by Keith Laing
The News Service of Florida
Three high-profile state agencies could be combined under a proposal released this week by Gov.-elect Rick Scott’s transition team that calls for the state departments of Transportation, Environmental Protection and Community Affairs to be merged.
The policy briefing recommends that Scott, who is preparing to take office next month, “refocus discrete components (of the agencies) as part of a newly created, more muscular state economic development agency.”
It also recommends the state get out of the business of overseeing local comprehensive planning following high profile fights in the Legislature in recent years over growth management restrictions lawmakers say are overly burdensome.
It would take legislation to combine the agencies and the transition team warned Scott that merging DCA with the other two large agencies wouldn’t necessarily make those problems go away, even as it recommended he push for the consolidation.
“When considering the many horror stories charging DCA as a bureaucratic inhibitor to growth, understand that DCA is carrying out the will of the law and its implementing rules,” the report said. “‘Blowing up’ DCA, as the Tallahassee insiders speculate is the focus of the incoming administration, will not solve the problem. The law must be changed.”
With so many water regulations coming from the federal government, several of which are being legally contested by the state, the transition also said that a stand-alone DEP was not necessary.
“Federal regulation is more extensive than it was 20-30 years ago when additive state regulation was created,” the report said. “Federal policy and rules ‘over-regulate’ Florida beyond a reasonable need, making the regulatory process more cumbersome and costly than competitive states.”
The rationale for eliminating the stand-alone DCA is similar: “Let cities be cities. Eliminate state oversight of local comprehensive planning,” the report said.
But transportation and environmental advocates questioned Tuesday whether the solution was combining the two very different transportation and environmental protection agencies, even as they acknowledged each could fit well with Community Affairs.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Audubon of Florida Executive Director Eric Draper told the News Service. “DEP has two primary purposes: make environmental regulations and be responsible under the constitution and state law for air and water quality. How do you put that together with planning for and financing the state highway system?”
He said that “it’s probably more justified putting DOT and DCA closer together because the placement of roads dictates where you can develop, but there’s no explanation for taking the role of environmental protection and putting it with transportation planning.”
Florida Transportation Builders Association President Bob Burleson agreed with the overall goal of making government more efficient, but said he would have to hear more about the proposal to decide whether he agreed with the details.
“I can agree with the duplicity of effort in permitting, but we’ve all got to remember these are requirements the Legislature put in place,” he said. “I don’t know that merging will eliminate the problem.”