The public interest perspective on SB 360.

• Author: Grosso, Richard
• Position: Florida

The environmental community sought a veto of SB 360 because its grossly over-broad definition of "dense urban land area" promotes development in rural areas; it substantially repeals the regulation of developments of regional impact (DRI), and represents a huge public subsidy--through either tax dollars or quality of life--for the transportation impacts of development.

Developments of Regional Impact

The exemption of "dense urban land areas" (DULA) from DRI review is an overbroad legislative fiat that will cause significant amounts of rural and farmland to be labeled as DULAs because they lie within a local government with an average density of 1,000 people per square mile, which even itself is too low to be a true urban infill area. This will promote urban sprawl. The bill may be vulnerable to attack on separation of powers grounds, as it grants the exclusive authority to the legislature's Office of Economic and Demographic Research to determine which jurisdictions qualify, authorizing Department of Community Affairs (DCA) only to publish that list on its Web page. Since this entity is not a state agency subject to F.S. Ch. 120, challenges to errors in this determination may well be precluded.

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DCA may challenge projects that exceed 120 percent of the applicable DRI threshold, but only on the basis of inconsistency with the comprehensive plan. This will deprive local residents of the protections of the DRI law for most large scale or regional projects. Limiting DCA's challenges to the substance of the more limited and general comprehensive plan policies (which were not written to address DRIs), instead of the more detailed and rigorous DRI rules, is problematic. Moreover, intergovernmental coordination policies in comprehensive plans are widely known to be among their weakest elements and, therefore, do not provide the same type of guidance as DRI review.

This substantial reduction in DRI requirements could cause major inconsistencies in development decisions by different local governments. A local government with a strong growth management philosophy could still find itself overrun with traffic from projects approved by adjacent local governments. There could be an increase in plan amendment challenges filed by adjacent local governments concerned about the impacts of density and intensity increases on their infrastructure or protected areas.

Alternative State Review Process for Plan Amendments

The bill provides an...