Carl Hiaasen - Kick Ass - Selected Columns of Carl Hiaasen

Because of its location, the Homestead jetport will have an impact on two national parks, Biscayne and Everglades. The effect of constant aircraft noise on wildlife is one issue, but questions have also been raised about potential fuel spills, air pollution and traffic.

Those concerns evidently aren't shared by Penelas, Graham or other politicians who opposed an environmental-impact statement. A new study would postpone construction unnecessarily, they insisted. The old study would do just fine.

Their argument was made at a Nov. 25 meeting between county and federal officials in Graham's Miami office. According to New Times, the county lamely tried to backpedal away from HABDI, saying it had not yet accepted all the company's projections.

In other words: Sure, we let 'em have the air base, but we don't agree with all their big ideas.

How's that for a cop-out? Luckily, the feds didn't buy it. On Dec. 22, the White House agreed that the revamped air base should be studied for potential environmental damage. The work is supposed to take about 18 months.

In a way, HABDI brought on the delay itself by outlandishly predicting that its airport would be a $12 billion boon to South Dade's economy. County consultants chimed in, projecting 230,000 flights a year, comparable to JFK in New York.

The price for all that wild hype is scrutiny, because the stakes are high. Industrializing a rural community shouldn't happen overnight. Nor should anyone lightly dismiss ecological threats to the Everglades, Biscayne Bay and Florida Bay—vital resources that also happen to be multibillion-dollar tourist attractions.

So the county is stuck; stuck with HABDI, stuck with the hype, and now stuck with a long delay. It's nobody's fault but the commissioners' for agreeing to such a disgraceful deal.

No wonder they're looking for somebody else to blame.

Jeb Bush, conservationist?

Stop laughing. The Republicans are wising up, and the Democrats had better pay attention.

A column recently appeared in this newspaper that might have made you rub your eyes, to make sure you weren't hallucinating. The headline: "Let's protect Florida forever."

The byline: Jeb Bush.

Yes, the same Bush who had no environmental platform whatsoever—no clue, in fact—when he ran for governor on the GOP ticket in 1994.

This year Bush is running again, and he's full of ideas about how to preserve wilderness and wetlands. Did he suddenly get religion, or is this an act?

It doesn't really matter, as long as promises are kept.

Bill Clinton didn't start talking like Thoreau until he ran for president, and there's no reason—based on his record in Arkansas—to believe the rhetoric came from his heart. Nonetheless, his administration has done some good things, mainly because he installed some good people.

Early in the new gubernatorial race, Bush is listening to smart talk. Republicans have a reputation as the anti-green party, and in Florida that translates into thousands of lost votes. Bush's supporters appear to have convinced him of the importance of a credible environmental platform.

The centerpiece is an extended edition of Preservation 2000, the successful land-acquisition program initiated under Florida's last Republican governor, Bob Martinez. Although Martinez made some terrible appointments to environmental watchdog agencies, he will be well remembered for pushing "P2000."

It works like this: The state issues tax-free bonds to raise money for the purchase of ecologically sensitive or imperiled lands. The benefits have been felt from the Panhandle to the Keys, wherever green space and wildlife habitat have been spared from destruction.

Preservation 2000 expires at the turn of the century, and Bush pledges to renew the concept for another decade, with $300 million a year allocated for buying and managing land.

And when a parcel is too expensive to purchase, he says, the state should secure the development rights or a conservation easement. That would preserve the land while compensating the owner for maintaining it—an approach that makes sense, as long as everyone plays by the rules.

These are interesting ideas from an unlikely source. But the greening of Jeb Bush, developer, is being guided by Martinez and his onetime running mate, J. Allison DeFoor, an attorney and ex-sheriff of Monroe County.

DeFoor is a rare breed, a Republican with solid environmental credentials. He and Martinez recently formed a GOP think tank called the Theodore Roosevelt Society. The name is meant to remind voters that the nation's most impassioned and progressive president, conservation-wise, was a Republican.

Bush is a city boy at heart, and will never be mistaken for the second coming of T.R. He's happier on the tennis court than on a mangrove island, but that's all right.

He wouldn't be the first governor, Democrat or Republican, to act out of political expediency rather than deeply held conviction. And while we can hope that Bush is losing sleep over the future of the Everglades, he's probably just losing sleep over the votes.

That's all right, too. You can't expect an overnight spiritual conversion. It'd be swell to have a governor who truly believes, but most of us will settle for one who does the right thing, for whatever reason.

Thank you, Roberto Pineiro, for sparing us from another dispiriting Humberto Hernandez trial.

Taxpayers are grateful. Prosecutors are grateful. And we in the media are eternally grateful.

Pineiro is the Miami-Dade judge who socked it to Hernandez on Aug. 19 for his role in the vote fraud committed during last fall's Miami elections.

The defrocked commissioner was so crushed by Pineiro's stiff sentence—and cutting words—that last week he threw in the towel on pending bank fraud and money laundering charges.

Now there's one less cockroach in the public cupboard, and for that Judge Pineiro deserves a standing ovation.

A jury had convicted Hernandez of helping cover up phony absentee balloting. It was only a misdemeanor, and Pineiro could have let Humberto off with token jail time or a fine.

But instead he hammered him with the maximum: 364 days. Smirking Bert was smirking no more. He listened gloomily as the judge told him: "I cannot envision a more felonious misdemeanor."

For Hernandez, it was a decisively deflating moment. He couldn't endure another trial, or the prospect of a 13-year prison term. Within days his lawyer began negotiating with the U.S. attorney's office.

On Thursday a deal was announced. Hernandez pleaded guilty to one conspiracy count, for which he could get four years. He admitted his role in falsifying mortgages that ripped off banks for $2.9 million. Prosecutors say the scam also laundered a fortune in stolen Medicare funds.

Hernandez's attorney describes him as "depressed and embarrassed." Good. The idiots who voted for him ought to feel the same way.

Bert's grimy past was well-publicized before the November election. Everybody knew he'd been canned as an assistant city attorney for running a private law practice out of City Hall. Everybody knew about his abominable ambulance chasing after the Valujet crash.

And everybody knew he was facing 23 heavy-duty charges involving bogus sales of condominiums and houses.

But Humberto easily got reelected anyway. So who could be shocked when it came to light that he was mixed up in vote fraud? What'd you expect from a crook?

And a cocky crook he was, grinning in handcuffs during his arrest. Later, hidden microphones in the paddy wagon recorded Bert and his pals joking and discussing how to manipulate talk-radio to rally support.