Growth management must be proactive.

After a slowdown in population growth following the Great Recession, Florida is back to absorbing more than a thousand new residents a day. Managing all that growth to preserve the state’s fragile environment and the quality of life that Floridians treasure is more important than ever.

Sadly, there’s good reason to conclude that growth management remains an afterthought in Tallahassee.

A decade as an operative

The latest example came this week from Mary Ellen Klas of the Miami Herald. As Klas reported, Gov. Rick Scott chose a political operative last year with no experience in development or land planning to be the state’s chief of growth management oversight, a position paying $110,000. Taylor Teepell, according to his LinkedIn page, was “responsible for state level review of land use and planning issues of Florida communities, including, but not limited to, comprehensive plans and amendments, future land use maps, DRI’s [developments of regional impact] and other land use issues.” In a state as big as Florida, and growing as fast as Florida, those are serious responsibilities.

Yet when Teepell applied for the job in February 2016, he left most of the application blank, according to Klas. Instead, he referred to his twopage resume. which listed 10 years worth of political positions and a year as a marketing director for a Colorado printing company.

Scott considered this political experience sufficient to install Teepell above another state official with a decade of community-planning experience and a master’s degree in urban and regional planning. A year later the governor named that deputy, Julie Dennis, to succeed Teepell as director of the Division of Community Development when he was given a new title, director of executive projects, and a $6,500 raise.

But evidence for a policy of neglecting growth management goes beyond this example of entrusting the responsibilities to a political operative.

Dismantling the DCA

During Scott’s first year as governor in 2011, he and leaders of the Republican-led Legislature dismantled the Department of Community Affairs. The agency had been created under Gov. Bob Graham to back up local governments in reviewing development proposals that would require amendments to their comprehensive plans and would pose potential impacts on the environment, as well as on local schools and roads. Scott and legislators shifted those responsibilities to a smaller, weaker office in the new Department of Economic Opportunity.

DCA took its watchdog role seriously; it objected to more than 200 proposals a year in the last five years of the agency’s operation. But since its dismantling, the state has objected to only about 20 proposals in a typical year. DEO Secretary Cissy Proctor told a legislative committee in January, “Our goal is not to object or comment if we can work through those issues.”

Partnering with developers, instead of regulating them, is a poor excuse for growth management.

The price of neglect

Unlike their leaders in Tallahassee, most Floridians have come to recognize the threat of no-holds-barred development to the state’s environment and quality of life — and the healthy economy that depends on both. In 2014, three-quarters of state voters ratified an amendment to the Florida Constitution that requires a substantial annual investment in land and water conservation.

Last year lawmakers earmarked $50 million a year from those funds to restore natural springs. This week Scott touted the latest round of state spending on springs, bringing the total spent on their restoration since he took office to $365 million. But as Robert Knight, director of the Florida Springs Institute, wrote in a guest column published this week in the Sentinel, “This massive expense of the public’s money would not have been necessary if damaging urban and agricultural development had not been allowed in the first place.”

It’s much cheaper for taxpayers to manage growth than to repair the damage belatedly. But accomplishing this imperative starts with a sincere commitment to growth management — including the right people to carry it out.