As executive director of the Century Commission, Steve Seibert must come up with a growthmanagement plan that looks ahead 50 years.

Steve Seibert's job is different from just about anybody else's in state government: As executive director of the Century Commission for a Sustainable Florida, the former Pinellas County commissioner and secretary of the Florida Department of Community Affairs has to see that Florida 50 years from now is a great place to live and can continue to be. "I like to say that if we don't change direction, we're going to wind up where we're going," says St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker, the commission's chairman. "You ask if Florida is sustainable now. It's probably not, which is why the Legislature put this commission together. Our job is to make sure it is. We need to change the way we do things to make it sustainable."

There's one big problem, though: The politicians themselves. "Sometimes you've just about got to hold a gun to a politician's head to get him to do the right thing," says state Sen. Mike Bennett, a Sarasota Republican who midwifed the Century Commission into existence in 2005 after years of effort.

Bennett's choice of weapon, alas, is not a gun.

Another commission, like a second marriage, is a triumph of hope over experience. How many commissions have we had in this state? Yet Bennett says, "Thirty years after the first environmental laws were passed, Florida does not have a vision for the future and the ability to pay for growth."

Shortly after he became governor, Jeb Bush appointed a Growth Management Study Commission headed by Mel Martinez, then the Orange County Commission chairman and now Florida's junior U.S. senator. It was packed with landowners and developers and focused heavily on reducing the state's role in regulating growth and boosting the economy. The impact on Florida growth patterns was inconsequential.

It's not that commissions are always fruitless. It's just that time, lobbyists, campaign contributions and political distraction erode even good outcomes. So is it different this time? Maybe. Besides, nothing else is working.

A measure of quality
When you think about the next 50 years, think about the changes in Florida since 1956, before interstates and the Daytona 500 and Disney World and astronauts. Elvis was cutting-edge, and our favorite desperate housewife was Lucy Ricardo. Florida had just over 4 million people. The flow of newcomers is starting to look like that Sorcerer's Apprentice segment in Walt Disney's "Fantasia," where more and more broomsticks keep bringing more and more buckets of water until Mickey nearly drowns -- except new Floridians don't bring water with them. They bring cars, along with demand for all government services, ranging from schools, parks and healthcare to roads, electricity and sewers.

The legislation creating the Century Commission speculates that 17 million more people -- twice the current number -- will live here in 50 years. Others figure it will take just over 25 years to get there. Either way, where are we going to put them? Will Ocala become another Orlando, Pensacola-Destin another Broward- Palm Beach, Jupiter another Jacksonville? How will the state plan for all that?

"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."