Issue link: https://newsleader.uberflip.com/i/211425
Sarasota News Leader November 15, 2013 Page 11 was also an advisor to Gov. Rick Scott and "I was shocked when I read it," says New is known as the architect of his "7-7-7" 2010 College of Florida Professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies David Brain. "It's comcampaign plan. pletely ideologically motivated to discredit Arduin co-founded a Tallahassee consulting the smart growth movement, but it's a comfirm with Arthur Laffer, known as "the father pletely inaccurate depiction of how smart of supply-side economics" during his tenure growth fits into the history of planning." in the Reagan Administration, according to The first 27 pages of the 48-page report indeed the company's website. Sarasota County's barely mention Sarasota. They instead feadeal was eventually finalized with Laffer ture an extended attack on the very notion of Associates, Arthur's Tennessee-based firm. smart growth itself, going all the way back to Chaucer to make the case that smart growth Laffer submitted a first draft of its fiscal neu- is "authoritarian," "coercive" and "elitist." The trality analysis to the county last week. It is report draws largely from the work of writers raising eyebrows among academics and crit- such as Randal O'Toole, a senior fellow with ics of the county's decision to revise 2050, as the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank well as members of the commission itself. founded in part by Charles Koch, one of the Donna Arduin was hired to examine the county's 2050 Plan. Photo courtesy Virginia Institute for Public Policy