In the meantime, you can download the proposed rules and procedures in .pdf.

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?

The picture above was distributed by Sen. Mel Marinez in his e-mail newsletter. The caption in the newsletter says, “Pictured Above: Senator Martinez meets with members of the Tampa Chamber of Commerce in Washington to discuss issues pending in Congress and the potential impacts on the Tampa business community”.

We are spending a fortune on funding the chambers in our area. We’re calling it economic development. The tab for various chambers and other economic groups/activities in 2010 is a whopping $10.9 million, according to a figure buried deep inside County Administrator Pat Bean’s proposed budget. (The Tampa Chamber is slated to get its annual $361,000 allotment against in 2010 and 2011 (its Committee of 100 gets another $89,000 to lure biotech companies here), while the Brandon Chamber is seeing its haul doubled, from $15,000 last year to $30,000 in each of the next two years.)

I checked with the Tampa Chamber to see who paid for the Washington boondoggle. Most of that trip was paid for by “sponsors” (generous business members with money to burn), although the specific names of the sponsors weren’t shared with me. Some of the cost was paid for out of the chamber’s budget and some picked up by those doing the traveling. I was assured by a staff member that they don’t mix Hillsborough’s “donated” money with boondoggle money. And they don’t like the term “donated,” either. They prefer to call it an investment in “economic development.” That has a more sophisticated ring to it, and doesn’t connote the idea that it’s costing us anything. This was the first time they went out of state to do lobbying. Apparently they must have had a good time because I was told that they are planning to do out-of-state lobbying twice a year from here on in.

While our “donations” cannot be tied directly to in-state or out-of-state lobbying efforts, it does raise questions about how much funding our local government should be providing during these hard economic times. If the chambers have enough ready cash to take lobbying trips to Tallahassee and beyond, maybe they should be funding economic development locally, at no cost to tax payers.

If we let Bean have her way, we’ll have to close our parks and cut back on service to our families so that we can keep funding the chambers at the level to which they’ve become accustomed. In looking at her proposed budget, it’s obvious that she will never seriously cut this type of funding. The BOCC better think long and hard about these “donations”, going forward. Can we afford to continue giving such large contributions to organizations that, operationally, don’t seem to be feeling any crunch in this downturned economy? If they’re not feeling the pain, then maybe they don’t need the gain (of our heavy funding)?

After thinking outside the box for about 20 seconds, I’ve got a possible solution that will allow the chambers to continue taking their boondoggles while, at the same time, helping our families deal with not being able to visit the parks that will be closing.

Yes, let’s ask the chambers to take our kids with them when they take their boondoggles to DC and other places. Then the chambers can lobby for business, and the kids can get to see how government works, or at least see how those groups that ride on the back of government, work.

By Lorna Bracewell
PoHo contributor

This just in from Securing Our Children’s Rights (SOCR), a Tampa-based lobbying group organized to secure, protect and preserve equal rights for children of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender parents in Florida:

Securing Our Children’s Rights, Inc. (SOCR), is pleased to announce HB 3 – Adoption, for the 2010 legislative session, introduced by Representative Mary Brandenburg, D-West Palm Beach, that is a full repeal of Florida’s ban on adoption by its gay and lesbian citizens. Senator Nan Rich has a companion bill in drafting at this date.

Governor Crist has declared Wednesday, July 22, 2009 as Explore Adoption Day and we must contact Governor Crist and the legislature to Explore Adoption by repealing the ban.

WHEN: Wednesday, July 22, 2009
WHO: Governor Charlie Crist (850) 488-7146 or email to Charlie.Crist@myflorida.com

House Speaker Larry Cretul 850-488-1450 or 352-873-6564 or email to Larry.Cretul@myfloridahouse.gov

Senate President Jeff Atwater 850-487-5100 or 561-625-5101 or email to atwater.jeff.web@flsenate.gov

Your Florida Representative – www.myfloridahouse.gov

Your Florida Senator – www.flsenate.gov

THE ASK:
Please ask the Governor to support the repeal of the adoption ban on gay Floridians and ask him to encourage the legislative leadership to pass the repeal.

Please ask the House Speaker and the Senate President to support the repeal and encourage Committee hearings for the bills.

Please ask your representative and senator to support the repeal, and to become a co-sponsor.

Here are your fun facts and talking points, courtesy of SOCR:

(1) Florida’s gay adoption ban was passed in 1977 at the height of Anita Bryant’s anti-gay “Save the Children” campaign. This law has done significant damage to children in foster care by not allowing the best interest of the child to be considered on a case-by-case basis. Curtis Peterson, the lead Senate sponsor, said upon passage of the ban, “We’re trying to send [homosexuals] a message. We’re really tired of you. We wish you’d go back into the closet.”

(2) Destructive impact on children – over 4,500 children languish in Florida’s foster care system today. The adoption ban arbitrarily excludes hundreds, if not thousands, of potential parents based solely on the irrelevant criteria of sexual orientation. These adults could provide stable, loving, PERMANENT homes to many of these children if this ban were lifted.

(3) In 2003, the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute released a research study, stating, “reality on the ground is outstripping the pace of the debate. That is, a growing number of lesbians and gay men are becoming parents and are living as families every day, irrespective of what the policymakers do or say.”

(4) There is no credible scientific evidence that the sexual orientation of parents has any effects either on the quality of parenting or on the well-being of their children. In fact, the reliable social scientific evidence indicates that lesbian and gay parents are as fit, effective and successful at parenting as their heterosexual counterparts. (See American Academy of Pediatrics February 2002 Policy Statement, Vol. 109, No. 2, pp. 341-344)

(5) At least eleven (11) mainstream child welfare, social science, and professional organizations have issued policy statements SUPPORTING adoption by lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender (LGBT) people:

Child Welfare League of America
American Bar Association
American Medical Association
American Academy of Pediatrics
American Psychiatric Association
American Psychoanalytical Association
American Academy of Family Physicians
American Psychological Association
American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
National Association of Social Workers
North American Council on adoptable Children

(6) Decades of research indicate that optimal development for children is based not on the sexual orientation of the parents, but on stable attachments to committed and nurturing adults. Children with two parents, regardless of the parents’ sexual orientation, do better than children with only one parent. (American Psychiatric Association 11/2002 policy statement)

(7) Adoption decisions should be based on an individualized assessment of what is in the best interests of the child to be adopted. Applicants should be assessed on the basis of their ability to successfully parent a child in need of family membership and not on irrelevant considerations such as sexual orientation.

(8) Regardless of what policy makers do or say, gay Floridians are raising children and legal protection is necessary for these children. Families have been created by adopting in other states, artificial insemination, previous heterosexual relationships and family tragedies such as the death of a sibling.

(Full Disclosure: Lorna Bracewell is a human rights activist and founder of ImpACT, a gay-rights advocacy group and social network.)

By Lorna Bracewell
PoHo contributor

On Saturday, June 27, thousands of people gathered in the streets of St. Petersburg, FL for the city’s annual Gay Pride parade and festival. While we were celebrating and honoring the legacy of the LGBT civil rights movement, our local NBC affiliate (WFLA-Ch. 8) was airing Speechless: Silencing the Christians, an hour long special paid for by the conservative American Family Association (AFA) that makes a series of specious and demeaning claims about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Watch a clip from the program after the jump.

Within hours of airing Speechless, WFLA was flooded with phone calls and emails from viewers who disagreed with and disapproved of the special’s anti-gay thesis. Equality Florida, a Tampa based statewide gay rights group, repeatedly petitioned the station and its parent company, Media General, to issue a public apology for airing the homophobic program, to divest themselves of the $35,000 paid to them by the AFA by donating it to an LGBT youth organization, and to devote an hour of air time to a special that balances out the hateful message of Speechless. So far, these petitions have gone unanswered except for a comment from Media General’s top Florida exec, John Schueler, who told Equality Florida that he could see why “people who have chosen the homosexual lifestyle might be offended” by the program’s “strident tone” but that the program “didn’t raise any red flags” for him or his associates.

Didn’t raise any red flags? According to Speechless, homosexuals (who, for PR reasons, started calling themselves “gays” in the 1990’s) are a danger to children and an existential threat to the family; they are the masterminds of an elaborate conspiracy to eradicate Christian influence and Christians themselves from our culture; they are simultaneously a cause and a symptom of cultural, spiritual and national decline. How could such apocalyptic rhetoric, such demonization of a segment of society not raise any red flags?

Imagine if Speechless targeted a racial minority instead of LGBT people. Imagine if the voiceover at the beginning of the program went something like this: “Family values, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and morality are all threatened by a radical Asian American activist agenda that’s redefining the family, teaching children that Asian Americans are normal and pushing for minority status and preferential treatment for Asian Americans” (replace the words “Asian American” with “homosexual” and you have an actual line from Speechless). All the money in the world couldn’t get that special aired on WFLA.

Due to Media General’s flagrant disregard for fairness… oh, let me try that again eschewing the euphemisms for once. Due to Media General’s flagrant disregard for the equal citizenship and physical safety of LGBT people in Tampa Bay and everywhere, Equality Florida, Impact-Florida (Ed’s. note: of which Lorna is founder) and a number of other grassroots groups from the surrounding area are organizing a demonstration outside of Media General’s Tampa headquarters at 202 S Parker St., Tampa, on Wednesday at 5:30 pm.

WFLA and Media General have made it clear over the past two weeks that they do not speak the language of reason and civility. We have tried to engage their decision makers in innumerable other ways. Since these attempts have failed, we will be there this Wednesday (at the same time as Media General’s national president) to make our demands in the “strident tone” Media General seems to prefer. Since many of us “homosexuals” are Christians ourselves, we may even quote a scripture or two. Perhaps a little something from Jeremiah? “Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness and his chambers by injustice” (Jeremiah 22:13).

Now they have — in George: The Poor Little Rich Boy Who Built The Yankee Empire, the laugh-out-loud biography by St. Petersburg author Peter Golenbock.

Golenbock’s prior written collaborations with Yankee greats Billy Martin, Graig Nettles and Sparky Lyle provide him unique historical background on Steinbrenner and the 36-year-long Yankee soap opera. In fact, Lyle has been quoted as saying that his intense dislike for Steinbrenner was the “inspiration” for his collaboration with Golenbock on the 1979 bestselling book The Bronx Zoo.

Without George Steinbrenner there would be no A-Rod, no Jeter, and Vinny LeCavalier would be working in the off-season painting houses to make ends meet. But was he a brilliant tactician who carefully plotted his ascent in pro sports?  Hardly. But he was a good showman, and it is this quality — combined with an inability to envision failure and a penchant for suspending rules and reality — that Golenbock says was the real reason he was able to build the most valuable sports franchise in the world, becoming a cultural icon in the process (not to mention a running joke on Seinfeld).

From Golenbock's book: Steinbrenner vs. Costanza in an episode of "Seinfeld."

Steinbrenner’s middle name is Michael, but Machiavelli might have been more appropriate. Among the revelations in the book: he once sold stock owned by his wife without her knowledge to keep his minor league basketball team afloat. At the time Joan Steinbrenner had begun divorce proceedings against George. The divorce filing was later rescinded and they remain married today.

That’s not to say that Steinbrenner doesn’t have a good heart when it comes to those less fortunate. Stories abound in the last chapter of the book about the softer side of George, whether he’s paying for a poor kid’s college tuition, helping the families of fallen police officers in Tampa and NYC, or rebuilding a ball field in a poor neighborhood.

But then again, he may be the only convicted (if later pardoned) felon to have a high school named in his honor. Golenbock recounts Steinbrenner’s participation in the Watergate scandal — the only time other than his two suspensions from baseball when the music finally stopped for George and there was no one left to clean up his mess. But even after pleading guilty to two felonies for funneling thousands of dollars to Nixon’s Committee to Re-elect the President — better known as CREEP — George didn’t serve a day in jail: Reagan pardoned him in 1989. Heck, a guy who jumps the turnstile at Yankee Stadium would receive a harsher punishment.

Some of the funniest stories in the book come from Steinbrenner’s days in Cleveland before he acquired the Yankees. It was no stroke of luck that young George avoided the cold and bullets of Korea and instead wound up running the sports program at an Ohio military base just miles from his family home. According to Golenbock, George’s special treatment was the direct result of a deal his father cut with the Air Force. But George being George almost killed the deal. He complained that the lights on the ball fields were substandard and attempted to get them replaced by the Army, but was told no money was available. So George went ahead and ordered the lights anyway while his base commander was away in Washington, telling the lighting company that he would pay for them if the Army didn’t. When the commander returned from his trip, he was surprised to find the base lit up like Runway 22R at JFK. Of course, Henry Steinbrenner came to his son’s rescue and the Air Force paid for the lights.

Peter Golenbock at Yankee Stadium.

Steinbrenner’s toughest critic in the book is cable executive Leo Hindery, who created the YES network for Steinbrenner. The YES Network, which telecasts Yankee games and programming, is valued at over $2 billion. It ensures that the Yankees will continue to be able to afford high-priced free agents for the foreseeable future. Hindrey lets George have it with both barrels, including telling Golenbock that Steinbrenner’s daughters are the brains of the family (but George will never allow women to run the team), and that the minority owners, who own 40 percent of the Yankees, haven’t made a nickel in 30 years due to Steinbrenner’s profligate spending on players and his family.

Many interesting personal tidbits come to light in this book.  Among them:
• Steinbrenner was raised a Christian Scientist.
• He made up a story that he played pro football for the NY Giants in an effort to land a college football coaching job after graduating from Williams.
• He didn’t really understand the rules of baseball when he first became the Yankee owner, as evidenced by his tirade against a scorekeeper who failed to award the Yankees a run on a play where the third out was made.
• He stormed the field during a Hillsborough Community College baseball game at the Yankees complex, threatening to stop the game because the Yankee groundskeeper had the HCC team play on the wrong field. (Yes, a greenskeeper was fired.)
• He announced that Yankees manager Dick Howser, who had won 103 games the prior season, was stepping down to take advantage of a lucrative real estate opportunity in Florida. Howser’s lucrative real estate opportunity turned out to be George paying off his home mortgage in exchange for his resignation.
• And Golenbock puts into print what most people have been whispering for the past five years — that Steinbrenner is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.
This book confirms two things.
There is only one George Steinbrenner. And the world would be a lot less entertaining without him.

Scott Farrell hosts The Farrell Files on the 10Connects Morning News. He’s also a contributor to Wayne Garcia’s Creative Loafing blog, The Political Whore.

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By Manny Leto
PoHo contributor and editor, Cigar City Magazine

You may not have even known it was happening, but “Rapprochement With Cuba: Good For Tampa Bay, Good For Florida, Good For America,” a conference sponsored by the Alliance for Responsible Cuba Policy Foundation and held Saturday at the Italian Club in Ybor City, was, by its very existence, a milestone in repairing the tattered relationship between Tampa and Cuba.

About 150 guests, panelists, professors and local politicians filled the grand, neo-classical Italian Club, once the social, cultural and political epicenter of Tampa’s Italian community. Whether the speeches, panel discussions, and networking sessions will really accomplish much toward ending the 50-year-old U.S. embargo, no one is really sure. However, to get a sense of where the Cuba barometer is pointing, you could start with the venue itself.

In 1955, a young, verbose Fidel Castro arrived in Ybor City. This was no accident, no anomaly. In fact, it made perfect sense. Castro, in a bid to gain popular support for his uprising against CIA-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista, he followed — literally — in the footsteps of an earlier young, charismatic Cuban revolutionary, Jose Marti.

Marti was the ideological voice of the first Cuban Revolution; the one American school children call the Spanish American War. In the 1890s, after an earlier 10-year conflict between Spain and native Cubans, Jose Marti rose to the fore of a new effort to oust Spain from the island of Cuba. Like Castro, Marti was an intellectual, a writer, poet. He traveled extensively throughout Florida between 1891 and 1895, raising money for Cuban independence. He visited Tampa some 20 times, giving speeches to Tampa’s cigar workers and strategizing with the exiled leadership headquartered in West Tampa and New York City. Marti’s revolution began in 1895. Teddy Roosevelt and the U.S. Army showed up a couple years later, in 1898.

So, 60 years later in 1955, Castro was on a PR tour of sorts that would take him to New York City and the cover of Time magazine but first, he spent some time in Ybor City. His choice for a speaking venue: The Italian Club. He met with then-club president Phil LoCicero at La Tropicana, where the two reportedly talked for hours. Castro’s request to rent the Italian hall was denied, as was his request to speak at the Cuban Club. Castro eventually rented the AFL-CIO Union Hall on 7th Avenue and 13th Street, which is today home of the Marti-Maceo Social Club.

On Saturday, 54 years after Fidel Castro was denied use of the club and 114 years after Marti rallied Tampa’s cigar workers to action, nearly 200 people, Republicans, Democrats, entrepreneurs, cattle ranchers, and exiled Cubans, gathered in Ybor City to talk, once more, about Cuba.

Rain drove the only five protesters away, even though Al Fox, the event organizer, invited them to come in for coffee and doughnuts.

Fox, president of the Alliance for Responsible Cuba Policy, assembled an impressive lineup of experts including an adviser on Cuba policy for the Kennedy Administration, Dr. Wayne Smith; former head of the Democratic Party of Florida, Alfredo Duran; and, via conference call, U.S. Congressman Bill Delahunt, D-MA, who has sponsored a bill to lift restrictions on Americans traveling to Cuba. The bill has several co-sponsors including Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican; Rosa Delauro, Jo-Ann Emerson, a Missouri Republican; Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican; Ron Paul, a Texas Republican.

Locally, Tampa Congresswoman Kathy Castor, who was conspicuously absent on Saturday, has expressed her support for establishing direct flights between Tampa and Havana, to compete for business with Miami International Airport.

“Every time a flight leaves Miami for Havana, the airport collects roughly 50 dollars per passenger and other assorted baggage fees,” said local business owner Jason Busto, adding, “People who are opposed [to increased contact and trade with Cuba] are using a playbook from the 1980s.”

Business interests were in full force at Saturday’s meeting, eager to capitalize on reestablishing trade with the island.

“We’re exporting democracy and capitalism,” said Richard Waltzer, head of the Havana Group, a “facilitator” for companies looking to do business in Cuba, who says the two are linked. “We buy more products from China than any other nation. What’s the difference between China and Cuba?”

John Parke Wright, a cattleman who traces his Tampa roots back to Capt. James McKay and James Lykes, was also on hand. Donning a suit, cowboy boots and a wide-brimmed cowboy hat, Park Wright wants to see Tampa and Cuba’s cattle trade “back on the map.”

Indeed Tampa’s connections to Cuba extend beyond Castro’s 1955 visit, beyond cigars and Jose Marti. In the 1840s, Captain James McKay (He of McKay Bay) began shipping cattle to Cuba from Ballast Point in Tampa. The still-prominent Lykes family was, by 1906 firmly established in Havana, operating one of the largest cattle ranches on the island. They also operated the Lykes Steamship Company, which shipped cattle and other goods between Tampa, Havana, and New Orleans.

In the 1880s and 1890s, Henry Plant operated a steamship line, which traveled weekly between Tampa, Key West and Havana. Ironically, at the very center of Tampa’s city seal is the Olivette, a one of Plant’s steamships that traveled regularly to Cuba.

The connections are even deeper. When the Spanish sold Florida to the U.S. in 1824, they may have taken groups of Cuban fishermen with them back to Havana.

In the 1500s Spanish conquistadores “governed” and explored Tampa Bay via Havana.

Havana is our sister city, said City Councilwoman Linda Saul-Sena. “Economically, socially, culturally, we are kin.”

And the other shoe drops. It was predictable after the outburst earlier this week from Tampa Bay Rays President Matt Silverman about poor attendance at the Phillies series that it was just setting the table for a St. Petersburg departure. Now, comes confirmation that it is very actively being considered.

The A Baseball Community, studying everything from new sites for a Rays stadium to how to boost ticket sales, now confirms that three of the five geographic areas it is analyzing are in Hillsborough County. The three are in Westshore, downtown Tampa and east of the city at/near the Florida State Fairgrounds. Those sites join mid-Pinellas County (the Feather Sound/Carillon area) and downtown St. Petersburg on the list of five regions under study.

The St. Petersburg Times reported:

Progress Energy Florida CEO Jeff Lyash, chairman of A Baseball Community, said Thursday that the city-commissioned group is examining potential sites in those five “trade areas” and anticipates detailed reports on each region by August.

The analysis would consider income levels in surrounding neighborhoods, population within a 30- to 45-minute drive and availability of land.

“We’re not looking at any particular site,” insisted Lyash.

This is quite a change from December 2008, when the Rays released a report detailing their Top 7 relocation destinations, many in St. Petersburg and all in Pinellas County. Last week, they ruled out a rehab of Tropicana Field.

Now watch the ensuing political shitstorm. The fight between St. Pete (which, by the way, has a long-term lease for the team to stay in the Trop) and Tampa has been one of the most childish of the long history of sibling feuds between both sides of the Bay. When St. Petersburg was trying to lure a team to its empty domed stadium, for instance, the editor of the Tampa Tribune’s editorial page bemoaned how nobody would drive to games, the setting sun blinding their eyes on the Howard Frankland Bridge, to visit an area of The ‘Burg that resembled “a particularly pinched Albanian village.”

Yeah, that went over well.

By Catherine Durkin Robinson
PoHo contributor,“feminist mother of twins” and a political blogger, working under the title Out in Left Field

Charlie Miranda has come up with a plan to turn hundreds of millions of gallons of wastewater into drinking water. All in the name of self-sufficiency.

Yes, we are in the middle of a drought. But we aren’t desperate:

In 2005, the U.S. Geological Survey conducted a study of the treated wastewater from the city’s Howard F. Curren Wastewater Treatment Plant and found 27 different kinds of micropollutants in the recycled water even after it passed through a filtration process.

A plan to punish South Tampa homeowners who refuse to use reclaimed water on their lawns is the way to go.

That’s right, let’s go after Buffy and Thurston Howell III.

But if we’re having a hard time getting people to use this water on grass, imagine the trouble with getting them to put it into their bodies.

Would you drink it?

Retreated water contains nitrogen, steroids, antibiotics … and shit.

Is this the best that Miranda can do?

Tell Charlie Miranda that if he can’t come up with a better plan, we’ll elect someone who will.

For decades, Tampa has faced a conundrum; every day tens of milions of gallons of treated wastewater is dumped into Tampa Bay, wasted in a word. In St. Petersburg, treated wastewater is used for residential lawn watering, thanks to the foresightful construction of special water lines in neighborhoods. But Tampa’s attempts to re-use its wastewater hasn’t met with the same success.

So now the Tampa City Council wants to skip the whole lawn watering step and move right to drinking the highly treated sewer water. It voted yesterday to ask voters in a 2010 referendum if they want to build a system to deliver the potty product back to their drinking faucets.

From Bay News 9:

Councilman Charlie Miranda is all in favor.

“This will solve our situation for water in this area for at least 50 years,” Miranda said.

The concept isn’t new.

In the 1980s, Tampa initiated a program to treat waste water. The program failed to get support.

Miranda said the potable wastewater system could cost as much as $200 million.

So the question is: Would you drink it?