Kick Ass (54 page)

“I’m so mad. I live behind there,” Jessie Wood said. She sat through much of the all-day meeting with her 11-month-old baby. “I used to ride my bike up and down that road when I was a kid. Now I have a sonwhere”s he going to ride his bike?”

After the paid experts were done testifying, Greenman called the neighbors to the microphone. They talked about crime and noise and safety concerns, such as the nearby school bus stop. They also talked about the unique but vanishing character of the Keys.

When they finished, Planning Commissioner Lynn Mapes spoke first: “I think there are more gas pumps in this town than I’ve seen anywhere outside of New Jersey. I can’t see any need for more gas pumps.”

Commissioner Billy Gorsuch expressed other concerns. So did Commissioner Jim Aultman and Chairwoman Mary Hansley. The final vote went 4-1 against McDonald’s.

A cheer erupted, hesitantly at first, because people couldn’t really believe what had happened: They had actually been heardand trusted to know what was best for their neighborhood.

McDonald’s can appeal the decision, but the company will face a new hurdle next time around. In less than a month, Islamorada officially incorporates as a city.

From then on, island residents will make their own rules about density, zoning, traffic capacitythings that help determine a community’s quality of life.

In paradise, that includes cheeseburgers.

Feds are right in grounding jetport project

January 4, 1998

The White House decision to delay development of the old Homestead Air Force Base has drawn instant criticism from South Dade officials, Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas and even Sen. Bob Graham.

They say the delay unfairly punishes a needy community that’s still struggling after Hurricane Andrew. A new commercial jetport, they say, is necessary to invigorate South Dade.

Blaming Uncle Sam for the setback is convenient. It’s also a crock. The county screwed up the air-base project so badly that the feds had little choice but to step in and enforce the law.

The fiasco began when commissioners, including Penelas, chose to lease the storm-battered property to a bunch of politically connected home builders. The group, called HABDI, includes Carlos Herrera, a former president of the Latin Builders Association and a heavy Democratic contributor.

HABDI announced elaborate plans to convert the military airfield into a thriving cargo jetport. Hotels, shops and warehouses would sprout upnot to mention plenty of new subdivisions, which is what the Homestead deal is really all about.

That Herrera and HABDI had zero experience in the airport business didn’t seem to bother the commissioners. They awarded the lease without considering any other bids.

Angry South Dade residents tried in vain to kill the deal. They felt like pawns in a political trade-off, and they were right. HABDI had the votes it needed.

Then somebody noticed that the group’s plans for the Homestead base were far more ambitious than those originally presented to the Air Force. The number of predicted flights was doubled, and suddenly there was a drawing of a second runway.

That meant the original environmental-impact report was worthless. (On one map, for example, Biscayne Bay was labeled “The Atlantic Ocean.”) Friends of the Everglades, the Sierra Club and the National Resources Defense Council demanded that the feds review HABDI’s plan.

Because of its location, the Homestead jetport will have an impact on two national parks, Biscayne and Everglades. The effect of constant aircraft noise on wildlife is one issue, but questions have also been raised about potential fuel spills, air pollution and traffic.

Those concerns evidently aren’t shared by Penelas, Graham or other politicians who opposed an environmental-impact statement. A new study would postpone construction unnecessarily, they insisted. The old study would do just fine.

Their argument was made at a Nov. 25 meeting between county and federal officials in Graham’s Miami office. According to New Times, the county lamely tried to backpedal away from HABDI, saying it had not yet accepted all the company’s projections.

In other words: Sure, we let ‘em have the air base, but we don’t agree with all their big ideas.

How’s that for a cop-out? Luckily, the feds didn’t buy it. On Dec. 22, the White House agreed that the revamped air base should be studied for potential environmental damage. The work is supposed to take about 18 months.

In a way, HABDI brought on the delay itself by outlandishly predicting that its airport would be a $12 billion boon to South Dade’s economy. County consultants chimed in, projecting 230,000 flights a year, comparable to JFK in New York.

The price for all that wild hype is scrutiny, because the stakes are high. Industrializing a rural community shouldn’t happen overnight. Nor should anyone lightly dismiss ecological threats to the Everglades, Biscayne Bay and Florida Bayvital resources that also happen to be multibillion-dollar tourist attractions.

So the county is stuck; stuck with HABDI, stuck with the hype, and now stuck with a long delay. It’s nobody’s fault but the commissioners’ for agreeing to such a disgraceful deal.

No wonder they’re looking for somebody else to blame.

Bush listens to smart talk on environment

February 5, 1998

Jeb Bush, conservationist?

Stop laughing. The Republicans are wising up, and the Democrats had better pay attention.

A column recently appeared in this newspaper that might have made you rub your eyes, to make sure you weren’t hallucinating. The headline: “Let’s protect Florida forever.”

The byline: Jeb Bush.

Yes, the same Bush who had no environmental platform whatsoeverno clue, in factwhen he ran for governor on the GOP ticket in 1994.

This year Bush is running again, and he’s full of ideas about how to preserve wilderness and wetlands. Did he suddenly get religion, or is this an act?

It doesn’t really matter, as long as promises are kept.

Bill Clinton didn’t start talking like Thoreau until he ran for president, and there’s no reasonbased on his record in Arkansasto believe the rhetoric came from his heart. Nonetheless, his administration has done some good things, mainly because he installed some good people.

Early in the new gubernatorial race, Bush is listening to smart talk. Republicans have a reputation as the anti-green party, and in Florida that translates into thousands of lost votes. Bush’s supporters appear to have convinced him of the importance of a credible environmental platform.

The centerpiece is an extended edition of Preservation 2000, the successful land-acquisition program initiated under Florida’s last Republican governor, Bob Martinez. Although Martinez made some terrible appointments to environmental watchdog agencies, he will be well remembered for pushing “P2000.”

It works like this: The state issues tax-free bonds to raise money for the purchase of ecologically sensitive or imperiled lands. The benefits have been felt from the Panhandle to the Keys, wherever green space and wildlife habitat have been spared from destruction.

Preservation 2000 expires at the turn of the century, and Bush pledges to renew the concept for another decade, with $300 million a year allocated for buying and managing land.

And when a parcel is too expensive to purchase, he says, the state should secure the development rights or a conservation easement. That would preserve the land while compensating the owner for maintaining itan approach that makes sense, as long as everyone plays by the rules.

These are interesting ideas from an unlikely source. But the greening of Jeb Bush, developer, is being guided by Martinez and his onetime running mate, J. Allison DeFoor, an attorney and ex-sheriff of Monroe County.

DeFoor is a rare breed, a Republican with solid environmental credentials. He and Martinez recently formed a GOP think tank called the Theodore Roosevelt Society. The name is meant to remind voters that the nation’s most impassioned and progressive president, conservation-wise, was a Republican.

Bush is a city boy at heart, and will never be mistaken for the second coming of T.R. He’s happier on the tennis court than on a mangrove island, but that’s all right.

He wouldn’t be the first governor, Democrat or Republican, to act out of political expediency rather than deeply held conviction. And while we can hope that Bush is losing sleep over the future of the Everglades, he’s probably just losing sleep over the votes.

That’s all right, too. You can’t expect an overnight spiritual conversion. It’d be swell to have a governor who truly believes, but most of us will settle for one who does the right thing, for whatever reason.

Judge humbles Humberto

August 30, 1998

Thank you, Roberto Pineiro, for sparing us from another dispiriting Humberto Hernandez trial.

Taxpayers are grateful. Prosecutors are grateful. And we in the media are eternally grateful.

Pineiro is the Miami-Dade judge who socked it to Hernandez on Aug. 19 for his role in the vote fraud committed during last fall’s Miami elections.

The defrocked commissioner was so crushed by Pineiro’s stiff sentenceand cutting wordsthat last week he threw in the towel on pending bank fraud and money laundering charges.

Now there’s one less cockroach in the public cupboard, and for that Judge Pineiro deserves a standing ovation.

A jury had convicted Hernandez of helping cover up phony absentee balloting. It was only a misdemeanor, and Pineiro could have let Humberto off with token jail time or a fine.

But instead he hammered him with the maximum: 364 days. Smirking Bert was smirking no more. He listened gloomily as the judge told him: “I cannot envision a more felonious misdemeanor.”

For Hernandez, it was a decisively deflating moment. He couldn’t endure another trial, or the prospect of a 13-year prison term. Within days his lawyer began negotiating with the U.S. attorney’s office.

On Thursday a deal was announced. Hernandez pleaded guilty to one conspiracy count, for which he could get four years. He admitted his role in falsifying mortgages that ripped off banks for $2.9 million. Prosecutors say the scam also laundered a fortune in stolen Medicare funds.

Hernandez’s attorney describes him as “depressed and embarrassed.” Good. The idiots who voted for him ought to feel the same way.

Bert’s grimy past was well-publicized before the November election. Everybody knew he’d been canned as an assistant city attorney for running a private law practice out of City Hall. Everybody knew about his abominable ambulance chasing after the Valujet crash.

And everybody knew he was facing 23 heavy-duty charges involving bogus sales of condominiums and houses.

But Humberto easily got reelected anyway. So who could be shocked when it came to light that he was mixed up in vote fraud? What’d you expect from a crook?

And a cocky crook he was, grinning in handcuffs during his arrest. Later, hidden microphones in the paddy wagon recorded Bert and his pals joking and discussing how to manipulate talk-radio to rally support.

As for the bank-fraud charges, Hernandez vowed to win at trial. That would come after his quick acquittal in the ballot-fraud case, he predicted confidently.

Bert planned to play the “race card,” to claim he was being persecuted because he’s Hispanic. This despicable scheme came back to haunt him before Judge Pineiro, a former prosecutor and, like Hernandez, a Cuban American.

“Sadly, you were willing to polarize our community in order to save your political power,” Pineiro said as he passed sentence. “This is unconscionable.”

I don’t know if the judge’s stern sermon sent a message to other corrupt politicians, but clearly it sent one to Smirking Bert: Your luck’s run out.

Thanks to another tough judge, Joan Lenard, Hernandez has been sitting behind bars while awaiting his federal trial. It’s been lonely, demoralizing and brutally hard on his family. To risk 13 years would have been the ultimate cockiness.

Copping a plea is the first decent thing Hernandez has done in a while, but decency never comes easy to crooks. First they need to get their socks scared off.

Thank you again, Roberto Pineiro.

Glades buyout has to happen

November 15, 1998

The uprooting of 350 families in the boggy East Everglades is no cause for joy, but it’s necessary, overdue and inevitable.

Last week, the South Florida Water Management District decided to buy out landowners in a sodden patch of southwest Miami-Dade known as the 8 1/2 Square Mile Area.

Planners say the purchase is essential to restore the flow of clean, fresh water to Everglades National Park. Residents are in a furious uproar. They want to stay in the Glades, and they want government to provide new roads, sewers and drainage ditches to help keep them dry.

It’s the classic Florida yarn, with villains and victims but no tidy ending.

Want to blame somebody? Start with the clowns on the old Metro Commission who allowed folks to sell “property” on the wrong side of the Everglades dike.

That’s right, the 8 1/2 Square Mile Area is west of the flood-control levee. That meanssurprise!no flood control. It’s a wetland, as in: wet land.

That self-evident fact didn’t discourage people from hawking lots, and nobody stopped them. This is Florida, after all, with a proud tradition of submersible real estate.

But here’s the problem with living in a swamp: You live in a swamp.

Water managers have been diverting some flow from the 8 1/2 Square Mile Area, parching the national park to benefit the homeowners. Yet every rainy season the ritual repeats: TV crews slosh out to the East Everglades to interview folks who are ankle-deep and miserable. Of course they want flood protectionwho wouldn’t?

It’s impossible not to feel heartache for those who will be forced to give up a home, a neighborhood, a way of life. But it’s ludicrous to likenas some havethe Everglades acquisition to Fidel Castro’s property confiscations.

The comparison should insult anyone who lost land in CubaFidel didn’t pay a dime, he just took it. Landowners in the 8 1/2 Square Mile Area cumulatively will collect as much as $113 million, according to officials.

However, the longer the buyout takes, the more it will cost. That’s a serious concern for both conservationists and budget watchers. Litigation could prolong the haggling for precious years.

Meanwhile, the park gasps for more water, and speculators snap up border tracts in hopes of gouging the governmentmeaning you and mewhen the buyout finally begins.

But the alternative could be even more expensive. Engineers say the cost of letting people remain in the S1/2 Square Mile Area and making it flood-free could reach $180 million.

Behind the scenes are a few landowners who deserve scorn, not sympathy. They want flood control not just to dry out the families, but to enable further development.

Astoundingly, these operators want more houses, more ranchettes, more farms

in a swamp. Swell idea: Don’t fix a dumb mistake. Subdivide it.

Without a healthy Everglades, all South Floridians will face dire water shortages. The 8 1/2 Square Mile Area is needed for recreating an unbroken flow. It’s a patch that needs to be wet. It’s supposed to be wet.

If officials guarantee drainage for homeowners there, a long line of swamp peddlers would form at the water management district. Everybody who owned any wetland would demand publicly funded dikes, ditches and sewers.

The cost would be outrageous and, more importantly, the Everglades restoration project would fall apart.

It’s truly a shame that people need to move out of the 8 1/2 Square Mile Area. A worse shame is that anyone was allowed to build there in the first place.

That’s why there’s a law

December 13, 1998

History was made recently when the Florida Ethics Commission found an actual lapse of ethics in Florida. It’s a rare instance of the system working the way it’s supposed to.

The case centers on a man named Dennis Wardlow. In 1995, while mayor of Key West, Wardlow was charged by U.S. prosecutors with taking a bribe from lawyer John Bigler.

Bigler owned a company that rented Jet Ski-style water bikes to tourists on the island. He put Wardlow on his payroll for $100 a week, an arrangement that lasted 19 months. This was not disputed.

The mayor claimed he was being paid to do “public relations” work for Bigler. The feds said the money was meant to buy Wardlow’s influence.

These payments came during a period when Key West officials were trying to regulate water-bike vendors. Wardlow participated in the key votes. He never told fellow commissioners or the public that he was taking money from a firm that was affected by the new laws.

It seemed like a textbook case of small-town bribery, with the facts weighing gloomily against the indicted mayor.

But this wasn’t just any small town; it was Key West, where juries traditionally have a higher tolerance (or a narrower definition) of corruption. This is particularly true when the accused happens to be a native “Bubba.”

Wardlow took the stand to proclaim that he was not a crook, and that he had done nothing wrong by taking the $100 payments. He insisted his work for Bigler was giving business advice, on weekends, with special attention to possible water-bike opportunities in the Dominican Republic.

As lame as that sounds, it was enough to sway jurors. They acquitted the mayor, and he went back to work. Bigler didn’t fare so well. He pleaded guilty to attempted bribery, received one year’s probation and gave up his law license. His water-bike business is no more.

The case would have ended, too, except for one indignant citizen named Jace Hobbs, a Key Wester fed up with graft. He wrote to the state Ethics Commission, not the most tenacious of watchdog agencies.

“I didn’t even know it existed,” Hobbs said, “until a week or so before I did it.”

Yet a wondrous thing happened to his complaint: It got taken seriously. The ethics panel eventually found probable cause that Wardlow broke state rules by taking Bigler’s money and failing to disclose it.

True, the commission needed almost two years to reach a conclusion that most clear-thinking adults would regard as a no-brainer. Then it took another nine months to hold a hearing, and another seven months to make a ruling

but, hey, at least something got done. For a change.

On Dec. 3, the Ethics Commission unanimously declared that Wardlow had violated seven state rules and should cough up $12,900a $5,000 fine, plus the $7,900 he pocketed during his so-called “employment” by Bigler.

The panel also recommended a reprimand, which won’t mean diddly since Wardlow is no longer Key West’s mayor. Still, with the governor’s backing, the fine could send a message to politicians sniffing around for extra cash: There’s a chance you’ll actually get punished for itnot anytime soon but long into the future, when you can barely remember which bribe they’re talking about.

Jace Hobbs was out of town when news of the Wardlow ruling reached Key West. A week later, no one had yet told him about it.

He seemed quietly pleased when he heard the outcome. When I asked why he had bothered to pursue the case, Hobbs paused for a moment, then said: “I felt obligated to the community.”

That’s why there’s a law. Sometimes, when the stars align, it even works.

Bush on track with ‘bullet’

January 14, 1999

It was the first test for Florida’s new governor. Was Jeb Bush really a different breed of politician, or just another Brand X hack who knuckled under to heavyweight lobbyists?

Now we have a clue. Today Bush is expected to put a bullet in the bullet train, the most egregious public rip-off ever contemplated by the Legislature.

It was a proposed 320-mile rail link between Miami, Orlando and Tampaa $6.3 billion boondoggle that was doomed to lose money until its tracks rusted out. Its chief selling point: a train ride that would take longer and cost more than traveling by air. All aboard!

During the gubernatorial campaign, Bush criticized the bullet train because of the immense risk to taxpayers. Beginning in 2001, the state was to begin subsidizing the Millennium Turkey to the tune of $70 million annually, escalating over 40 years to a total handout exceeding $6 billion.

And that’s if everything went right.

It’s nice to think Florida’s worsening highway gridlock and traffic pollution could be alleviated by a railroad, but it wouldn’t.

Like Metrorail, Tri-Rail and Amtrak, the bullet train would never have attracted the promised passengers. Taxpayers would have been stuck with a 200-mph rolling disaster that bled cash every time it pulled out of the station.

Bush’s skepticism worried those pushing the project. The most avid shill was the state Department of Transportation, which adores expensive, endless construction extravaganzas.

The DOT’s ridership predictions for the bullet train were so wacky they should have been on Comedy Centralthough not too wacky for lawmakers, who had already had set aside $77 million for research.

However, a preliminary planning budget was due to run out Jan. 31, with $56 million remaining in the kitty. No more could be spent without the governor’s OK.

In addition to Bush’s wariness, bullet-train boosters faced a dubious upcoming report from the U.S. General Accounting Office. The GAO raised questions (surprise!) about both the estimated cost of the train and the demand.

Uncle Sam’s interest was substantial because Florida had sought a $2 billion federal loan for the train, to be backed by revenues from future passenger fares. The idea transcended mere optimism, and entered the realm of the hallucinatory.

Nobody was more worried about the train’s political future than Florida Overland Express (FOX), the consortium seeking to build the railway and hand it over to the state. Be certain there was a fortune to be made off the bullet train by those doing the promoting, planning and engineering. The trick was to hang taxpayers with the debt for running it.

To win over Bush, FOX hired high-profile lobbyists with strong GOP connections, including Mac Stipanovich, one of Bush’s top advisors in his 1994 race against Lawton Chiles. FOX even donated $5,000 toward Bush’s inaugural festivities this month.

For their efforts, company big shots got some face time with the new governor last week. Evidently they failed to change his mind.

Today Bush announces that he won’t approve future funding for the bullet train. It’s unlikely the Republican-led Legislature will rise up against him, so the project is as good as dead.

Had the governor caved to the lobbyists, he would have been indelibly linked to Florida’s costliest transportation fiasco. Jeb’s Folly, it would have been called.

But by running the bullet train off the rails now, before another penny is wasted, Bush saves future generations of taxpayers from a multibillion-dollar debacle. He also sets a promising precedent for his administrationcommon sense instead of common politics.

Let’s hope it’s not a fluke.

––––––––––––