By George Niemann PoHo contributor and R-LAND and UCAN activist
The Hillsborough budget saga continues. County Administrator Pat Bean has submitted a proposed budget and now the county commissioners are reviewing it in detail via a series of budget workshops.
Even though some commissioners are continuing to dig and review the budget, we still have the same nagging problem – there is a huge imbalance between cuts in basic services and large donations to non-profit organizations. While we’re closing parks and libraries, we’re still lavishly funding organizations like the Sports Authority, the Sports Commission and Hillsborough’s many chambers of commerce.
Fear not, though. Commissioner Jim Norman, known in some circles as the Johnny Appleseed of Money Trees, has come up with a creative twist on how to solve the budget cut dilemma. In an editorial by the Tribune dated Aug. 6, it was reported that, during one of the budget workshop meetings, Commissioner Appleseed suggested that the county should seek donations from citizens. He thought that they should put a donation check box on Tampa Bay Water’s bills so that citizens could donate up to $5 toward keeping the parks and libraries open.
It’s easy to understand Appleseed’s motivations for putting forth this idea. The Sports Authority provides Norman with a luxury suite at Raymond James Stadium to watch football games in (St.Pete Times, Sept 20, 2008). He’s helped them stay well funded all these years so they want to reciprocate by affording him with, shall we say, the type of comfort that only connected politicians can appreciate. If he cuts their funding, will he continue to watch games from inside that gorgeous enclosed luxury suite with a private kitchen or, instead, will he be reduced to sitting on a bar stool at Beef O’Brady’s looking at a flat panel TV? It’s easy to see why the Money Tree man doesn’t want to kill the money tree.
But are citizens willing to donate more money to keep basic services alive, while their tax dollars are going toward funding organizations that give luxury boxes to politicians, and while those same citizens still have to pay a dear price to sit in the bleachers? I think Johnny Appleseed still has a problem.
So I put on my thinking cap and, EUREKA!!! I’ve taken the Money Tree man’s idea and improved it!!!
Let’s do this – let’s significantly reduce the funding for the Sports Authority and the Sports Commission in the budget, keep the parks and libraries open, and allow citizens to donate up to $5 to the Sports Authority/Sports Commission via their water bills.
Our FLA senator, Mel Martinez, center, chums it up at with Tampa Chamber visitors recently.
By George Niemann PoHo contributor and R-LAND and UCAN activist
Since we’ve got such a budget crunch looming that we have to close public facilities and lay off Hillsborough County workers, I wonder if Hillsborough’s economic development “donations” to the many chambers of commerce ended up paying for the Tampa Chamber’s trip to Washington, D.C.? And if so, how much did it cost to send this delegation to the capital to discuss legislative business impacts on our dime?
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jun. 16, 2009, at 3:40 pm
Trimming the fat at the top of the St. Petersburg City Hall pecking order would help mayoral hopeful Kathleen Ford trim property tax rates in the city by 8.5 percent, according to a proposed budget she released this afternoon.
So at the end of the day’s budget workshop last Thursday, Commissioner Kevin Beckner acknowledged the elephant/s in the room and brought up the subject to Bean newspaper in hand.
I had my own concerns with two of her minions getting these raises. Lucia Garsys is listed in the Times article as a “former planner,” yet she makes even more money than the head of The Planning Commission. How can Bean justify this, and more importantly how can Commissioners let her get away with this? (Especially with elections nearing?) Read the rest of this entry »
In case you missed it, Gov. Charlie Crist made a slight step this week that could help in his Senate race. Especially when you add it to a measure from the 2008 session.
This week, Crist signed the 2009-2010 budget for the State of Florida. Florida’s governor has line-item veto power, a tool many governors use to nix budget provisions with which they disagree. This year, Crist vetoed two items: the first veto restored state workers salaries to current levels, undoing the 2 percent pay cut passed by the Legislature.
The second veto, however, was a bit more important to Crist’s political future.
Posted by Rick Kriseman on Apr. 26, 2009, at 9:34 am
By State Rep. Rick Kriseman, D-St. Petersburg
PoHo contributor Kriseman is blogging throughout the Florida Legislature’s 60-day session.
There is certainly no shortage of blogworthy material in Tallahassee these days. The indictment of our former speaker, Rep. Ray Sansom, has been greeted by mostly silence in the Capitol, with even my Democratic colleagues preferring to focus on the business at hand rather than score easy political points. I had thought the strong language contained in the grand jury’s indictment and the damning assessment of our legislative process would temper the culture of secrecy, but that hasn’t been the case. Participation in the budget process has been restricted to just a few Republicans, a late-filed amendment to allow oil drilling in the Gulf just a few miles off our shores was heard with almost no notice given to the amendment’s likely opponents, and a broader energy package is expected to come before the full House without prior committee or council vetting.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 14, 2009, at 11:44 am
Tampa, as a government, has done better than some in its handling of private nonprofits that it supports over the past three years of tightening budgets. Two years ago, it cut funding to city-owned partners like the Florida Aquarium by 10 percent and other nonprofits by 20 percent. Last year, no cuts were made.
But in the upcoming budget, Mayor Pam Iorio says she will be forced to cut funding to both categories by the same formula as two years ago, 10 percent cuts to the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, Lowry Park Zoo, Florida Aquarium, Tampa Theatre, Tampa Museum of Art, and H. B. Plant Museum, and 20 percent cuts to a dozen or so other nonprofits.
Posted by Rick Kriseman on Mar. 30, 2009, at 5:00 am
By State Rep. Rick Kriseman, D-St. Petersburg
PoHo contributor Kriseman is guest blogging throughout the Florida Legislature’s 60-day session.
It’s halftime in the Florida Legislature. I don’t know the exact score, but I know the people of Florida are trailing. The House, in particular has shown little sense of urgency, unless we’re tackling mandatory pre-abortion ultrasounds or some other issue of importance to certain political consultants and pollsters. We’ve spent just a few hours on the floor during the first month of session, and committee meetings are quietly winding down without passage of any significant packages.
In fairness, the budget does remain the talk of the town, and serious discussions between the two chambers are reportedly beginning. Regardless, Floridians shouldn’t expect any bold ideas from their state government. It’s business as usual up here, and unless our coaches make some halftime adjustments, hardworking Floridians will endure another losing session.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jan. 30, 2009, at 7:35 am
The state hopes to get $3.5 billion in stimulus money earmarked for education, a big help in filling Florida’s budget hole.
But the Orlando Sentinel says not so fast there.
The daily reports that a provision in the economic recovery package calls for the stimulus money to go only to those states that can support “schools for the next two years at the levels they had in the 2005-06 school year.
“But the state is below that threshold,” the paper reports. “In fact, school funding coming directly from the state is now lower than it was in the 2004-05 school year. With Florida’s budget shortfall for next year ballooning toward $4 billion, it’s not clear it could meet that requirement.”
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jan. 15, 2009, at 11:35 am
It turns out that the 2009 budget cuts engineered by Tallahassee Republicans makes liars out of those same legislators’ words from the 2008 session. In an excellent piece of hold-their-feet-to-the-fire reporting, the Miami Herald’s Marc Caputo writes:
Lawmakers slashed $1.2 billion in spending Wednesday, reduced nearly every state program’s budget — and began breaking their own past promises.
In a May 2 news release headlined ”House Republicans Keep their Promise to Floridians,” legislative leaders boasted that the 2008-09 budget didn’t spend savings on day-to-day operations, gave more money to the Florida Highway Patrol and the Agency for Persons with Disabilities and didn’t reduce Childrens Medical Services, Healthy Start or the state crime lab.
But Wednesday’s newly trimmed budget reverses most of those commitments. It spends up to $1.6 billion in savings money, takes back the new FHP and APD money, and cuts the crime lab and services for kids.
The GOP’s answer comes from Rep. Dean Cannon: Nobody can expect us to keep the same commitments made before we knew the depth of the recession.
Speaker Ray Sansom and Rep. Dean Cannon during the budget-cutting special section. (photo by Meredith Hill/House of Representatives)
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jan. 14, 2009, at 11:33 am
This is just the start of some of the disruption and carnage from the state’s budget crisis and economic nosedive: the Pinellas County School Board has voted to close eight schools to save money, and to take a number of studnets off the bus.
The schools to be closed are:
Clearview Elementary
Coachman Fundamental (consolidate with Kennedy)
Gulf Beaches Elementary
Kings Highway Elementary
North Ward Elementary
Palm Harbor Elementary
Rio Vista Elementary
Southside Fundamental (consolidate with Mad. Beach)
(Download the school board’s presentation from Tuesday’s meeting here.
The biggest problem for affected parents: the new maps for where those displaced students will go won’t be published until February. The St. Petersburg Timeswrote:
The uncertainty had many parents urging the district to provide more stability in the future. But officials said there were no guarantees in an era when tight budgets and declining enrollment will continue to pressure the district to make adjustments.
“I don’t think you have all the answers yet,” Laurie Clark, a parent at Palm Harbor Elementary, told the board.
“Where will my child go to school? ‘Somewhere’ isn’t an appropriate answer.”
The Republicans thinking about a Senate run work the crowd at the Orlando Rosen Shingle Creek.
Broder whacks Obama: “After a near-perfect month of transition operations, Obama has stumbled twice in two weeks, first being caught unaware by the investigation of Bill Richardson, his choice for commerce secretary, and then being outmaneuvered by Burris and his tawdry sponsor, Gov. Rod Blagojevich.”
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jan. 8, 2009, at 8:04 am
The karaoke killer? Police say Robert Farley killed his father then returned to a Plant City hotel to dance and sing the night away, caught on hotel video (click here if video doesn’t load on your browser):
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jan. 7, 2009, at 1:43 pm
We’re almost $3 billion underwater in the state budget, so state Sen. Nan Rich’s idea today makes a helluva lot of sense: kill $600,000 in funding for an “abstinence-only education and crisis that counsels women about abortion alternatives,” according to TBO.com:
“There is not one peer-reviewed study that says that program works,” said Rich, D-Sunrise, referring particularly to the abstinence component. “It is a dismal failure, and that was the charge from the Senate president: Look for things that don’t work, and let’s take the money and use it in critical-need areas.”
Yeah, especially given recent studies that show the ineffectiveness of chastity pledges and other such head-in-the-sand approaches to sex education.
Will this program be cut? Of course not. It is a pet project of former Gov. Jeb Bush and a fave in the right-wing House of Representatives, who resisted the Senate’s efforts to cut it in 2008. Take a gander at this from the same guy who brought you the anti-gay Amendment 2:
“The services being provided are extremely important,” said John Stemberger, head of the socially conservative Florida Family Policy Council. “One judge of civilization is how we treat the most vulnerable members of society. There’s no more vulnerable a class of citizens than the unborn.”
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 28, 2008, at 12:19 pm
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From our USF intern Franki Weddington, with photos by Cara Trump:
State budget cuts are hitting home at the University of South Florida in Tampa.
Rumors about the possible merger of USF’s Women’s Studies and Africana Studies departments drew more than 200 protestors to a rally on campus last week.
The current recession and recent tax reforms have caused the Florida Legislature to demand budget cuts from state universities. USF is facing approximately $13 million in cuts this year, one year after it was forced to carve $19 million out of its spending plan. The university is struggling to find places to make those cuts.
The students and faculty of the Women’s Studies and Africana Studies departments say they won’t go down without a fight. Merging the two programs, they insist, would erase their autonomy and marginalize groups that have historically faced discrimination.
“We are not ripe for elimination,†said Dr. Deborah Plant, chairwoman of the Africana Studies department. “We are ripe for expansion.â€
The two departments are not without distinction. The USF Women’s Studies department publicizes itself as the second-oldest program of its kind in the country, and it and the Africana Studies department have a small but accomplished faculty. Each department believes that despite the need to cut the budget, academic and operational autonomy is essential to the integrity of the programs.
The protest illustrates the strain between administration and academia at a university where budget mismanagement has been a serious issue in the past. Critics of USF’s spending priorities point to a proposed new Lakeland campus that would cost up to $200 million.
After a rally on April 22, protestors from both departments and their supporters marched to the administration building, chanting for “progress,†many bearing signs urging onlookers to “rise up, the system is broken.â€
The crowd was soon greeted by USF’s Provost and Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs Ralph Wilcox, who assured them that the university had no intention of eliminating either department.
“If we can realign to retain the degree programs, to retain the tenured faculty, and thirdly, to allow them to retain their identities as departments, while showing greater efficiencies by providing shared operational support,†Wilcox said, “then I think we’ve all accomplished our goals.â€
He said some on campus have suggested that the two programs are “ripe for elimination,†but he insisted that he has “made a commitment to retaining these programs and the tenured faculty in those departments as critically important to this university.â€
Many in the crowd weren’t buying it.
“You say you want to figure out how we can run more efficiently?†Plant said. “We run efficiently. We are bare bones; there are few of us, but our productivity is high. We publish books. We go to major conferences. We have faculty who are world class.†She got loud applause that echoed through the breezeway of the administration building.
Throughout Wilcox’s question-and-answer session with the crowd of students, faculty and alumni, common themes emerged: marginalization of minorities and women, the lack of transparency in the administrative decision-making process and the administration’s apparent lack of concern for students and faculty.
“We turned in a self-study that I was told by someone in your office was completely irrelevant, was stupid and that they would not use it,†Plant said. “So what you also don’t get is the history of this department. You keep talking about the budget crisis, but we’ve been in crisis ever since we got here.â€
Dr. Kim Vaz, chairwoman of the Women’s Studies department, refuted Wilcox’s claim that the departments would maintain their academic (if not operational) autonomy, saying that a merger would only contribute to the “dearth and deficit†of diversity in the academic affairs departments. It would also, she said, affect funding, tenure and grants available to these departments, making it more difficult for them to aid students and faculty members who have historically faced discrimination.
(Read the complete story when this week’s CL hits newsstands or Wednesday afternoon online.)
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Mar. 31, 2008, at 2:15 pm
Our former gov, Jeb Bush, is speaking out against expanding gambling in Florida, telling the Florida Baptist Witness:
… gambling expansion is a “narcotic†state leaders should reject even though the “allure of gambling is probably even stronger today†with the state budget deficit.
Gambling can be opposed for moral, economic, fairness or social costs reasons, but the “combination of all of them†make for a “very compelling argument†against expansion, Bush said.
“I think gambling is a vivid example of a culture that demands immediate gratification,†giving an “impression that you can achieve things without work†and “that luck matters,†Bush said. As such, gambling is a “deterrence for true economic development.â€
According to Bush, “the bottom line is that this is a money-making enterprise for a select few that do really, really well at the expense of the communities†where they exist.
Bush continues that the drive to expand gambling is not “unstoppabl” but he is careful not to criticize his successor, Charlie Crist, directly, saying there may be circumstances that he is not privvy to.
How about a state economy that is in shambles, education reforms that have done nothing to make public schools better or more accountable and a lingering land-hucksterism that Bush did nothing to curb in his eight years in the gov’s mansion in Tallahassee?
I especially love Jeb!’s overall assessment of how our state should be, as elucidated in the FBW lede:
If the Sunshine State had a mission statement it should be “Florida is a family-friendly, wholesome, prosperous place†and “gambling doesn’t have a part in that,†former Gov. Jeb Bush told Florida Baptist Witness in an exclusive interview.
Make that quote “heterosexual, traditional nuclear family-friendly, wholesome prosperous for connected land developers place.”
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jan. 25, 2008, at 11:05 am
The state Board of Governors of the college system has taken one step in the right direction and another in a terrible direction. From Shannon CVS at the Times:
The board in charge of Florida’s 11 public universities chose the former Thursday, giving college leaders the green light to slash overall enrollment, lay off faculty and staff members, and take other money-cutting measures, all aimed at preserving the value of a four-year degree amid the state’s budget crisis.
The Board of Governors also voted to raise undergraduate, in-state tuition and fees by 8 percent next year, to $83.58 per credit hour, or $186 more per year for a full-time student.
It’s about time we raised tuition, as much as it pains me to say that (full disclosure: I am a graduate student at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg), but Florida’s been out of whack for decades in the amount of money that students pay vs. how much the state subsidizes. Now, with budget shortfalls and the tax crisis, the Board is taking a moderate action, given that it considered raising tuition 13 percent a year for the next five years before falling back to 8 percent.
But what troubles me is the other faculty cuts and enrollment caps that are accompanying the tuition increases, making it harder to get a higher education in Florida at a time when we could use more trained and intelligent young people for our work force. Again, in full disclosure, I’ve got a son who wouldn’t mind being admitted to a Florida public university in a year and a half. And I am a graduate of the University of Florida myself.
Already our public schools are mired at the bottom of national lists in terms of money spent per pupil. One board member worried that the same fate awaits our college system:
“We have to raise the tuition so that universities can go forward with their missions,” said board member Gus Stavros. “We have the worst faculty-student ratio in the nation, we’re 42nd for need-based aid. I’m embarrassed. I’ve never been involved in a mediocre system in my life until now. Let’s do it.”
We should be expanding access to our universities, not curtailing it. We should be providing better educations in our community colleges. Instead, we’re the cheapest because legislators want to keep Florida a cheap place to live. The Times pointed out that even the aggressive 13 percent tuition increase ” would have put Florida’s tuition and fees at about No. 37 among the 50 states, compared to being the least expensive now at $3,361 a year.”
It’s great to be less expensive, but you get what you pay for. If we’re cheap, we’re getting cheap educations. And now fewer and fewer kids will be able to get even that.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jun. 28, 2007, at 2:47 pm
Newser is in 15 minutes. Former journalist Paul Wilborn’s job, creative industries manager, is among about 200 or so positions (some are vacant already) that will see Mayor Pam Iorio’s budget cleaver. More as story develops.
UPDATE: Trib’s Ellen Gedalius has more details here. JZ confirms Wilborn, even further detail.
Hillsborough County Administrator Pat Bean
In case you missed it, Gov. Charlie Crist made a slight step this week that could help in his Senate race. Especially when you add it to a measure from the 2008 session.
