Carl Hiaasen - Kick Ass - Selected Columns of Carl Hiaasen

Another dubious item was the state's plan to purchase the Sawgrass Expressway, which (like Metrorail) is now being called successful because it's losing fewer millions of dollars than it once did.

Having paid for the Sawgrass once (and for the criminal prosecutions that followed), Broward residents would have been forced to pay again with the gas tax, this time joined by other drivers. That's not progress, it's larceny.

If the Martinez veto ultimately means less road construction for a while, that's not so bad. The worst traffic jams in Florida are caused by road projects that never seem to end.

All of us love to drive on fast-moving, freshly paved freeways, but they don't stay that way very long. They fill up, slow down and clog. The gas tax would have accelerated, not halted, this phenomenon.

Besides, there is something to be said for sitting bumper-to-bumper and contemplating the mess we've made of this state. The real problem isn't roads, and most people know it.

Last week, Lt. Gov. Buddy MacKay uttered one of the most stunning comments ever to exit the lips of a Florida politician.

"In the past," he said, "we've had a policy of trying to stimulate growth. We measured our success by the numbers of people who moved into the state. We can no longer continue to do that."

What refreshing blasphemy! Finally, somebody in elected office has the guts to admit that Florida is drowning in its own humanity.

Every crisis facing the state—water, pollution, crime, health care, traffic, and budget—is the result of too many people, too few resources and gutless leader ship. The quality of life is deteriorating in direct correlation with population growth, but until lately you could find only a handful of Florida politicians willing to come out and say so.

More was always better. To challenge that philosophy was to jeopardize hefty campaign contributions from banks, builders and utilities. Unthinkable! That's why officeholders always talk about "managing" growth instead of stopping it.

With the state government practically broke, the Chiles administration is promoting the theme of "growing smarter." Translation: Help! What do we do now!

The statistics are chilling. Each day, more than 900 people stampede to Florida, and that's not counting illegal aliens. Think of it as adding two entire cities the size of Hialeah every year.

Every day, more than 300 acres of green space are paved for shopping malls and subdivisions. Planners say that keeping up with such expansion requires two new miles of road, two new classrooms, two new prison beds, two new cops and two new schoolteachers hired each day.

In other words, there's no way to keep pace. Nine hundred newcomers a day is insane and ultimately suicidal. Stopping the flow will take imagination and a radical change in the way we promote the state.

Pro-growthers say Florida's got plenty of space to grow—just look out the window when you're on an airplane! And it's true, you can actually see some empty green patches in the center of the state. Unfortunately, that's not where most new residents want to go.

Until now, people who've migrated here were foolishly allowed to settle any place they wanted. Not surprisingly, the coastal cities were overrun—first Jacksonville, Miami and Fort Lauderdale, now Boca Raton, Tampa and Fort Myers. A big mess. Glorified human ant farms.

One smart way for the Chiles administration to modify Florida's metastatic growth is to channel it—by decree—toward more thinly populated areas. Absolutely nobody else should be permitted to settle in Miami until North Florida fills up. It's only fair.

Consider that the density of Pinellas County (anchored by St. Petersburg) is about 3,055 people per square mile, the worst in the state. Broward is second with about i ,026 people per square mile, and Dade is third at 958 per square mile. No wonder the homicide rate is so high.

Now think of Liberty County. Tucked snugly in the Panhandle and bordered by the misty Apalachicola River, Liberty County has the lowest density in Florida—about six people for every square mile. Paradise!

Or Lafayette County, kissed by the quiet Suwannee—and only 10 human beings per mile of riverside. Or spring-fed Gilchrist County, which grows some of the world's juiciest watermelons, and does it with only 22 people per square mile.

Why do they deserve all the peace and quiet? It's time for rural Florida to carry an honest share of growth's burden. Think of it as a redistribution of wealth.

Starting tomorrow, Liberty County should take at least 100 of Florida's 900 daily new arrivals. Sprinkle the remainder in Lafayette, Gilchrist, Wakulla, Calhoun, DeSoto and so on.

Give those folks a taste of what we're experiencing down here, and you won't hear any fuzzy debates about "growth management." They'll vote to close the borders.

Rep. Al Lawson sparked a small uproar last week by proposing that every household in Florida should be required to have a gun, and that every Floridian should be trained to shoot.

The man seemed dead serious. He talked of introducing a guns-for-all law during the upcoming special session on, fittingly, prisons. "I don't see any option for the people but for them to bear arms," he said. "Every house would have a gun."

Obviously Lawson isn't from South Florida (he's from Tallahassee), but it's still hard to understand how an elected official could be so grossly uninformed about the demographics of crime. Miami has armed itself to the teeth, but only occasionally does a citizen manage to shoot a criminal. Usually it's a spouse, child, neighbor or pal who gets wasted, in moments of anger, drunkenness or stupidity.

My hunch is that Lawson knew the homicide stats very well, and that we underestimated him. Nobody could be daffy enough to believe that saturating rough neighborhoods with more guns will reduce crime. I think Lawson's true aim was to reduce population, a worthy goal.

Florida's got too many people, yet continues to grow at an insane pace. Virtually every major social crisis stems from overcrowding—crime, pollution, gridlock, failing schools, you name it. The state's going broke trying to provide for its 13 million residents, and the thousands more who arrive permanently each week.

Nothing seems to scare them off, either. Not the publicity about drugs and street violence. Not the specter of another killer hurricane. Not even the fact that Madonna and Mickey Rourke both live down here. People keep coming anyway.

Most politicians are resigned to the notion that Florida will grow until it bursts at the seams, and nothing can be done. Lawson is different. He's come up with a surefire way to thin the herd. Putting a gun in every home would be radical, but effective.

Now embroiled in controversy, Lawson is backing off. An aide insists that the lawmaker was misunderstood: He doesn't really think everybody must have a gun, especially if they don't want to.

Lawson shouldn't give up so quickly. A guns-for-all law could be promoted politically as helping the average Joe fight back, where the cops and the courts have failed. Among crime-weary citizens, the plan would strike a patriotic chord. A chicken in every pot, a Clock in every nightstand!

Conservatives from both parties would rally to Lawson's side. The NRA would canonize him. He'd get invited on Rush Limbaugh. The Legislature, cowed by Lawson's newfound celebrity, would probably ignore the pleas of police organizations and pass the law.

The results would be instantaneous. With a gun in every house, the murder rate would skyrocket, eventually offsetting the influx of new residents. Lawson's firearms-training program would pay dividends, too, as Floridians would be shooting each other with unprecedented accuracy.