2008 session: Green or greenwashed?

Trying to decipher whether the 2008 session was “green” or not takes a Pantone color chart. There are spots of leafy green, mottled with the gray-green of hard cash, bright acid envy, and the pallid sheen of greenwash.

With his customary good cheer, Gov. Charlie Crist declared Tuesday the 2008 session, "a banner year on the environment, I dare say."

"I'm so proud that Florida is finally moving forward on these issues," Crist gushed.

While Crist stays focused on the silver - or green - lining, others cast a jaundiced eye at the over sized  cloud.

Florida's energy bill is a case-in-point, containing a handful of green measures along with a grab-bag of utility goodies. Susan Glickman, an environmental lobbyists who has spent 21 sessions in Tallahassee, pronounced the bill a success overall, but couldn't conceal a bit of pique that the utility's got so much of their own way.

"This is really a tale of the influence of money in politics," Glickman said. "It's just like everything else. They can walk down the street and drop off a check for a million bucks, and I can't bring a tray of sandwiches in for people that I'm working with."

There's no record of anyone dropping off a $1-million check to either party, but both benefited substantially from the munificence of the state's utilities.

On March 5, Florida Power & Light donated $150,000 to the state’s Republican party, and at the end of the month gave the Democrats $30,000. Progress Energy gave $25,000 to the Democrats since January, and another $45,000 to the GOP in February. TECO Energy, parent of Tampa Electric, ponied up $30,000 to the Democrats and $65,000 to the state GOP in February and March.

None of those tallies include money salted on state legislators by the utilities and their lobbyists, or money donated to 527s, like the one that raised nearly $100,000 for powerful House Rep. Stan Mayfield, sponsor of the energy bill.

The energy bill included Crist's cherished cap-and-trade scheme, but left the details to state regulators, and required the rules to come back to the legislature for approval. It also included provisions that make it easier for utilities to site transmission lines and nuclear power plants.

Frank Matthews, a lobbyists for a utility trade group, said he was "pretty happy" with the legislation. "It will result in a better, more efficient process," he said.

"There's certainly different ways of looking at it," Glickman said. "The most negative way is that we did nothing because we have to come back next year. But it's a long way from where we were a year ago."

Other green measures suffered a similarly mixed fate. The Florida Forever land-buying program was extended for 10 years. Sewage dumping off the Florida coast was ordered to end in 2025. The Everglades restoration program escaped total gutting, but still saw its funding cut from $100-million to $50-million.

One glaring failure was a bill to cut some of the exemptions that allow local officials to alter their growth plans to suit developers’ demands. Although the growth management revamp had come from Crist’s Department of Community Affairs secretary, Tom Pelham, it died in the waning hours of the session. Pelham had proposed the bill as an alternative to the growing Florida Hometown Democracy movement.

The fact that it didn’t pass, joked Charles Pattison of the group 1,000 Friends of Florida, shows that Legislature is actually the Hometown Democracy movement’s greatest ally.

-Asjylyn Loder and Craig Pittman, Times Staff Writers

Comments

The real joke is that Pelham is the reason the bill didn't pass. He's a disaster, but word out of the plaza level is that Crist is too scared to do anything about it. Afraid he'll look soft on developers.