They're Florida's most powerful ethnic group.
Their interests trump the mundane worries of ordinary citizens -- traffic, overcrowded schools, strained public services.
Local governments tend first to the needs of nonexistent constituents -- residents who don't yet reside.
Last month, when Miami-Dade commissioners breached the urban development boundary, their vote had little to do with real-life residents. They did it for the Virtuals.
It's the Virtuals who want a big box home improvement store just over the UDB. Virtual children need that new charter school. And Virtuals, so many of them, will surely require the County Commission to approve thousands of new homes on the other side of the boundary. Of course, Virtuals also need fast food joints, strip shopping centers and gas stations -- plenty of gas stations for long slow slogs to their virtual jobs in the city.
CITIZENS IN THEORY
Actuals may worry about water, sewers, roads and police protection when teeming populations of not-here-yets finally arrive. But in this town, Democrats, Republicans, Haitians, Jews, Cubans, old-time Florida crackers -- they're all second class citizens. Nobody matters like theoretical residents in a proposed new development.
It's not just a South Florida phenomenon. It's Florida all over. Drive 600 miles north and Bay County is building a $330 million (and counting) ''international'' airport that 54 percent of the actual county residents rejected in a 2004 referendum.
The old airport in Panama City, with 15 commercial departures daily, has not exactly been overwhelmed by travelers, international or otherwise -- just 360,000 last year (compared to 34 million out of Miami International). Meanwhile, cities the size of Panama City are losing what flights they have.
30 CITIES OUT
The New York Times reported Wednesday that 30 U.S. cities have lost all commercial service in the last year, including Hagerstown, Md., same population (36,000) as Panama City, despite a new $61 million runway extension.
But the apprehensions of actual residents matter no more in Bay County than down in South Florida. The new airport 30 miles out of town is really designed to serve the theoretical residents of the 5,842 upscale homes that the St. Joe Paper Co. intends to build (along with 4.4 million square feet of commercial space) out in the virtual middle of nowhere.
Of course, South Florida will pay a disproportionate share of Bay County's folly. The state has contributed $32.7 million for planning and will pay another $87.3 million for construction costs -- money derived from taxes Florida levies on air travel. Most of which comes from you know where.
SLICE OF BUDGET
And in a brutal budget year, the 2008 state Legislature miraculously found $12 million to build a road to Boondoggle International.
The feds are pitching in $72 million. Bay County figures to pay off the balance by selling the old Panama City airport, on 700 acres of prime public-owned gulf-front land, where a private developer can build new homes for even more virtual residents.
Don Hodges, a leader in the long, futile fight waged by actual residents against Bay County International, said moving an airport or moving the UDB were of the same Florida pathology.
These projects are sold with happy lies about ''a bright silvery economic future'' in which future residents pay all the bills, Hodges said. ``But it's all about converting vacant land into money.''
