The Effect of the Growth Management Act on Local Comprehensive Planning Expenditures: The South Florida Experience

Abstract

In response to citizens' concerns about the environment, state governments have been actively involved in establishing programs for managing growth since the early 1970s. Most of the earlier growth management programs attempted to balance the needs of development with the protection of natural systems such as land, air, and water (DeGrove, 1990). The implementation of the earlier programs had achieved some mixed results. Some states (e.g., Oregon) received sustained financial and political support from citizens, the legislatures, and executives of government, while other states (e.g., Florida and Colorado) suffered from underfunding and unsustained political support during implementation (DeGrove, 1990). To improve upon earlier growth management programs, Florida established a comprehensive growth management system in 1985 and became the first state to do so. Similar statewide growth management systems were adopted later by New Jersey, Maine, Vermont, Rhode Island, Georgia, and Washington. The new systems redefine the roles and responsibilities of local government in planning and growth management, and require local governments to share their planning responsibilities with state and regional levels of government (DeGrove, 1991). The purpose of this article is to evaluate the fiscal effect of new growth management systems by examining the impact of the Florida Omnibus Growth Management Act (GMA) of 1985 on comprehensive planning expenditures of local governments in south Florida. We first review previous empirical research on the effects of growth management and the growth management experience in Florida. Using the interrupted time-series analysis technique, we then empirically examine the change of local comprehensive planning expenditures before and after the 1985 GMA. Considering the effect of city size on the planning expenditures, we compare the impact of GMA between larger and smaller cities. Florida's Growth Management Experience For the past two decades, Florida has been a national leader in the effort to manage growth (DeGrove, 1989). The growth management experience in Florida can be described in terms of three periods based on different characteristics (DeGrove, 1990; Turner 1990): the pre-1975 responding period, the 1975-1985 implementing and reassessing period, and the post-1985 comprehensive system period. The Pre-1975 Period: Responding to the Challenge The rise of environmental concerns in Florida was closely related to the national environmental movement of the 1950s and 1960s and to a number of environmental issues occurring in Florida during the 1960s. In 1972, Governor Reubin Askew presented four pieces of legislation to the Florida legislature that addressed rising environmental concerns and the pressures of population growth. These laws, including the Environmental Land and Water Management Act (chap. 380), the Water Resources Act (chap. 373), the State Comprehensive Planning Act (chap. 23), and the Land Conservation Act (chap. 259), constituted Florida's first major effort to accommodate growth in a responsible way (DeGrove, 1990). The State Comprehensive Planning Act in particular recognized that planning is vital to the management of growth and that a state comprehensive plan would lend rationality to decisions affecting environmentally sensitive areas and provide direction for future growth. The 1975-1985 Period. Implementing and Reassessing Efforts In 1975, the Florida legislature enacted the Local Government Comprehensive Planning Act (LGCPA) (F.S. 163.3161), mandating comprehensive planning for cities and counties. Emphasizing the centralized approach to the planning process throughout the state (Turner, 1990; deHaven-Smith, 1984), the LGCPA left the contents of the plan and the implementation of it to local government discretion. In assessing these earlier laws, DeGrove (1990) pointed out that the lack of state funding to support the increased costs of comprehensive planning was one major weakness. …