The Political Whore

By Kelly Cornelius
PoHo contributor & R-LAND activist

Remember when the whole idea behind the Cone Ranch possible sale was because Commissioner Ken “Half-Truth” Hagan wanted to “preserve it” after being asked by big-time Republican donors to subdivide and sell off Cone Ranch [more than 12,000 acres of publicly owned land in Northeast Hillsborough County]?

The county now has an advisory board pondering this deal. You can read my take on their first meeting here. This second meeting started with County Administrator Pat Bean addressing the panel lobbing threats about the state of the county water utility which owns the land. Wasn’t this panel supposed to be objective? Yet here we have the County Administrator throwing in her 2 cents. She did admit that the land was already preserved though, glad we got that cleared up. Recall the earlier threats that the Florida Environmental and Conservation Group (FCEG) (the group pushing the sale) made implying that the alternative could be commercial or residential development. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo credit: DRB62 Flickr.com

By Kelly Cornelius
PoHo contributor and R-LAND activist

Just when you thought that renaming the Moral Courage award after their shuga daddy (and pardoned ex-felon) Ralph Hughes was the low point, the Hillsborough County Commission, led by Chairman Ken Hagan, floats an idea that is starting to smell worse than the reclaimed sewage that some officials want to dump into our aquifer.

Sell the preservation land that is Cone Ranch to private developers … in order to save it! Read the rest of this entry »

They are an unlikely pair: She’s a lifelong Democrat, and he’s a conservative Republican. Their cities are known for decades of feuding and rivalries, a history that seems remote in these days of regionalism. But Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio and St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker both share a passion for history; Iorio was a history major at USF and earned her master’s in the subject, while Baker has written his own history of St. Petersburg.

In “A Tale of Two Cities,” a forum held last night at the historic Centro Asturiano building between downtown Tampa and Ybor City, Baker and Iorio showed off their historian chops in front of a crowd of a few hundred people. USF historians Gary Mormino and Ray Arsenault moderated.

I was asked to join La Gaceta publisher Patrick Manteiga and St. Petersburg Times columnist Ernest Hooper in questioning the two mayors on historical matters, and I asked both: What one historical building that no longer exists in your city would you like to have back, and why?

Their answers, and pictures of those two buildings, after the jump:

Read the rest of this entry »