At a statewide gathering of growth-management advocates Saturday in Tampa, a moderator was introducing seven distinguished politicians, business and government leaders when he reached the bureaucrat on the panel. As he uttered the name Thomas Pelham, the conference hall erupted. People stood. They applauded. They kept applauding. Pelham, secretary of the state Department of Community Affairs (DCA), smiled. "I have to tell you," he said to the audience moments later, "after the past few months, I really, really, really, really needed that."
In an administration that has cut loose its transportation director, faced repeated criticism over its social services head, been embarrassed by an environmental chief who won't regulate, Pelham is a fascinating story. He is a land-planning scholar and former development attorney who may have the toughest job in Tallahassee right now. He is the state's growth watchdog, and if he does his job right, he angers the most politically potent businesses interests in Florida _ developers, homebuilders, real estate investors and agribusiness speculators.
Yet Pelham, who has been called a tyrant by developers and a communist by a leading business consultant, is becoming something of a growth-management folk hero.
To the people who look to DCA for tough growth control, Pelham is a blessing. Says John DeGrove, former DCA secretary who helped write the 1985 Growth Management Act: "I couldn't praise DCA more. .
.
. Tom has done it better than I could have done it myself, and I'm a very egotistical fellow."
Pelham has not taken his job lightly. He also has not hesitated to speak his mind. In his three years as community affairs secretary, he has: called state transportation planning a disaster; told regional planning councils they were doing a lousy job planning; told small cities they were inefficient and should consolidate; accused homebuilders and real estate developers of trying to wreck growth controls; taken on agribusiness, calling its attack on growth management "a campaign of misinformation and disinformation."
Pelham has challenged cities and counties to write growth plans that prevent further development sprawl. He has rejected scores of them, big and small, and persuaded the Cabinet to fine some cities for not following the law. In Charlotte County, he took on the county commission, homebuilders and the real estate industry over the issue of urban sprawl, and won.
The extent to which Pelham is succeeding may be measured by the intensity of his opponents' rhetoric. The lead paragraph in Florida Agriculture this month: "Owners of rural property are being stripped of their rights, their futures, even their livelihoods by an insensitive bureaucracy which has overstepped its bounds."
As the appointee of a governor who once complained the state has too much control over city and county zoning, Pelham is indeed an unexpected disciple of land planning. In debate, he takes on all comers. Says David Gluckman, Tallahassee environmental attorney: "Growth management is too complex to just launch these uneducated diatribes against it. Tom frustrates (his opponents) because he knows too much."
In the Legislature this year, lawmakers again will be talking about growth management. Some, such as Rep. Fred Jones, want to relax it. Homebuilders and real-estate speculators will support him. What they will face, however, is the Pelham factor. A legislative staff member describes it: "If Tom Pelham stands up and says you're weakening growth management, then you're dead. That's it. Fold your tents and go home."
The businesses that helped elect Pelham's boss, Bob Martinez, are infuriated. The people who worried the state would buckle under to development are applauding. Go figure.
Jon East is an editorial writer for the St. Petersburg Times.