Don't blame state woes on growth management - Sun Sentinel

Former Governor Bob Graham, who was in office at the time of the landmark 1985 growth management legislation shoots down the notion that Florida's current "recovery" is due to repeal of many of those laws and the gutting of the Department of Community Affairs. That agency is now the Office of Economic Opportunity. Furthermore, he shoots holes in the notion that the original growth management laws somehow created our housing bubble and resulting recession. Click title for link. Here are some major points:

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which investigated the great recession, did not find that growth-management policies such as Florida's were the cause of the collapse. Rather, the collapse of Florida's housing market — like those in other Sunbelt states such as Arizona, California and Nevada— was driven by a variety of factors including rampant speculation, lax regulatory policies, weak underwriting standards and old-fashioned greed and fraud. These were the same causes of Florida's crashes in the 20th century, before the state's growth-management laws were enacted.
From 1990 to 2000, Florida added, on average, more than 100,000 housing units per year. But in the years leading up to 2007, housing starts exceeded 200,000 units per year. On top of this, between 2007 and 2010, 660,000 more residences of all types were authorized to be constructed, as well as more than 6 billion square feet of commercial and institutional space, most of which has not been built.