Bruce Ritchie
Rep. Steve Crisafulli suggests the state needs to take better care of its land before buying any more with Amendment 1 money.
Amendment 1, approved by 75 percent of voters statewide in November, is expected to provide $757 million for water and land conservation programs in the coming year.
Crisafulli, a Republican from Merritt Island, told House members during the opening day of the Legislative Session on March 3 that “stewardship is much more than ownership.”
“Buying up land we cannot care for, that falls into disrepair or becomes a breeding ground for harmful invasive species, is not a legacy that I am interested in leaving,” Crisafulli said.
But some environmentalists say that there doesn’t need to be a choice between buying and taking care of what the state already owns. A University of Florida professor who served on a state panel overseeing state lands said land management is being used as a political scapegoat.
Crisafulli told reporters that the message coming from the state agencies is that better land management is needed before buying more.
Nick Wiley, executive director of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, says he doesn’t quite put it in those black-and-white terms, though he also doesn’t disagree.
“Taking care of the lands we have should be our first priority,” Wiley said.
“I don’t think we’ve put it quite that, ‘Don’t get any more lands until we can do land management,’” he continued. “But If I had to make a choice, I would make that choice.”
And he also explained that spending by his agency on land management was down about 40 percent from five years ago. It’s not because the Legislature cut spending, he said, but revenue from documentary stamp taxes was down during the economic decline.
An annual state land management report shows that spending increased last year for visitor services and capital improvements, such as bathrooms and parking lots, while spending for resource management decreased by 14.4 percent.
Florida had the largest land-buying program in the nation from 1990 until 2009, when its budget was slashed. With voter approval of Amendment 1 in November, environmental groups are pushing for more land-buying – in addition to improved land management.
“We view Amendment 1 as an opportunity to address unmet (land management) needs,” said Janet Bowman, The Nature Conservancy’s director of legislative policy and strategies. “But that’s not to say they (state agencies) are doing a bad job.”
Peter Frederick, who recently left the state Acquisition and Restoration Council after six years, said land management has become a political scapegoat. He is a research professor in the University of Florida’s Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation.
The state agencies that manage parks, forests and other state lands need relief from budget cuts in recent years, Frederick said.
Vehicles need to be repaired or replaced, he said. Many of the state jobs in land management are vacant. And he said those that are filled usually are low-paying, leading people out of state government into better paying federal jobs.
“We need some money in the system,” Frederick said. “It has traditionally been squeezed by the legislature with, ‘We can do more with less.’ I think we are well beyond the breaking point.”
Bruce Ritchie (@bruceritchie) covers environment and growth management issues in Tallahassee for Floridapolitics.com. He also is editor of Floridaenvironments.com.
