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Skunked!
Literally. Before the Feb. 22 meeting of the Environmental Regulation Commission started, an environmental activist had plastered the room with dozens of heart-shaped paper valentines. On each, the inscription read, "To all my friends at (BLANK) Company Inc. Good for one 20-year 'sweetheart' deal if my proposed ecosystem management plan becomes law. All my love, Ginger."
Wetherell and her aides went on to present an upbeat progress report on implementation of ecosystem management, a trendy new regulatory scheme that tries to take a big-picture view of environmental protection.
Despite those cheerful assurances, however, consensus over the idea remains elusive. The state's initiative, once hailed by environmentalists around the country as a way to increase protection without adding regulation, now is being denounced by many Florida activists, who say it threatens to destroy practically all of the environmental protections they fought so hard for in the 1970s and 1980s.
Activist Linda Young of Tallahassee, who staged the valentine protest, says Wetherell and her boss Gov. Chiles are "trying to take something that originated as a good concept -- and still is -- and bastardize it into a slick marketing plan for the rollback of our environmental laws.
"It really angers me," says Young, who publishes a statewide environmental newspaper called Pro Earth Times.
As a result of the growing controversy, many observers on both sides of the debate believe the political momentum behind ecosystem management has waned. That could add years to the struggle to streamline Florida's notoriously niggling permitting process.
What exactly is ecosystem management? Environmentalists around the country began using the term in earnest in the 1980s. That's about the time they realized that despite all the laws they had pushed through to protect sensitive wetlands, the environment as a whole continues to be threatened, primarily because of development in biologically rich upland habitats. The problem is especially acute in Florida, home to the second-largest number of endangered plant and animal species of any state (behind Hawaii).
At first, environmental policymakers tried the obvious: buy the land that's left.
But after years of pouring public money into Florida's ambitious land purchase programs, even some environmentalists are beginning to wonder if they can ever buy enough. By 1994, Florida's Game & Freshwater Fish Commission was estimating that the state would have to increase its conservation lands by 67% -- from the current 7 million acres to 11.7 million -- in order to protect all the wild things. Consider that the state only has 37 million acres total and you begin to perceive the magnitude of the problem.
"It looks like more acres than the state can ever buy," says James R. Brindell, a West Palm Beach lawyer and former high-ranking state environmental official.
That, in large part, led moderate environmentalists to consider the idea of ecosystem management. As originally conceived, the concept was to give government the ability to negotiate agreements with private landowners that would better protect entire natural systems, not just isolated wetlands. Property owners might even be given the right to develop some wetlands, for example, in exchange for tighter regulation of uplands, if that was what was best for the surrounding ecosystem as a whole.
This is exactly what Carol Browner, then the rising-star secretary of the old Department of Environmental Regulation (DER), had in mind in 1992 when she negotiated the state's first ecosystem management agreement with Disney. The agreement allowed the company to expand into wetlands in its Lake Buena Vista property. In return, the company arranged for permanent conservation of some valuable old uplands on another property known as the Walker Ranch.
In 1993, Browner left to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. But her legacy lived on in Florida. When the Legislature merged Browner's old DER with the state's Department of Natural Resources to create the current Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), the Chiles administration insisted that implementation of ecosystem management be put at the top of the new agency's agenda.
"We see Florida as the national leader in this area," says R. Steven Brown, director of the Centers for Environment and Safety at the Council of State Governments in Lexington, Ky.
Many business leaders were appalled, however. They feared -- with good reason -- that environmentalists planned to use ecosystem management to impose regulation of uplands.
Three years later, though, business lobbyists express cautious optimism about the initiative. Instead, it's environmentalists who are worried. Many of them say the Chiles administration is turning the concept of ecosystem management into a tool that will actually smooth the way for development that otherwise would not occur.
A few focus the blame squarely on Wetherell, Browner's successor, whose pro-business views and prominent gray streak have won her the nickname "Skunk" among some hard-core environmentalists. (Perhaps as a result, Wetherell's gray streak recently disappeared.)
Others say ecosystem management has become nothing more than a pie-in-the-sky to divert attention from the administration's lack of vigor in enforcing current laws.
Even officials of the Florida Audubon Society, a moderate group that participated actively in the initiative's development, say they are growing skeptical. "There's a tremendous amount of potential for it to be a good thing for the environment, but so far most of us have seen it used by the department as simply an excuse to let things slide in the way of environmental protection," says Charles Lee, Florida Audubon's senior vice president.
Here's what's changed. The administration's current ecosystem management plan calls for dividing the state into 24 Ecosystem Management Areas that generally follow rivers. Within these areas, teams comprising the relevant agencies and interest groups could be empowered to hammer out wide-ranging agreements on business activities in a single forum -- provided the applicant wants to go that route. The alternative of traditional regulation always would remain available, DEP officials say.
Environmentalists are fretful about what they say is a lack of regulatory standards for such agreements. Political appointees to the regional boards, they fear, will strike deals with big business, effectively making an end run around the existing regulatory process.
DEP officials downplay the concerns. "Initially there were some misconceptions on both sides," says Ernie Barnett, DEP's director of ecosystem planning. "But once those misconceptions are better understood the concerns will be eliminated."
Among the biggest, Barnett says, is that government officials will be allowing more overt pollution in one medium -- air, for example -- in exchange for less in another -- say, water.
"That's a falsehood," he insists. "The existing standards don't go away. The only thing we'll trade away is freedom from some of the process that applicants for permits have to go through."
That could be accomplished, for example, by collapsing four or six environmental permits for a complex project into a single permit. He says third parties like environmental groups will retain their rights to challenge administrative actions.
Barnett says the controversy isn't affecting DEP's timetable to implement ecosystem management statewide.
However, other observers say DEP's progress will be limited until it can show success in its year-old pilot-project areas along the Panhandle coast, in the Hillsborough River watershed and in the Everglades.
"We're not ever going to have either side comfortable until we get more concrete examples of this in action," Barnett admits.
Black Box Politics
Many property and casualty carriers thought the biggest prize they won in last year's insurance bill was a provision that allowed them to use a new computer model to calculate their windstorm rates.
It turns out state regulators were just kidding when they agreed to the measure, however. In the year since the bill's approval, not one carrier has managed to win approval from the Department of Insurance for the computer-generated portion of its rate requests.
That's not the only bureaucratic laugh being enjoyed at the companies' expense, though: It turns out the state Board of Administration -- of which Insurance Commissioner Bill Nelson is a member -- uses the very same computer model to calculate the premiums it charges the companies for the state's hurricane catastrophe reinsurance program. Developed by Boston-based Applied Insurance Research, it is known as the AIR model.
Department of Insurance officials insist with straight faces that they see no unfairness in the situation. Nelson spokesman Don Pride says department regulators can't be sure the companies' computer-generated numbers are reliable. Because of proprietary concerns, the department isn't allowed access to all the data used in the modeling calculations when the companies submit their computer-generated requests, Pride says.
"There's no way for our actuaries to tell that their projections are accurate," Pride says. "We're just not going to accept somebody's word for it."
But there's a political component to the department's resistance too, of course. That's because the AIR model inevitably calls for much higher rate increases than previous methods did -- in some cases, up to 500% increases for the windstorm component of property insurance premiums. For an ambitious man like Commissioner Nelson, allowing those increases could be a serious mistake.
The model produces such big numbers because it considers historical loss experiences over a far longer period of time than previous methods. Until Hurricane Andrew in 1992, Florida had been in the midst of a 30-year lull in severe storms.
Last year's legislative approval of the AIR model was intended only as a temporary solution. The bill also created a blue-ribbon panel to develop a more permanent computer model for use in Florida. The deadline for the panel's report is July 1.
But during the 1996 session, various proposals surfaced in the House of Representatives to weaken the ability of the insurance companies to use the new model in rate cases. Insurers believe the measures were backed by Nelson and show that politically motivated resistance to modeling won't disappear when the AIR model is replaced. It doesn't take a computer, they say, to figure out that their long-term future in Florida remains bleak.
Musical Chairs
As legislators stewed through the sluggish 1996 session, political concerns appeared to be bubbling unusually high.
The reason: As even the most amateurish of the state's supposedly part-time legislators are beginning to realize, term limits will be kicking in soon. For those elected in 1992, the year 2000 will be their last in their current positions. That means that more and more would-be career politicians will be trying to move up faster, some as soon as this fall. House members will be looking to the Senate. Senators will be looking to the Cabinet and beyond. The hordes of desperate, dispossessed politicians could even encourage some Cabinet members to move up sooner than they otherwise would.
Several lobbyists said they saw strong indications of the coming clashes in the furious debate over property insurance this spring. Both Senate Banking and Insurance Chairman John Grant (R-Tampa) and House Insurance Chairman John Cosgrove (D-Miami) are thought to be contenders for Commissioner Bill Nelson's job. Nelson himself is said to be considering a plan to make his Cabinet post appointed instead of elected. That could allow him to keep his job in the event of another disastrous hurricane. Nelson, a former Space Coast congressman who rode on the shuttle just weeks before the Challenger disaster, also is rumored to be mulling a stint as NASA administrator if President Clinton wins re-election.
Another Cabinet member said to be considering a move: Agriculture Commissioner Bob Crawford.
Some observers also speculate that outgoing House Speaker Peter Rudy Wallace (D-St. Petersburg) would seek the education commissioner's job now held by Republican Frank Brogan in 1998. Wallace, who leaves office at the end of his speaker's term this year, endeared himself to teacher unions by putting class size reduction at the top of his agenda. And he appeared to be a less than enthusiastic supporter of charter schools, a favored reform of Brogan. Wallace also is mentioned as a possible candidate for Congress if longtime incumbent C.W. Bill Young of St. Petersburg retires.
Other senators mentioned as possible statewide candidates in 1998: Charlie Crist (R-St. Petersburg), Rick Dantzler (D-Winter Haven), Fred Dudley (R-Cape Coral), Katherine Harris (R-Sarasota), Ken Jenne (D-Fort Lauderdale), Toni Jennings (R-Orlando) and Charles Williams (D-Tallahassee).
"Plenty of people up here with egos that are too big," as one strategist notes.
