Monroe County's statements to governor and Cabinet were lacking in candor

I must join the request for reconsideration [of the governor's and state Cabinet's finding that Monroe County has made substantial progress toward its state-mandated goals].

The follow-up information provided by Ms. [Teresa] Tinker and by the Department [of Community Affairs], as well as the subsequent newspaper reports, demonstrate that the commission and its staff were given information that was, to say the least, incomplete and lacking in candor.

As we had insisted, the amendment previously adopted into the Monroe [land-use] plan was simply a policy to engage in early/phased evacuations — a wise policy to be implemented whenever possible.

No 18-hour figure was ever put in the plan. It couldn't have been, since it only appeared for the first time last month, as the result of eight scenarios identified by the [South Florida] Regional Planning Council.

That scenario — a best-case scenario that assumes all tourists and mobile home dwellers will always or usually be completely evacuated prior to a countywide evacuation order — is considered by the emergency management experts to be a highly questionable assumption.

Assuming that scenario to be likely in most cases is akin to assuming that all hurricanes will tell us where they are going to hit several days before they hit. Such an assumption supposes that most hurricanes tell us several days out what category they will be and exactly what path they will take.

You can't make such things true by writing a policy in a comp plan. Contrary to what the county may be suggesting to the commission and its staff, a comp plan cannot "direct" early evacuation or "yield" a resulting evacuation time. Such things are possible or not depending on the contingencies of each particular hurricane.

That is why the Regional Planning Council analyzed eight scenarios, with resulting "choke-point clearance times" varying from 35 hours to 18.

The Regional Planning Council did not determine an evacuation clearance time, but only analyzed how long it might take evacuating vehicles to pass through the choke-point at the Snake Creek Bridge. It did not analyze a clearance time — the time it takes all vehicles to get to a safe place after they enter the evacuation route. It was not consulted on DCA's categorical claim that the evacuation clearance time is 18 hours. It did not intend its study to be used by DCA for that purpose, and it believes its study to have problems and not be competent to be used for the purposes for which DCA has used it.

What is now clear is that some in the county and at DCA have used that recent study to argue that the 18-hour figure has "predetermined" or automatically "yielded" from the adoption — 2 years ago — of the county early/phased evacuation policy.

As we've said, it's one thing to have a goal or policy of early evacuation, but another entirely to claim categorically that the Keys evacuation time calculation should assume that such a policy can always be implemented. Clearly, the relevant experts dispute that assumption vehemently. Clearly, the danger in doing so is the potential loss of life.

It is very troubling to think that an apparent effort to create a paper record that would support large increases in development might have been a motivating factor in the less-than-candid, incomplete, and confusing information provided to the commission. ...

We should also point out that early/phased evacuations have been part of Monroe County's strategy for years. The adoption of a policy in the comp plan two years ago seemed like a nice expression of official policy, but of no real impact. It is troubling now to think that the real purpose of putting it into the plan was to allow just the argument made this week by the county and DCA.

It is reasonable to be concerned that the strong opposition by some in the county and DCA to reducing permits by 20 percent (the result required by the existing plan if the state finds insubstantial progress in implementing the county work plan) may have been a strong motivating factor in leading DCA to write a report despite the more accurate facts that evacuation times have not, in fact, been reduced below 24 hours and important water-quality tasks have not been done, ... as [Debbie] Harrison and [Kim] Wigington have reported.

In conclusion, I cannot recall an incident like this in my 20-year career, where DCA has taken on the role of advocate — spinning and manipulating information — instead of neutral reporter of information and presenter of policy options. I have not seen other public servants so upset with how another agency apparently misused their information. I am an advocate, and so are my clients. It is proper for others to advocate different policy positions than we advocate. It is not OK, however, for public servants to do what has been done in this case, particularly when the things at stake include the potential great loss of life and property and the future of the marine and land-based environment that defines the Florida Keys.

We ask for this issue to be reconsidered by the commission.

Richard Grosso is the executive director and general counsel of the Environmental and Land Use Law Center, a public interest law firm that represents South Florida citizens in cases that defend the public interest in environmental and land-use matters. He was the legal director of 1000 Friends of Florida from 1990 until 1996 and was an attorney for the Department of Community Affairs and Department of Environmental Regulation.