Can He Do That? And Other Stories

It's the stories inside the newspaper that sometimes make me sit up and yell the loudest. Here's one: The man that Gov. Charlie Crist has hired to oversee growth management in our state is Tom Pelham, secretary of the Department of Community Affairs. Without a doubt, Pelham is an expert on the law. But, check out this article by my colleague Craig Pittman: Even after taking his state job, Pelham intends to continue to represent developers as a private attorney! This seems too weird to be true, and will probably be the subject of my column tomorrow.

Incidentally, one of Pelham's cases as a private attorney included helping the city of St. Pete Beach fight a citizens' group that wanted direct voter control of growth decisions. Pelham argued in Court for the city that these things were Too Complicated for voters to handle directly. Well, the citizens' group won in court and then at the ballot box, and now has a majority on the St. Pete Beach City Commission. Check out an article in today's paper by Cristina Silva.

Also, here's an interesting article on the condo movement in downtown Tampa by Michael Van Sickler. Ever since I got here 25 years ago the talk in Tampa has been about how to get a residential component downtown. One interesting difference to me between Tampa and St. Pete, which has been condo-izing its downtown for years, is the deliberate targeting of more reasonable price ranges. Now, if Mayor Iorio can throw in a car-less downtown with step-on, step-off transit...

Comments

Hi Howard, love your work!

Perhaps your article on this can include the fact that they’re not even trying to hide it anymore. I mean blatant conflict exists here. But when people fail to speak up or act on it, it becomes acceptable practice… and don’t think they haven’t figured that out.