Legislative Builder

Legislative Builder

government watch by Jean Gruss | Editor/Lee-Collier

Balancing special legislative sessions and a lackluster homebuilding market requires special skills. Here's how Gary Aubuchon manages to be two places at once.

Gary Aubuchon built a thriving homebuilding business in booming Cape Coral over the last 25 years, transforming Aubuchon Homes from a small residential land company into a builder of multi-million-dollar luxury homes.

But the 45-year-old president of the company that bears his name had harbored political ambitions for years. So when Jeff Kottkamp was elected lieutenant governor last year, Aubuchon filled Kottkamp's vacant seat in the state legislature.

Just as his dream of politics was coming true, the homebuilding market in Cape Coral began collapsing and special sessions of the state legislature required Aubuchon to spend more time in Tallahassee. "It's both the best time and the worst time," Aubuchon concedes.

But a funny thing happened when Aubuchon was away from running his business in Cape Coral: It gave him more time to think about the company's future without the daily distractions of the office.

"Deep thinking is done elsewhere," he says.

During 400-mile drives and plane rides to and from Tallahassee, Aubuchon had time to reflect on his business in a way that he had never been able to before. He calls the process "business sorbet."

What's more, Aubuchon felt he was accomplishing vital legislative work in Tallahassee on issues ranging from property taxes to homeowners insurance that would ultimately help the struggling real estate industry. "This is real, meaningful reform," Aubuchon says.

Crackberry addict

Aubuchon, a Cape Coral republican, started planning his political life in 2000, long before he inherited Kottkamp's seat in late 2006. He regularly hosted fundraisers in multi-million-dollar model homes in Cape Coral.

But his dream came earlier than he expected. "I was shooting for 2008," Aubuchon says. That's when Kottkamp would have reached his term limit had Gov. Charlie Crist not picked him as his running mate.

Still, Aubuchon started planning to reduce his daily involvement in his business long before he became a legislator. "You hire people smarter than you are," Aubuchon says. "Without that I couldn't have done this."

Instead of a clear successor, Aubuchon has a team of executives who oversee each of the company's five divisions. "What we found was that they simply stepped up," he says.

A laptop with a wireless connection and a Blackberry device were essential to staying in touch with his staff. Every evening after the day's legislative session ended in Tallahassee, Aubuchon would sit down to answer company emails. "It's kind of like brushing your teeth," he chuckles.

Outside work and family, Aubuchon has no interests. "I don't have a hobby," he says.

For most of his adult life, Aubuchon says he's divided his time into thirds: one-third business, one-third community and one-third family. Because being a state legislator is considered a part-time job, he expected that it would replace the one-third slice of time he usually devotes to community involvement.

But a special-session-happy state legislature tacked on weeks to the ordinary 60-day session in Tallahassee to tackle the thorny issues of property taxes and homeowners insurance. "It's difficult to hold it down to one third," Aubuchon says.

If he has any regrets about being away from his homebuilding business during these times, Aubuchon doesn't show it. Although he doesn't share financial information, Aubuchon says business mirrors the dramatic homebuilding downturn, which is down by 50% or more in Cape Coral. He's had to lay off some employees and the staff is down 20% from its 100-person roster at its peak.

Aubuchon says becoming a legislator during the real estate boom would have been just as challenging. "To leave when business was that good would have been hard," he says.

Deep thoughts

As the real estate market in Cape Coral was falling, Aubuchon realized his staff was getting distracted. He says there are two tendencies during a downturn: do nothing and do anything.

Managers of each of his subsidiaries were trying to figure out on their own how to manage through the downturn and keep business coming in. But Aubuchon realized that not everybody was "rowing in the same direction."

Being away in Tallahassee part of the time gave Aubuchon the time to think about the direction of the company during the downturn. If he had remained in the daily management of the company, Aubuchon says he might not have realized that quickly enough.

What he decided to do earlier this year was to take a dozen managers to a leadership retreat at the Hampton Inn near the company's offices that would be facilitated by a professional in the field. He found one in Richard LeBlanc, whose Virginia-based firm called Seroptyx coordinates these kinds of gatherings.

"We developed a statement about who we are, along with fully articulated corporate values," Aubuchon explains. But this was no pie-in-the-sky academic exercise: "It all revolves around reducing costs, increasing margins and increasing market share," he says.

That translated into concrete actions, including boosting brokerage commissions to 5%; offering to tear down homes on any customer's lot for free when Aubuchon builds them a new house; boosting Aubuchon homes' hurricane resistance from 130-mph winds to 150 mph; and consolidating all the customer databases from every department into a single "customer for life" database to get their repeat business.

With the homebuilding market in decline, Aubuchon says he's emphasized with his employees the importance of gaining market share and he's put less emphasis on the number of sales.

"It makes us better business people," Aubuchon concludes.

Special Sessions

Looking back, Gary Aubuchon laments the Florida Senate's refusal to back a proposal to eliminate property taxes in favor of an increase in the sales tax.

If anything could have reignited the dormant housing market, that would have been it, he says. "That would have speeded up the recovery," he argues.

Aubuchon, the freshman state legislator from Cape Coral who inherited Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp's seat, says the legislation that came out of the two recent special sessions helped stabilize the property tax and homeowners' insurance crises.

"What's been done so far is stopping the hemorrhaging," Aubuchon says.

Caps on local government revenues are particularly important, he says. "We should never see a repeat of what happened" with spiking government revenues, Aubuchon says.

On the insurance front, Aubuchon says the state's new program to help homeowners strengthen their homes gets little credit. The stronger their homes, the less homeowners will have to pay on their rates. The state has a free inspection program, mysafefloridahome.com that provides residents with a report of how well a home can withstand hurricane-force winds.

Aubuchon says he's had some positive surprises in Tallahassee.

"I was surprised at how dedicated legislators and staff are," Aubuchon says. "What we ask of our government workers is often greater than what we ask workers in the private sector."

REVIEW SUMMARY

Industry. Homebuilding

Company. Aubuchon Homes

Key. Taking time away from the day-to-day management of a business may have some unexpected benefits.