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Growth Management
Working on Commission
Armed with data, pie charts and determination, yet another commission attacks growth issues.
"People say they want good transportation," says Baker. "I know that." But what constitutes good transportation? Suppose you measured the average commuter drive time for a metropolitan area, Baker says, and tracked that over time to determine whether transportation is getting better or worse. One measure of the quality of neighborhoods might be how many children walk or ride bikes to school.
Baker loves measuring results against goals and presenting them so people know what's going on. St. Petersburg even has performance measures for schools, which are not under city control, because it keeps political pressure on school leaders. The city also compares its measures to four other cities. No surprise, then, that gathering up data from around the state has become one of the Century Commission's early undertakings. Its one paid staff member besides Seibert is research director Mary Oakley.
The trick is to create standard measures that can be used throughout the state -- at city, county, regional and state levels -- to assess what's going on. Jacksonville Community Council Inc. (JCCI) has been tracking indicators about the quality of life there for 25 years. Sarasota has some, too, though not nearly as extensive. Orlando's Myregion group of seven counties took a snapshot a couple of years ago, and the Center for Urban and Environmental Studies (CUES) at Florida Atlantic University has collected them for southeast Florida.
Florida started generating performance data during the Lawton Chiles administration, but that effort stopped under Bush, who had his own preferences about what to measure. Consistent measurement "can change the conversation to be solution-oriented rather than arguing about whether there's a problem," says Ben Warner, deputy director of JCCI. Says Seibert: "If we're going to be bold (in policy suggestions), I feel an obligation to provide great justification." But the Century Commission's effort is about much more than data. The 2005 growth-management act called for a local "vision" process, but many local governments aren't sure how to go about it. The Century Commission wants to point the way and has called in experienced people like Robert Grow, who founded the successful Envision Utah group several years ago.
"You start talking to people not about facts but about things that matter most to them," Grow told the commission last January. He described an Arizona referendum campaign on transportation, which "was going down to an ugly defeat." Voters were basically being told, "If you vote for this, you'll get 385 new buses, 23 miles of light rail and 27 rebuilt freeway bridges." At Grow's suggestion, the pitch changed: "If you vote for this, you'll get home for dinner with your kids." The measure passed. There will be controversy aplenty next year. For example, the large consumption of water for agriculture usually "is not touched because it's so politically volatile," says Baker. Seibert says they'll also deal with "governance" -- 67 counties, 410 cities, five water-management districts, 11 regional planning councils and eight emergency-management districts. ("Is that a logical way to govern?" Seibert asks.) "But if we can say, 'Here are the alternatives,' it deflects a little bit of volatility by having very data-driven scenarios," Baker says.
The 15-member commission, with a $550,000 budget, has spent more than a year without proposing a single change in state government. While the commission has heard from some dynamic thinkers, its own thinking has not been radical -- at least not yet. But government doesn't move quickly, or dramatically, and those who act otherwise risk defeat.
Bennett says the commission can "become Florida's most important oversight organization." Maybe it can, but it will depend on the group's ability to move policymakers. Says Century Commission member Steve Uhlfelder, "We have to make the questions and the lack of answers so shocking that politicians can't deal with them on a short-term basis."
