Because of Dan Paul, builders must stay 50 feet from the shoreline of Biscayne Bay, Crandon Park remains largely undeveloped and Miami-Dade County has home rule.

In spite of Dan Paul, the AmericanAirlines Arena rises at the water's edge, one of the few civic battles that the bow tie-wearing First Amendment crusader, environmental protector and arts benefactor lost.

On Saturday, he lost another battle -- against Parkinson's disease. The Harvard-educated lawyer and world traveler died at his La Gorce Island home, said his cousin Barbara P. Hansen.

He was 85.

Paul collected antiques and interesting friends -- among them an Irish duke and an Indian cabinet member -- kept a yacht called Veritas (truth, in Latin), and an abiding interest in the law.

Though he never sought public office, Paul was among the most influential players in modern county history. Famously witty and acerbic, he was the scourge of pompous politicians and rapacious land grabbers -- and called himself a ``public scold.''

He once said that a certain politician was ``so crooked he had to screw his socks on,'' and declared that ``if Miami thought it could get more on the tax roll, it would construct a whorehouse in Bayfront Park.''

Former County Manager Merritt Stierheim called Paul a ``primary architect'' of the Miami-Dade charter, a governing document that includes unique home-rule provisions.

Home rule ``allows for the government to deal with some degree of authority on regional issues, like environmental controls, water and sewer, airport, seaport,'' Stierheim said. ``The home-rule charter was his greatest contribution, and he had a highly ethical influence on the county, and to some extent on the cities.''

Paul, Stierheim said, was never shy about his opinions or unwilling to back them up with voting referenda -- a grass-roots way of influencing policy that he helped create when writing the charter.

That document, approved by the voters in 1957, turned a hodge-podge of 28 small cities into a metropolitan powerhouse with partly centralized government.

At the time, 900,000 people lived in the county but 5 million tourists visited annually. Yet the county had not a single mile of freeway, only one-third of homes connected to sewers, and those sewers emptied into Biscayne Bay.

The charter gave the county nearly unlimited powers in some important areas, like creating countywide departments and building codes, and merging, abolishing or changing cities' boundaries.

The county took over Miami International Airport and Jackson Memorial Hospital from the city of Miami, giving them countywide tax bases, and set minimum standards for local municipalities' police departments.

He was instrumental in preserving land for some of Miami-Dade's open spaces, including Key Biscayne's Crandon Park and downtown's Bicentennial Park.

He represented the National Audubon Society in a successful attempt to block an Everglades jetport and major media companies in free speech and open-records cases.

His clients included NBC News, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Miami Herald.

Becky Roper Matkov, president/CEO of Dade Heritage Trust, called Paul ``so wonderful at trying to protect our waterfront, which of course, in Miami, has been such an uphill battle.''

The Trust, like Paul, opposed allowing the Miami Heat to build AmericanAirlines Arena on publicly owned, waterfront land.