The Political Whore

By George Niemann
PoHo contributor and R-LAND and UCAN activist

On Wednesday, Hillsborough’s Moral Courage Award became respectable again. The County Commission voted 7-0 to remove Ralph Hughes from the award’s name. It also agreed to not to assign any honorary name to this award, going forward.

I attended this week’s commission meeting to throw my 2 cents in when I saw that Commissioner Rose Ferlita had put the Moral Courage Award discussion on the agenda.

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photo by .res flickr.com

By Kelly Cornelius
PoHo contributor & R-LAND activist

After months of hounding from activists and even early coverage in both papers including this editorial in the Trib dated Feb 21st, 2009 the Hillsborough County Commission finally weighs in on Senate Bill 360, a bad revamp of Florida’s growth-management safeguards. This is a bill that everyone (except developers and their politicians) thinks is a bad idea. The bill’s sponsor is Mike Bennett -R of Bradentucky Bradenton. So, after two months of Legislative Session where the bill sailed through committees and was voted on twice on the floor in the House and three times in the Senate and eventually passed on the last day of Session, our commission, at the urging of Commissioner Mark Sharpe decide to discuss it.  You would have thought they were being asked to consider…..gasp…… domestic partnership benefits or something considering the discussion. Some of them acted surprised or feigned ignorance about the content of the bill citing that things change minute by minute in bills in Tallahassee and while that is true the bigger truth is that the main things in the bill that everyone was screaming about, transportation concurrency and no reviews for DRIs (big ass subdivisions) have been in the bill since the beginning as noted in this Feb 20th article by Mariella Smith. Read the rest of this entry »

A 360 of flip-flops … get it? (photo: Katy Warner/flickr.com)

By Kelly Cornelius
PoHo contributor & R-LAND activist

Well, my earlier post on who voted in support of SB 360 (a gutting of growth management laws) caused quite a stir, and as Wayne already reported and corrected on that post, State Sen. Victor Crist actually changed his last vote on the growth management bill from yes to no. I do apologize that I did not find that change online before submitting that post. I spoke with Crist himself Tuesday afternoon regarding the issue. He wanted to make sure I understood the process so I will share his explanation with you as well. Read the rest of this entry »