Corruption in Florida

By Weekly Archive On Feb 22, 2012

By Alan Farago

The Hindustan Times reports that the University of Sussex in Great Britain "has announced the creation of a new research center at Sussex entitled the ‘Sussex Centre for the Study of Corruption’." The university will offer a master’s degree for center students who will "analyze what corruption is, where it thrives and most importantly, what can be done about it." Understandably, this is an idea that we could affiliate with locally. The University of Miami Law School, FIU or Nova should link with the Sussex venture, started by an Indian politician, Anna Hazare.

Suggestion to UM president Donna Shalala: solicit support for a new study of corruption from Lennar and Stuart Miller, a UM board member and on whose corporate board she sits, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, or Leonard Abess, an environmental philanthropist. Just a thought, but a thought that came to me in the context of a report by environmental journalist Bruce Ritchie, "Suwannee River Water Management District chief quits, warns Senate panel about water policy." Former District chief David Still told the GOP led legislature, "People have asked me, ‘How you like what you’re doing in the Legislature? … The truth of the matter is I really want to tell them – you won’t hear this out of me very often – I’m scared. I’m scared what is going to happen in our future with water."

What do the people of Florida recognize that the legislature doesn’t? That to accommodate ceaseless growth of the cement and asphalt-based footprint of development in Florida we are destroying our fresh water future. Its the same manifesto – growth at any cost – that made Florida the centerpiece of the housing boom and bust; mainly for the political influence peddling and campaign money that coalesced around former Governor Jeb Bush and an immoveable Republican majority in the legislature. Destroying our water future is in the genetic code of the Florida builders and associations like the Latin Builders: just give us the water we want, now. Keep the costs low. Keep building platted subdivisions in wetlands and open space. Never mind the future.

This is no exaggeration: the most important of Miami-Dade’s 20 year plans, based on its consumptive use permit with the state of Florida’s water management district, have been scrapped since Gov. Rick Scott took office. There is a virtual halt to enforcement and planning by state regulatory authority.

Don’t get me wrong I am not letting Democrats off the hook. When the Democrats had their turn at running the state of Florida and through their influence in Congress, not much was done to protect – and I mean really to protect – our water and air. Statewide candidates for office in Florida have been notoriously slow and indifferent to the ways that corruption is pervasive in environmental regulatory policies and growth management.

A recent report by the Department of Justice identifies Florida as 4th in the nation for public corruption. But factoring in state prosecutions, we are 1st. Numero Uno.

This leads me to thoughts about addressing corruption. Unfortunately we don’t want to call corruption for what it is. Not just the money under the table that lands county commissioners in jail, but policies that circumvent the will of the people as broadly expressed in important laws and regulations and for which loopholes are constantly being created. The goalposts change. The baselines vanish and are rewritten. Fast numerical standards on pollution become "narrative" standards. The Florida legislature hasn’t even reckoned with the most dangerous pollutant of all, pervasive in Florida water: methylized mercury.

There you have it. The Florida legislature is obsessed with the moment of conception, but cares not a shilling or dime for the pollution that is known to alter genes and creates terrible neurological deficits. This reminds me of the comment by super PAC organizer Karl Rove to the New York Times in 2003, when he was arguably the most important person in the Bush White House. Rove said, ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

I call that corruption.

For the past 20 years Alan Farago has written, worked and volunteered to advance civic engagement and issues related to the environment and politics. He publishes the Eye on Miami blog and writes under the name, Gimleteye.