time for rural Florida to carry an honest share of growth’s burden. Think of it as a redistribution of wealth.

Starting tomorrow, Liberty County should take at least 100 of Florida’s 900 daily new arrivals. Sprinkle the remainder in Lafayette, Gilchrist, Wakulla, Calhoun, DeSoto and so on.

Give those folks a taste of what we’re experiencing down here, and you won’t hear any fuzzy debates about “growth management.” They’ll vote to close the borders.

Guns-for-all law one way to end congestion

May 20, 1993

Rep. Al Lawson sparked a small uproar last week by proposing that every household in Florida should be required to have a gun, and that every Floridian should be trained to shoot.

The man seemed dead serious. He talked of introducing a guns-for-all law during the upcoming special session on, fittingly, prisons. “I don’t see any option for the people but for them to bear arms,” he said. “Every house would have a gun.”

Obviously Lawson isn’t from South Florida (he’s from Tallahassee), but it’s still hard to understand how an elected official could be so grossly uninformed about the demographics of crime. Miami has armed itself to the teeth, but only occasionally does a citizen manage to shoot a criminal. Usually it’s a spouse, child, neighbor or pal who gets wasted, in moments of anger, drunkenness or stupidity.

My hunch is that Lawson knew the homicide stats very well, and that we underestimated him. Nobody could be daffy enough to believe that saturating rough neighborhoods with more guns will reduce crime. I think Lawson’s true aim was to reduce population, a worthy goal.

Florida’s got too many people, yet continues to grow at an insane pace. Virtually every major social crisis stems from overcrowdingcrime, pollution, gridlock, failing schools, you name it. The state’s going broke trying to provide for its 13 million residents, and the thousands more who arrive permanently each week.

Nothing seems to scare them off, either. Not the publicity about drugs and street violence. Not the specter of another killer hurricane. Not even the fact that Madonna and Mickey Rourke both live down here. People keep coming anyway.

Most politicians are resigned to the notion that Florida will grow until it bursts at the seams, and nothing can be done. Lawson is different. He’s come up with a surefire way to thin the herd. Putting a gun in every home would be radical, but effective.

Now embroiled in controversy, Lawson is backing off. An aide insists that the lawmaker was misunderstood: He doesn’t really think everybody must have a gun, especially if they don’t want to.

Lawson shouldn’t give up so quickly. A guns-for-all law could be promoted politically as helping the average Joe fight back, where the cops and the courts have failed. Among crime-weary citizens, the plan would strike a patriotic chord. A chicken in every pot, a Clock in every nightstand!

Conservatives from both parties would rally to Lawson’s side. The NRA would canonize him. He’d get invited on Rush Limbaugh. The Legislature, cowed by Lawson’s newfound celebrity, would probably ignore the pleas of police organizations and pass the law.

The results would be instantaneous. With a gun in every house, the murder rate would skyrocket, eventually offsetting the influx of new residents. Lawson’s firearms-training program would pay dividends, too, as Floridians would be shooting each other with unprecedented accuracy.

The bloodbath would make headlines worldwide, putting a minor dent in our tourist trade. However, that would be balanced by sunny economic news: Funeral homes, casket makers and florists would enjoy a sales boom.

Undoubtedly, Lawson’s gun policy would make Florida a much less congested place. Traffic would improve dramatically, as would highway etiquette. Those long lines at the post office would be a thing of the past. And it would get much easier to find good seats at the Marlins games.

For years, the Legislature has unsuccessfully tried to cope with Florida’s population explosion. Why not let Al Lawson take a shot at growth management?

Overcrowding solution: Pay folks to leave

September 5, 1994

The nations of the world are meeting in Cairo to tackle the crisis of global overpopulation. Here in Florida the problem isn’t the birth rate, it’s the arrival rate.

No matter how crowded and crime-ridden the place gets, people keep coming. That’s because most of them are leaving places that are equally crowded and crime-ridden, but without the sunshine and beaches.

Currently Florida’s population is growing at a net rate of about 753 persons per day, which is manifestly insane. These aren’t rafters or boat people, but American migrants in U-hauls and station wagons and minivans.

Most of them will end up working the popcorn machines at Wayne’s World, or in some other low-paying, service-sector job. But still they come.

Each year Florida gets enough new residents to fill a city more populous than Tampa. Not even sky-high homicide rates put a dent in the problem. The challenge is to offset the unending influx of arrivals by aggressively encouraging others to move out.

One way of spurring departures is to scare the pants off people, but that’s the job of the media, not government. Besides, residents of Florida aren’t nearly as intimidated by crime as are tourists.

A juicier incentive (and a time-honored ritual in Tallahassee) is to give money away. Lawmakers do it routinely for special intereststhis time they could do for the good of the whole state:

Pay people to move out.

Why not? When a plane is overbooked, the airline offers free tickets to anyone willing to give up a seat. Works like a charm.

Imagine Florida as a humongous jumbo jet, packed with 13 million restless passengers. Plenty of families would deplane if we made the right offersay $10,000 cash. Call it a buyout, residential severance or a “relocation bonus.”

Here’s how it might work: After moving elsewhere, mail a copy of your Florida driver’s license to Tallahassee, along with proof that you’ve bought or rented a place in another state. PrestoFlorida cuts you a nice fat check.

If 275,000 folks were persuaded to depart annually (to match the 275,000-plus new arrivals), the payout would total $2.7 billion.That’s expensive, but in the long run it’s a tax saver.

Think of the future expressways, airports, transit systems, hospitals, schools, jails and landfills that won’t need to be built if Florida’s population levels off. Think of the resurgence of tourist dollars, once we get a handle on growth-related social problems.

Politicians won’t admit Florida is overpopulated. To do so would offend too many campaign contributorsdevelopers, bankers, real-estate firmswho make their fortunes drawing new settlers here in the largest possible numbers.

More is better, growth is good! In no region is the credo more religiously followed than South Florida, which has become so urbanized and perilous that tourists stay away by the millions, and longtime residents bail out in droves.

The rest of the state faces the same gloomy fate, if drastic measures aren’t taken soon.

Clean high-tech industries aren’t attracted to places with runaway crime, bursting schools and a steadily declining quality of life. Corporate recruiters already have a devil of time selling Florida to young executives with families.

Depopulation is the only answernot kicking people out; rather, presenting them with a generous opportunity to leave.

Ideally, we’d combine the relocation bonus with a stiff entry cap: Nobody gets across the Georgia border until somebody else leaves.

We’d “wait-list” newcomers, just like the airlines do.

More crime, traffic jams? Bring’em on!

February 4, 1996

Weird but true: In Jacksonville, an extravaganza called “Millionth Mania” was recently held to “celebrate” the area’s one millionth new resident.

As if this were a good thing, something to be desired.

South Floridians can only shake their heads in puzzlement. We stopped celebrating about three million newcomers ago. Today, ascending population in Dade, Broward and Palm Beach are curtly noted and often received with quiet dismay.

In Jacksonville, they shot off fireworks on the river, while Barbara Eden and Frankie Valli entertained. But not everyone was jumping for joy.

Mike Webster, a native Miamian, fled to North Florida in 1980. Now 39, the Jacksonville yacht broker is a founding member of a small but feisty cell of objectors called the Florida League Against “Progress.”

FLAP has no dues, no officers, no membership rolls and no meetings. What it does have is a blunt and plainly articulated position:

That growth for growth’s sake is reckless, and that all Floridians are paying the price in a declining quality of life: crime, traffic gridlock, overcrowded schools, more taxes.

Years ago, FLAP gained modest attention by distributing delightfully seditious bumper stickers that said: LEAVING FLORIDA? TAKE A FRIEND!

Understandably, Webster was chagrined when his adopted hometown began to boast about swelling to one million residents. It was the same greedhead mentality that had turned South Florida into a parking lot.