Has the Endgame Begun?

The pieces are in place, and when the process is complete, it will usher in an era of development at an intensity that will make these past three decades look like they were just the dress rehearsal.”

Over the next several months, the Manatee County Commission and its administration will set about an overhaul of the county’s comprehensive land use plan and its policies regarding wetland protections. The process may well prove to be one of the most consequential events in our county’s history, and the prospects do not look good for the average citizen that does not somehow profit from unsustainable growth.

Local developers have enjoyed an oversized amount of influence in Manatee County for decades. In the past three years, however, their collective sway has soared. Beginning with the 2020 election, deep-pocketed builders like Carlos Beruff and Pat Neal ceased supporting politicians they trusted would be influenced by generous campaign checks and began pushing a slate of unqualified puppet candidates who had mostly floundered within their industry.

Many of the candidates have shared similar traits: a history of failed business ventures, financial distress, a penchant for moral/ethical lapses, and the unflappable ability to ignore the community they represent while keeping a straight face as they say anything, no matter how absurd, that supports the desired outcome of their benefactors. It has given new meaning to the term empty suit.

This has come at no small cost, of course, with development interests pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into campaign accounts and dark money PACs every two years. The return on that investment, however, has been gargantuan, often allowing them to move from the red into the black via a single vote of the board. Of course, those same developers had rarely come out on the short end of the stick in any vote over the past two decades. But we’re talking about people who not only don’t like to lose but seem to think that even occasionally not getting their way is an unforgivable affront so beneath their station that they are willing to scorch the earth to prevent it from happening again.

Commissioner George Kruse is a good example on the current board. In 2020, Kruse benefitted from the fact that he was running against former county administrator Ed Hunzeker, who had run afoul of Beruff by saying no to him, by my count, exactly once. Hunzeker was ultimately shown the door and when he filed to run for a seat on the board that had previously employed him, Kruse wound up being his opponent in the Republican primary.

Beruff spared no expense in setting fire to Hunzeker’s campaign, but beating him at the ballot box wasn’t enough. Once the new board was in place in 2020, it had a clear mandate to rid the administration of everyone who had been associated with Hunzeker. A bloodbath ensued and the county has been hemorrhaging experienced leadership ever since, while the ensuing disarray downtown has cost taxpayers dearly.

I found Kruse to be a thoughtful candidate when I interviewed him during that race, one who had a genuine interest in public policy, particularly as it related to managing growth, a fairly non-partisan individual who got caught up in the mud-slinging in what was a dirty election all the way around. However, I also got the clear impression that he somehow felt he would be able to thread the needle in terms of satisfying his biggest benefactor and focusing on issues he was passionate about, including workforce housing and infrastructure.

This perplexed me because Kruse seemed like a pretty bright guy, yet he had somehow missed the fact that he was only getting that support because Hunzeker, who had arguably done more to appease developers than any commissioner he served, had thought the very same thing. Kruse quickly found out how difficult that would prove when he initially resisted sacking Cheri Coryea, who succeeded Hunzeker as administrator, and again when he went off script regarding the new perils of flood policy that was being pushed by developers.

The commissioner more or less publicly unraveled, beginning with an odd confession of an extramarital affair from the dais during a televised meeting that included paranoia about being blackmailed and ending with him crashing his truck into a tree before bodycam footage would surface suggesting that he was deeply inebriated at the time. In the months since, it has become evident the commissioner has gotten the message that he’s persona non grata with the development cartel and is either taking his chances that he can win reelection by going against the grain or just attempting to be remembered for more than those public embarrassments. Whichever the case, the fact that there is someone on the board finally saying the quiet parts out loud has been nothing if not cathartic.

Recently, Kruse pushed his fellow Republican board members to address the scattershot development rezoning being awarded east of the FDAB and, although he failed, his calling attention to the fact that they had each previously expressed such a desire, only to come back from lunch with amnesia that has persisted since, indicates that some communication from on high was involved in changing their minds.

Kruse again took the opportunity to gently needle his fellow commissioners when they embarked on a vindictive assault of the county clerk/comptroller’s budget request on Thursday that was most memorable for demonstrating how little the rest of the board actually understood things like budgets, budget presentations, what auditors do, and well, public policy on the whole. Whatever your reasons, Georgie Boy, keep it up, if only because the meetings are far less insufferable than when the public can only point out the pretzel logic of your soft-headed colleagues from afar.

On Wednesday, Gov. DeSantis (with counsel from his developer buddies, no doubt) appointed a BIA board member to serve the remainder of Commissioner Baugh’s term. If you watch the planning commission meetings, you’ll know that Ray Turner was chosen because he is as reliably pro-development as the rest of the members of the BOCC. Mr. Turner doesn’t say all that much, which will be a welcome reprieve from the cacophony of unintelligible word salad that so reliably fell from Mrs. Baugh’s mouth, and he seems to be far better informed on development matters than Baugh (a low bar, to be sure), but expect him to cast few if any votes that stray from the script.

Developers may not have succeeded in getting the unqualified head of the Manatee-Sarasota Building Industry Association installed as administrator, but the lobbying organization is now so closely related to Manatee County government that it is indeed difficult to determine where one ends and the other begins. And that, my friends, has been the point. It was never about this rezone or that development approval. It was about getting rid of the future development area boundary line, gutting every environmental regulation that attempts to add protection beyond the bare minimum required by the state, and overhauling a comprehensive land use plan that had been implemented with tremendous community input until it is one that reflects the wishlist of the men who bought those expensive commission seats.

The pieces are in place, and when the process is complete, it will usher in an era of development at an intensity that will make these past three decades look like they were just the dress rehearsal. The houses will sell, the environment will sour, traffic will grind to a halt, and the community will collectively wonder how in the world such a beautiful place has been turned into such a hellscape. If you’re reading this column, chances are you’ll be one of the wise elders who can tell the story of how not enough people paid attention, how too many fell for the rouse of culture war nonsense, and how we were ultimately too busy fighting about things that had nothing to do with local government to realize what was being done to us.

Dennis "Mitch" Maley is an editor and columnist for The Bradenton Times and the host of our weekly podcast. With over two decades of experience as a journalist, he has covered Manatee County government since 2010. He is a graduate of Shippensburg University and later served as a Captain in the U.S. Army. Click here for his bio. His 2016 short story collection, Casting Shadows, was recently reissued and is available here.