I don’t know about how you view the Republicans, or Democrats, but the perception of them by some is that the Democrats are more Socialist in that they like to grow big government, while the Republicans like to grow Big Business.
Here in Florida we seem to have given control to the Republicans and Big Business. What does this means to US? They are trying to gut, or do away with, the Pill Mill Bills, regulations that govern many of the industries, out environmental laws, and even the progress we have made in the area of controlled growth.
Lets look at some of this. Growth Management has slowly taken shape to try to prevent uncontrolled growth that would over tax roads, water, schools, hospitals, various services, and even keep so-called Urban Sprawl from taking place. Years ago areas were required to come up with a Comprehensive Growth plan with designated zoning density for both urban and rural areas.
At onetime, in Sarasota County, there was an effort to put a building moratorium in place for 3 years. The were a number of groups that pushed it, and several that said it was bad for business, such as the Chamber of Commerce and the Argus Foundation, which was an impartial think tank, they said, which was made up of Banks, Business, Builders, and Realtors. I can see how impartial they might be. Argus argued that we had the 2050 Plan that would layout future growth to the year 2050. The only problem was that, in some people’s mind, the local governments kept voting to allow exemptions to zoning. Sometimes they even overruled their own staff. The Moratorium failed, and over time the voters got amendments passed that required super majority on the council rather than just a majority vote.
When the Community Affairs office came around it was touted as an effort to centralize development in Tallahassee in an effort to make development plans more consistent. Others saw this as an effort to take away local control of growth and place it in the hands of people who might be more congenial to developers.
Rick Scott, and the Florida Republicans, are trying to do away with all the safeguards we have tried to put into place. They say that we need to allow the builders to build more homes, and thus attract more Business.
Just after the Housing Crash North Port builders wanted to do away with impact fees, fees that would pay for the expansion if infrastructure, such as road, school, police, fire, hospitals, and others. The claim was that the impact fees kept people from buying new homes. They ignored unemployment, foreclosures, the unwillingness of bank to loan money, or even the glut of empty homes that was rapidly getting larger. Sure it would be nice to put people to work building homes, maybe even filling them up with more construction people as many of them found themselves with out jobs. An economy that is geared solely on construction can only expand by construction, and when the need for the product, in this case homes, crashes then you have too much product and lower prices.
The idea was to build more homes, fill them with people, and then attract business to open here. Why not get the business in the area so that they could hire people who would then fill the homes we have, and then build some more once the demand is greater. That might pull up the property values and allow some of the home owners to get out from being “underwater” where the house is worth less than their mortgage.
What if we let them build to their heart’s content? Would the prices be higher than the homes around them? Would this, by itself, drive up the prices of all those empty homes, or would it just contribute to the falling prices by adding to the glut of homes?
I don’t know but my guess it that it would NOT help!!
The Pill Mill Bill is an effort to curb Florida as a Mecca for illegal prescription drug sales. It would, hopefully, allow the Doctors, the ones who care, determine if a is over medicated. Even some of the Drug Manufacturers are in favor, and it appears that the only ones against it, other than those people worried about the privacy of their prescriptions, are those who want to curb government regulation no matter who it might harm.
Industry regulation might not be perfect, I am sure of that, with all the laws that get passed, there are some that DO hinder business but, many of these regulation are for the safety of the general public.
Maybe we should take a closer look at some of the people who want to deregulate us, and figure out whose real interest they have in mind, it is likely that this interest is NOT OURS.
Thank you..
That Joe Guy 