Revenge of the live chat, noon Tuesday!

I hope you'll consider stopping by TroxBlog from noon to 1 p.m. Tuesday for our weekly live chat on current events. I'll be here live, taking questions and comments about goings-on in the Tampa Bay area and beyond. Feel free to jump in, or just to hang out and see what other folks have to say.

To observe or take part in the chat: Come back to TroxBlog at noon and look for a new announcement with the headline, "The April 1 Chat is OPEN." Click on the "Comments" link of that item and you'll be taken to a page with everything that's been said so far, and a space for you to add your own comment or question.

Can't be here live Tuesday? You can always "pre-file" a question or comment to the comments link of THIS item, just a few lines below. I'll work it in during the live chat. And you can always come back after the fact to read a transcript of what was said.

I hope to see you at noon Tuesday.

Tuesday's column on Monday! (But just remember, it's April 1)

SENATOR QUITS: The sponsor of a measure allowing Florida teachers to espouse “alternatives” to the theory of evolution announced today she is resigning from the Legislature to pursue a degree in paleontology.

State Sen. Ronda Storms, R-Brandon, said she has changed her mind about evolution and hopes to be able to build a model of a T. rex in the lobby of the state Capitol.

In reply, the president of the state Association of Science Teachers announced plans to enter a seminary.

SCHOOL LOTTO: The state has announced a plan to place automatic lottery-ticket vending machines in all Florida schools, so that young people “can help finance their own education.”

“If we’re going to fund the problems of this state, we need to get citizens into the gambling habit earlier,” Gov. Charlie Crist announced.

In related news, the Florida Lottery announced its “Sign It Over” game, in which players can sign over mortgages and car titles for tickets. The odds of winning are not increased.

LOCAL MAN BAILED OUT: The Federal Reserve Board voted this week to rescue debt-ridden Jeremy Slotovonick of Hudson, Fla., in an attempt to support the nation’s troubled economy.

Slotovonick, 32, had amassed several thousand dollars in credit-card debt for video games and pizza deliveries. “We cannot afford for the Jeremys of the world to fall,” Fed chairman Ben Bernanke announced.

Markets rallied in response and several chairmen of Wall Street firms were awarded multi-million-dollar bonuses.

REALITY CHECK: Gov. Charlie Crist accidentally read part of the state budget and briefly engaged in pessimism, state officials said.

During the pessimism, which sources said lasted for several minutes, Crist bemoaned not only the state’s financial condition, but also its failure to solve the insurance and tax problems.

Alert aides quickly distracted the governor.

HIGHER ED  REFORM:  University degrees in Florida will be awarded by a private contractor using correspondence courses, the state Legislature has decided.

The vendor, the “University of Freddy,” is a non-accredited institution in a basement in Pensacola, causing some critics to question whether Florida is losing its commitment to higher education.

“Not at all,” replied state Senate President Ken Pruitt. “And as a bonus, “anybody with anything that says ‘UF’ on it won’t have to change.”

BASEBALL BUCKS: The owners of the Tampa Bay Rays announced they have changed their minds and want to put up the entire $450-million cost of a new baseball stadium out of their own pockets.

“We were just kidding about getting the public to sell off land and commit future tax dollars,” a team spokesman said. “We’ve had the money in the bank all along.”

In related baseball news, New York Yankees executive Hank Steinbrenner declared that “no other teams should play hard against us this year.”

MEDIA LAPSE: A motion was filed in the Hulk Hogan divorce case this week without receiving extensive local media coverage. Red-faced media officials apologized for the lapse and called it “a one-time oversight.”

•••

No fooling: Join me at noon Tuesday on TroxBlog for a live chat about current events. Look under the “Blogs” menu at www.tampabay.com.

On second thought

Wait a minute. April 1 falls on my column day this year. Seems like a shame to waste it by writing about a serious topic...

Should the state know what's in your medicine cabinet?

My colleague Chris Tisch, who has written extensively about the abuse of prescription drugs in Florida, reports today that a bill in the Legislature to track prescriptions through a statewide monitoring system is running into trouble.

The measure is House Bill 1011, by state Rep. Jack Seiler, D-Fort Lauderdale. The bill would require a pilot project for prescription monitoring in South Florida, starting no later than 2009, which then would be expanded to the rest of the state. The idea is that "doctor shoppers" who try to get multiple prescriptions for the same drug would be caught by the system.

Tisch reports there are two reasons for opposition to Seiler's bill. The first is  cost, which supporters say could be offset by grants. The second concern is more serious -- does the government really need to know what is in the medicine cabinets of law-abiding citizens?

Prescription drug abuse is a modern and growing problem, linked to some 2,000 deaths a year in Florida, about a quarter of them in the Tampa Bay area. That is a tragic human cost and the cases Tisch has chronicled are heartbreaking.

On the other hand, to address it, we're talking about giving the government total access into the medicine cabinets of 18-million law-abiding people. Even though 35 other states have some form of this system, that's still no reason to embrace it automatically.

It is illegal in this state for the government to compile lists of law-abiding citizens who own a gun. So why should the government be able to know which homes on which block have which prescriptions in the medicine cabinet? Is personal freedom and privacy so easily surrendered in the name of fighting crime? Or do you think that the compelling state interest in fighting drug abuse overrides that privacy?

Sound like a Tuesday column to me...

Column: Not much 'reform' in timid tax panel

Every 20 years, a group of smart people is supposed to get together in Florida to decide whether to overhaul our state's taxes, budget and spending.

This outfit is not just some "blue-ribbon" study group, either. It has real power. It can put its ideas directly on the statewide ballot.

This is the year. The group, called the Taxation and Budget Reform Commission, is meeting now to decide what we'll vote on in November.

But I gotta tell you, anybody looking for the Thoughtful Big Picture out of this current crop is going to be disappointed.

Baseball and other serious Friday topics

Happy Friday to everybody. Today, in case you somehow missed it, is the final game of spring training to be played on Al Lang Field in St. Petersburg, as the Tampa Bay Rays are moving their spring operation south next year to broaden their fan base. It seems unlikely that the site will ever host a new team, but I suppose you never know.

The bigger question, of course, is whether it will become the site of a major-league stadium, as the team proposes and the city is considering. The group called Fans for a Waterfront Stadium have hired a plane to fly a banner over Al Lang at 1:30 p.m. today. "Our goal," the group's announcement says, "is to make sure our City Council puts this issue on the November ballot." I assume that they mean, "assuming the business deal turns out to make sense, which we don't know yet."

Ah, well. Elsewhere on the public-issue front:

* Florida's growth is definitely slowing down. But it's still growing. Notice the observation in Helen Huntley's article that interstate moves slow down in times of general economic downturn, so it might be too quick to conclude that Florida-specific troubles (insurance rates, property taxes, hurricanes) are the culprit. Then again, they don't help.

* Steve Bousquet's story adds a grim  element to the state budget cuts, such as ending hospice care for 8,000 terminally ill Medicaid patients. Take just a second to think about that: terminally ill patient. Hospice care. Ending. It's part of a much bigger, $1-billion cut necessary in human services, unless the Legislature chooses to raise money elsewhere, or dip into reserves. That's the central debate going on in Tallahassee, with the leaders of the House insisting the entire budget crisis should be met with cuts only. Hard, if not impossible, to do that without cuts to education and human services.

* Speaking of education, the state Senate under president Ken Pruitt remains heck-bent on ripping up Florida's education structure for the third time in 10 years -- and purely as a power grab to destroy the independence of the Board of Governors that the voters created in 2002 to run our state university system. My bias here is total and deep -- I think that putting the universities back under the political control of the Legislature is a wretched, horrible idea that will send Florida backward. Here's hoping the House, under Speaker Marco Rubio, manages not to go along in putting this on the ballot.

Overall, our fall ballot is starting to look potentially crowded, with the same-sex marriage amendment there by petition, and potentially amendments concerning school property taxes, allowing tax dollars to go to religious institutions, a tax break for marinas and other "working waterfronts," this higher education amendment and, well, we're not done yet.

I think my Sunday column will be a critique of the Taxation and Budget Reform Commission, which is supposed to take a deep look at Florida's tax structure every 20 years, but is acting more like a meddlesome "second Legislature."

Okay, enough issues for now... see you at the game.

Busy, busy, busy in Tallahassee

Not only is the Florida Legislature in the middle of its annual session, filled with ideas both good and bad, but there's also a tax reform commission, which meets only every 20 years, putting its own ideas on the ballot. So the air in Tallahassee is filled with all sorts of proposals.

For example -- should Florida weaken its especially strong barrier between church and state? The way our constitution is worded now, no state money can be spent in support of a religious institution. But that situation would be pretty much reversed under this new proposal tentatively approved by the Taxation and Budget Reform Commission.

Instead, if voters go along, the constitution would say that religious groups could NOT be barred from taking part in state programs, such as school vouchers. My own thinking is that we had the strong prohibition for a long time for a good reason. But I might be on the losin' end.

(Also in today's story, notice that they also voted to put on the ballot a special-interest tax break ONLY for marinas and other "working waterfront" property. It doesn't even help the mom and pop motels who need it the most. We oughta be making the tax code MORE fair, not less...)

Meanwhile, over in the Legislature:

* An apology for slavery, which seemed heartfelt and appropriate, although it is only symbolic.

* On the other hand, the apology to the wrongly imprisoned Alan Crotzer (first item in this roundup) is of a more concrete and cash variety, and rightly so.

* State Sen. Ronda Storms' so-called "academic freedom" bill, in which no one could be punished for "objectively" presenting "alternative" scientific theories (in other words, disputing evolution) is moving right along. I can't believe the Legislature would actually pass this, since it means anybody can make any danged-fool claim about anything they want and call it "teaching." No, wait. I can believe it.

* Also moving along is the "take your guns to work" bill, which passed the House. This is another weird bill. Basically it says that business owners, employers, malls, supermarkets and such can NOT control their own property when it comes to having a no-gun policy -- there would be a "right" to take your gun onto somebody's property and keep it in your car whether they wanted you to or not. The gun lobby is trampling over private-property rights, and it's winning.

Column: On storms, our heads still in the sand

It's reallllly hard to write columns about insurance. First, the subject is complicated. Second, the only thing that people want to hear is that they shouldn't have to pay as much.

Hey, I like beatin' on insurance companies as much as the next guy. The trouble is that we have chosen to build a lot of stuff on top of a spit of sand that gets hit by hurricanes. Taking that risk costs money -- either on the front end, or the back end. Hence today's column.

* * *

Sorry to bring up a sore subject, but we haven't fixed this hurricane insurance thing yet.

In fact, you could argue that we in Florida have just about put ourselves in the worst possible position.

As long as we continue to be lucky, our cheerful governor, Charlie Crist, can go right on being cheerful.

But if we're not so lucky ...

We are in a lousy position both in the public insurance sector, which has taken on a big chunk of the risk, and in the private sector, which is still fouled up. [Link to entire column]

Keeping track of all the tax-cut ideas

The news this morning is that a vote has been postponed on the "Taxpayers' Bill of Rights" (TABOR) in the state Taxation and Budget Reform Commission. The "bill of rights" included another kind of tax cap. It would limit the increase of a local government's revenue, from year to year, to the rate of population growth, plus inflation, plus 1 percentage point on top of that. The idea also requires voter approval for new taxes and fees. The idea was strongly criticized in the Times' lead editorial this morning.

But by this point, it's hard to keep track of all the different tax ideas that have been passed and that are still being proposed. So here are the major items:

* EXISTING ANNUAL CAP. Last year, the Legislature ordered a one-time rollback of property taxes and created a new year-to-year cap on how fast  local government revenue can rise. That's the law on the books now. The cap is tied to the growth of per capita personal income in Florida. The "bill of rights" cap would be more severe.

* BIGGER, MORE 'PORTABLE' HOMESTEAD. On January 29 the voters passed Amendment 1, which creates a bigger Homestead Exemption for homeowners, allows them to carry their existing tax break to a new home, puts a 10 percent annual cap on the tax valuation of non-homestead properties, and gives business a tax break on the first $25,000 worth of tangible property.

* SCHOOL TAX 'SWAP' PROPOSED: The tax reform commission, which meets every 20 years and can put things directly on the ballot, has tentatively proposed for this November's ballot a major change in school property taxes. Most school property taxes would be abolished, and replaced by a 1-cent increase in the state sales tax, and other sources of money as the Legislature chose. The commission's decision to put this on the ballot is not yet final.

So, those are two big things that have happened, and one thing that might happen. Meanwhile, there are two other big ideas floating around out there, one of them being the "bill of rights" discussion that has been delayed for today.

The other one is simply to cap all property taxes at 1.35% of a property's value. Here's a link to a group supporting this idea, and which is trying to get it on the Florida ballot via citizen petition. This would be a pretty big cut in current taxes. This also is the approach favored by the tax protesters who were just in Tallahassee, and who got a warm reception from House Speaker Marco Rubio, with their meeting in the House chamber pictured above. [Times photo | Alex Leary]

Puppies. Casino boats. Spring training. New stadiums. Democrats. Double-dipping. Priscilla Presley's face. How could you NOT want to read the transcript of this week's live chat?

We had a good weekly live chat today on TroxBlog, with -- if you can't tell from the headline -- a lively and wide range of topics. Check out the transcript by clicking on the "Comments" link of this item, just a few lines below. You'll see a page with everything that was said in the chat, along with a space where you can still add your own comments.

Thank you to everyone who took part in or stopped by for today's live chat -- I hope you'll consider stopping by again next Tuesday!

The live chat lives! Tuesday noon - 1 p.m.

I hope you'll join me at noon Tuesday for our weekly live chat here on TroxBlog. For an hour or so I'll be taking live questions and comments on current events in the Tampa Bay area and beyond.

Look for a new announcement here at noon Tuesday with the headline, "The March 25 chat is OPEN." Click on the "comments" link of that post, and you'll see a page with everything that's been said in the chat so far, and a space for you to add your own question or comment.

What would you like to talk about? We missed last week's discussion of the Obama speech about race. Those wacky Democrats still  haven't figured out their presidential primary. The Legislature is in session doing all kinds of interesting things. And if you insist, we can talk more stadium, although I'd just as soon talk baseball.

Lastly, if you'd like to "pre-file" a question or comment in advance of Tuesday's chat, add it to the comments of THIS announcement a few lines below, and I'll work it in. And if you can't be here live, you can always check back later to read a transcript.

Otherwise, I hope to see you at noon Tuesday!

Monday, March 24

Good morning and happy Monday. I don't know about you, but I have only 9 correct picks in the Sweet 16, and, like a lot of people, lost one of my Final Four teams when Georgetown got knocked out by Davidson yesterday. My bracket said Georgetown but, bein' originally from North Carolina, my heart cheered for the underdog.

I notice that a lively and sometimes nasty debate has continued in the comments following the last post about the baseball stadium. I even deleted a couple and asked other folks to quit calling each other names. Sheesh, there's enough to disagree about just based on the merits, isn't there? At any rate, the St. Petersburg City Council gets its first official look at the Tropicana Field proposals this Thursday. I hope you checked Aaron Sharockman's story this morning about the environmental aspect of those proposals. Me, I am holding off putting on my enviro-hat until I get past the threshold issue of whether the thing even works financially.

My colleague Steve Bousquet had a story this morning about yet another round of cuts in the current year's state budget. The total so far is about $1.6-billion out of a state budget of $70-billion. Not to sound like our pollyanna-ish governor, but that is not catastrophic by itself... the problem, as Steve points out, is that most state spending is in education and human services and if you can't cut them, the cuts fall disproportionately on everybody else.

There is a bigger job ahead for next year, where maybe twice as much in cuts have to be found. On top of this, the Legislature will have to figure out what to do if the voters approve yet another property tax amendment this fall, ordering lawmakers to replace most school property taxes with other kinds of taxes...

Despite all these pressing issues, I will probably bravely stand up to public criticism and write tomorrow's print column about my puppy, for a change of pace -- I mean, I can't just gripe about the Legislature and the baseball stadium full-time, can I? The trick to writing about one's animals, I have found, is to adopt a faux-dispassionate atttiude and to minimize the number of adjectives...

Don't forget Tuesday's weekly live chat here on TroxBlog from noon to 1 p.m., in which I'll be taking live questions and comments about current events... I'll post a full announcement later today.

State senators on the payroll, oh my!

If you haven't seen it yet, check out my colleague Lucy Morgan's story this morning about state Sen. Evelyn Lynn, R-Ormond Beach, being hired for a $120,000 job by Florida State University to oversee a program that, as a legislator, she helped create and fund. This now makes her a "triple dipper," drawing two state salaries and a pension as a retired educator.

To quote Borat: Very nice.

Morgan's article notes: "Lynn also happens to be chairwoman of the Senate's Higher Education Appropriations Committee, with great influence over university budgets." She quotes FSU President T.K. Wetherell: "It's just a coincidence."

Lynn is the second member of the 40-member Senate to make news recently by being hired by the state universities. Sen. Mike Haridopolos, R-Melbourne, recently raised eyebrows by getting hired as a $75,000-a-year lecturer at the University of Florida, although he has only a master's degree. Lynn has a doctorate and educational experience, at least, but it is still a fair question as to whether you should be a state legislator in charge of university budgets, creating programs that then hire you.

(State Sen. Charlie Justice, D-St. Petersburg, works for the University of South Florida, although he already had his job before he ran for office.)

It's pretty ironic that at the same time as all this, the Florida Senate wants to abolish the existing state university system with SJR 2308 and put it back directly under the political thumb of the Legislature. With the worst teacher-student ratio in the nation already, among the lowest tuition and state support, and now even more budget cuts because of the economy, Florida's universities are freezing admissions and slashing their instructional budgets -- but at least, by gum, they can still find jobs for members of the Florida Senate.

Sounds like a Sunday column to me!

Thursday morning

Happy Thursday. Happy NCAA Tournament. I got a kick out of Gary Shelton's column this morning. I have the same picks he does for the national final (UNC over UCLA) which means we are almost certainly wrong.

* My print column today is based on the proposals for redeveloping Tropicana Field. They are filled with pretty pictures but they do not immediately answer the question of how they will promise to generate $300-million toward the cost of new baseball stadium. For more on the plans' failure to answer all the questions, see Aaron Sharockman's news story.

* It is just as well that two Pinellas legislators are dropping their plans to allow higher tolls on the bridges of the southern county. The whole thing was handled inartfully by the Department of Transportation. The state should restore the money that's been taken from the toll fund in the past. The state should pay for the future bridge improvements with both tolls AND other revenue -- don't sock folks going to Fort De Soto Park for $7-plus.

* It's good to see the demise of parking meters in Ybor City. But these things are always cyclical, and there's always a tradeoff between those who want parking turnover and those who don't, depending in part on what kind of business is involved. One day, I guarantee you, somebody will be arguing to the city that what we need are parking meters in Ybor...

The mail: An unimpressive Sweetbay response

So tell me please, what am I missing here? Hannaford/Sweetbay shows no remorse for their failure and makes no offer to at least offer monitoring services for our credit card accounts. They feel badly about the data being compromised and suggest that we monitor our credit card statements. This seems to me to fall far short of what they should be doing. Some folks cannot monitor their accounts on a daily basis and must wait for their monthly statements. Then it will be up to them to fix the identity theft mess. Just another example of business as usual and the consumer be damned. As individuals we are held accountable for our failures and businesses should be also. -- J.D. White

I tend to agree about Hford/Sweetbay. It was a pretty major compromise and I would think a company that had subjected thousands of its customers to criminals would be a little more pro-active.

Pretty pictures, indeed

The three proposals opened Tuesday for the redevelopment of Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg contained many graceful and attractive artist's renderings. All three proposed some graceful mix of retail, office, residential, green space and public use.

This is all well and good. I'm not a naysayer trying to stand in the way of "progress," as some folks characterize the plan's skeptics. But I HAVE spent my entire career watching cities get carried away with pretty drawings and promises in projects such as this without doing their due diligence.

Two points have to be stressed over and over:

(1) By themselves, these proposals mean nothing. Zip. They can promise all the neat stores and X number of jobs and X dollars in economic impact that they want. What matters is the contract that the city enters into. What teeth will the contract have? What guarantees will there be if the goals of the contract are not met? The contract itself is not the guarantee. And neither is a simple "reverter" clause saying that as a last resort, the city can taken the land back. That is a "nuclear option" that does the city little good, as a practical measure.

(2) None of these ideas pays for a new baseball stadium -- not yet, anyway. And that is the entire purpose of this project. The Hines proposal is for a purchase price of the site of $50 million, and even that phased in with dribbles and drabs -- much less than any sale figure I've heard bandied about. The Archstone-Madison proposal is not even for a sale, but just a lease. As for the Williams Quarter proposal -- pretty drawings now, we can talk about those pesky little business details later. All of the grand estimates of tax revenues that will be generated might work, but again, there have to be guarantees.

On top of this, the Archstone proposal calls for the taxpayers to pay for the destruction of Tropicana Field, which I thought was pretty much the purpose of hiring a developer. Both the Archstone and the Hines proposals say the taxpayers will pay for any unexpected costs of environmental cleanup. That is a reasonable position for the companies -- but it will be UNreasonable for the city to agree unless it is entirely sure of what it is doing.

I will be curious to see whether the city continues to take these proposals at face value for as long as possible, choosing one of the developers and only then getting around to the nitty-gritty business details.

The baseball stadium: Yes, no or 'we'll see'? Read the transcript of the March 18 live chat

Without a doubt, the proposed waterfront baseball stadium in St. Petersburg, and the just-opened proposals from developers, were Topic A in today's weekly live chat here on TroxBlog.

Both the skeptics and preliminary supporters of the stadium made several good points. Opponents cited the heat, parking problems, and environmental issues, and whether the city's past secrecy was a deal-breaker. Supporters, or at least those who argued that we need to know more, asked how opponents could make up their minds without knowing all the facts. As for me, Johnny-one-note that I am, I said the main factor in the decision needs to be the terms of the contracts.

We also had a little talk about the Democrats' decision not to hold a new Florida primary and what voters should think of it. We even had a couple of comments on the Tax and Budget Reform Commission.

To read a transcript of today's chat: Click on the "Comments" link a few lines below. You'll see a page with everything that's been said so far, and a space at the end for you to add your own thoughts.

Thank you to everyone who stopped by or took part in today's live chat, and I hope you'll consider stopping by again next Tuesday at noon for the next one.

Attack of the live chat, Tuesday noon - 1 p.m!

What's on your mind concerning the news these days? Worried about Wall Street? Looking forward to Tuesday's bid opening for the fate of Tropicana Field? Why not stop by TroxBlog around noon Tuesday to talk about it in our weekly live chat? I'll be here for an hour or so taking questions and comments about current events in the Tampa Bay area and beyond.

To observe or take part in Tuesday's chat, come to TroxBlog at or just after noon and look for a new item with the headline, "The March 18 chat is OPEN." Click on the "Comments" link of that item and you'll see a page with everything that's been said in the chat so far, and a space at the bottom for you to join in.

If you can't be here live Tuesday, feel free to "pre-file" a comment or question in the comments field of THIS post, by clicking the link a few lines below. And be sure to stop by TroxBlog afterward to read the transcript and see what folks had on their minds.

Otherwise, I hope to see you at noon Tuesday...

Obama's success due to race?

Simple question. I want to see if I'm as unbiased as I think I am. Where do you think Obama would be now if he was a white guy? Honestly now. -- Dwayne

Dear Dwayne: Do you really want my honest answer? Here it is. I never heard of the guy who used to be governor of Arkansas until people started talking him up in 1991 and I thought to myself: Arkansas? What the heck qualifies that guy to be president?
 
Then the guy from Texas, whose only experience was being a rich boy who lucked into being the state's governor, was the new coming star in 2000, and I thought, what business does this guy have being president?
 
So now we have a U.S. senator that nobody heard of before and everybody is fawning over the guy because, apparently, he gives a good speech. I do not know if he has any business being president either.
 
However, if the game is, the upstarts Clinton and Bush were legitimate when they came from nowhere, but Obama has gotten where he is because he is black -- I ain't playin'.

Australian pine wars II

Australian Pines (Casuarina trees) are not indigineous to this area and are probably the dirtiest tree one can imagine.  They rob indigineous flora of nutrients and continually drop their needles, creating a continual mess. In this area they are nothing more than a weed.  There is no salutary reason for having them in public parks. The sooner they are all eradicated the better. Good for whomever is responsible for this program. -- Anthony Camisso, Tierra Verde

Australian pine wars

Christopher Davies writes about Fort De Soto Park in Pinellas County:

Several friends came across a park ranger ringing a mature shade bearing Australian Pine with a chain saw. We were told that all exotics are to be removed from the park.  Many of us consider these trees make the park with their beauty and welcome relief from the sun. Fort Desoto Park was voted #1 park in 2005. If we drastically alter the appearance of the park and make it look like Florida scrubland will we still have such a popular beach park? ... I assume we will see many more cases of skin cancer in the years to come as a result of this action.

Howdy. I got 3-4 e-mails on this same topic last week. Sorry, but I side with the county folks on this -- Australian pine is an invasive species that does far more harm than good. I wrote about this in a blog post a few months ago, saying: It is a harmful, terrible, terrible invasive species that has been a curse ever since settlers brought it here. It drives out native habitat. It actually sterilizes the soil and blocks native plant species. It provides no food source for species and it displaces other plant food sources. It does nothing except provide shade -- and that, generally in places that ought not have shade, blocking the light for the natural habitat. Along with Brazilian pepper, it is the enemy of the natural mangrove ecosystem that is typical of our inshore areas. I hope that Joyce Kilmer -- who wrote that only God can make a tree -- will forgive me, but the same must go for mangroves too, I think....

Column: Buying our favor with our own debt

Congratulations! You and I have just taken part in setting a record.

For the five months that ended Feb. 29, the U.S. government set a record for spending more money than it took in.

If you are keeping track, we spent more than we took in by $263-billion. The way things are going, our total deficit for this year will be something like $410-billion.

Way to go, USA!

Now, whose fault is this?

It's the president's fault, for starters. Like many modern Republicans, he thinks it is "conservative" to keep borrowing money, instead of spending less or raising taxes.

It's Congress' fault, too. Congress is run these days by Democrats. They like spending money, especially if the Republicans are doing it, too.

And, of course, mostly it's your fault and my fault.... [Link to entire column]

Want to see Ft. De Soto? That'll be $3.75

If the state Department of Transportation gets its way, then as of July 1 it will cost $3.75 in tolls, as opposed to the current 85 cents, to get to Fort De Soto Park at the southern tip of Pinellas County.

That includes an increase from 50 cents to $1.25 on the Pinellas Bayway, and from 35 cents to $2.50 for another toll leading to the park itself, south of Tierra Verde. Over time, the tolls could double again, to $2.50 on the Bayway and $5.00 on the way to the park.

This hefty jacking-up of tolls is pretty harsh. The DOT says it needs the money to replace the toll bridges in the next few years. (That's the DOT's vision of the new Bayway to the right].  But in that case, why has the state robbed the toll fund to pay for other projects elsewhere in the past?

Some folks will say, "This is just tough luck for the rich folks down in Tierra Verde. The heck with them. Besides, the folks going to Fort De Soto ought to be the ones paying for it."

But by that same logic, there ought to be a toll booth on Interstate 275 in downtown Tampa to pay for all that road work, and on the Bayside Bridge in north Pinellas -- why should those who don't drive there regularly have to pay for it? Fort De Soto is one of Pinellas' great public assets, one of the smartest things the county has done. It is NOT "rich folks" who go there, but families from all over Pinellas County and the whole Tampa Bay area, and beyond. It is frequently named one of America's best beaches. So, naturally, that means we ought to exploit and punish the people who go there...

I notice with some amusement that state Rep. Jim Frishe is behind the move to give the DOT the power to raise these tolls. If I understand his comments correctly, he is FOR the law letting DOT do this, AGAINST the full proposed toll increase, and he is trying to "find" money so the tolls aren't necessary.  Riiiiight.

I think we should name the toll booths for him and the Senate sponsor, Dennis Jones. Not the BRIDGES, mind you -- just the toll booths.

Florida driving e-mail #1: We're not so bad?

I just read your article about red light cameras. I quote you: "It seems to be especially bad here in Florida, where many folks learned their driving skills somewhere else and forgot to pack them."
 
Sir, I have driven in 48 of the 50 states, including Vermont, Hawaii, Minnesota, Florida. I have driven in New York City, San Francisco, Detroit, New Orleans, Dallas, Seattle, and hundreds of cities throughout the U.S.
 
From my observation after 65 years of driving (without a traffic ticket, I might add), I don't find Florida drivers to be any better, or any worse, than anywhere else in the country!
 
Have a good day! -- Don Copler

Dear Mr. Copler: I can't claim to have driven in 48 states, so you have more experience than I do. Maybe my impression is subjective and wrong. But can I at least claim that we lead the nation in leaving the turn-signal blinker on?

Florida driving e-mail #2

I liked this e-mail exchange. Notice the idea that it's OK to keep going if it's "only" a crosswalk and the pedestrian is in "no real danger." I also got a kick out of the follow-up...

This morning a person stepped into busy lanes of slow moving traffic and I happened to be one of the cars in those lanes.  While this person was in no real danger, I took note of both him and the police cars in the cross street nearby. As I passed through this intersection (with no traffic light only a crosswalk), one of the police cars pulled out behind me and pulled me over. I had failed to come to a complete stop while the pedestrian was still in the roadway.  (None of the cars in any lane stopped)
The part that grabs me is I have a pretty clean driving record and when the cop handed me the ticket he said it was to spread the word about pedestrians having the right of way and recently being in a lot of accidents.  He admitted that the point of me receiving a ticket for $120 was to help evangelize this message of pedestrian safety. 2 houses down from me is a known drug dropoff point and the cops have done nothing about that.  But they will ticket me for not coming to a complete stop when a cop jumps in front of my car.  Thanks for the safety tip. -- N.A.

Thanks for the note....  I hope you do not mind if I disagree a little bit. Pedestrians in crosswalks means stop, and this is a part of Florida culture that needs to change ... in fact, there is a bill in the Legislature this year to step up both penalties and public awareness of the rules. Not what you wanted to hear, I am sure, and yes, the cops can always being doing something else "more important." On another day I hope to be of better use to you. Cheers, Howard.
 
Having traveled the U.S. many times and I concur that FL is a very dangerous place.  The question it raises is should cops be jumping in front of moving cars to prove this point?  Do they jump in front of bullets to raise awareness of gun control?  If I had not seen the police man who purposefully stepped into traffic, and had we been traveling at unsafe speeds, I could have hit him.  How would that "Serve and Protect"?  By turning their public service agenda into involuntary manslaughter charge, turning a cop into a martyr, leaving his kids without a father? So what I'm hearing you say is dead cops are the best way to teach Florida drivers about pedestrian safety.  I'll let the folks I know that read your stuff that you feel that way. -- N.A.

Thursday's column on Wednesday!

Here's Thursday's print column. I've written on this topic before, but tried to restrain myself so far this year until the Legislature came into session. I get a lot of disagreement from my friends in local government on this topic -- if the government doesn't "educate" the citizens on which way to vote, then who will?

Stop using our money to tell us how to vote

Here is something that ought to be a law in Florida, but isn’t.

Local governments should not be able to take sides in their elections.

What could be more basic? The government is the servant of the taxpayers, not their master.

And yet increasingly, Florida cities, counties and school boards spend public dollars to try to sway election results.

Maybe the government is supporting a tax, such as the Penny for Pinellas, or Pasco County’s local school tax.

Maybe the local government has a strong opinion in favor of or against a particular  amendment or measure on the ballot.

That’s what happened in Pinellas, where cities and the county government spent tax dollars fighting each other over amendments to the County Charter.

I remember opening my water bill, only to see that my city was telling me which way to vote on the charter amendments. Meanwhile, absentee voters received, with their ballot, a propaganda brochure from the county telling them to vote the opposite way.

Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb bomb Iran and other Wednesday topics

Happy Wednesday. Do you wonder what Clients 1-8 are thinking these days? I liked Ben Montgomery's story about what goes through the minds of famous spouses in these situations.

My plan this morning, at least so far, is to write my Thursday print column about a favorite issue -- local governments using tax dollars to take sides in elections. We have seen a lot of cities and counties in Florida using tax dollars to try to "educate the voters" on which way the government wants them to vote on bond issues, tax referendums and such. There are bills in both our state House and Senate to outlaw this kind of electioneering with tax dollars, but naturally, the local governments oppose them. This would be a good thing to settle before this fall's baseball stadium referendum in St. Petersburg, seems to me.

Elsewhere:

* I am just a local schmoe speculating on this one, but do you really think this guy resigned just because a magazine article portrayed him as opposing the Bush Administration's plans to attack Iran? Is that really all it takes to knock out one of the senior commanders of the U.S. defense establishment? Or is it more likely that the article had some grain of truth to it, the admiral tried to engage in damage control within the administration without success, and either he (or his bosses) decided it was time to go?

* I see our editorial page came out against a mail-in primary for the Democrats. I don't especially care what the Dems do, but they ought to be careful about making it look too much like a banana republic. I would think there would be more ways to go wrong than right with an impromptu, on-the-fly mail-in vote. They SAID they were going to play by their national party rules -- maybe they should just stick to it. Sen. Bill Nelson said the other day it would be a "tragedy for America" if Florida's delegates aren't seated. A tragedy! I might save the T-word for, you know, Pearl Harbor and 9/11 and such.

* Have you ever visited Fort De Soto Park at the southern tip of Pinellas County? Do you think it is a great public asset? Do you think the Department of Transportation should be able to charge a toll that could eventually reach the outrageous price of $7.50 to get there, or for that matter, significantly higher tolls for the folks who use the Pinellas Bayway? Check out this story about the public meeting tonight on the DOT's plans.

* I hate to see this. But not nearly as much as I hate to see this. I am not sure what to make of this. And we are going to have to talk a whole lot more about this. But not right now, OK?

A little Spitzer, a little stadium, a little of this and that -- read the transcript of the March 11 chat

Hello, happy Tuesday, and welcome to the transcript of the live chat held earlier today here on TroxBlog. We started out with the Eliot Spitzer case, touched on the costs versus the benefits of the Pinellas Trail, hit a few other subjects along the way, and closed with more talk about the baseball stadium proposal.

To read today's chat, click on the "Comments" link of this announcement a few lines below. You'll be taken to a page showing everything that's been said so far, and at the bottom, a space where you can still add your own comment or question.

Thanks to everyone who took part or stopped by today! The next TroxBlog chat will be next Tuesday, March 18.

[The painting is "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" by some guy named Picasso in 1907. An image of Les Demoiselles d'Spitzer was not available.]

Return of the live chat, Tuesday noon

I hope you'll join me at noon Tuesday for the return of our weekly live chat here on TroxBlog. I'll be here in person for an hour or so, taking reader comments and questions about current events in the Tampa Bay area, Florida at beyond.

To take part in or just to observe Tuesday's chat, come back to TroxBlog at noon Tuesday and look for a new announcement with the headline, "The March 11 chat is OPEN!" Click on the "Comments" link of that item to see a page with everything that's been said in the chat so far, and a space for you to add your own question or comment.

As always, if you can't be here live, you can "pre-file" a question or comment to the Comments link of THIS item, just a few lines below. And you can always come back to TroxBlog later to read a transcript of the chat.

Otherwise, I hope you'll stop by on Tuesday.

Too bad, too bad, too bad

Being a fan of Eliot Spitzer's tenure as New York's state attorney general, when he went after Wall Street and corporate misconduct, I am seriously grieved at the news the governor's been linked to a high-priced prostitution ring. The guy was one of my role models for public officials. I bet right now a lot of rich guys in tall buildings are clinking their glasses and laughing their tails off.

I am sure the U.S. media will handle the story with the sensitivity and grace for which we are so well known.

I almost wish, almost, almost, that this were not enough to ruin him. But of course that implies tolerance for infidelity, mistreatment of women, etc., all of which are unacceptable. I can't see how it will turn out in any other way than the end for him, unless there's some unprecedented burst of tolerance on the part of the public. Part of me still would be glad to see it.

But then, I also thought our former state Rep. Bob Allen, R-Merritt Island, should have stayed in office after he was convicted on charges coming from his arrest in a men's room, so maybe my views on these things are out of touch.

Louie, Lou-aye, OH, baby

Happy Monday to you. First of all, allow me to plug the return of the weekly live chat here on TroxBlog at noon Tuesday. I'll be here live, taking reader comments and questions about current events in the Tampa Bay area and beyond.

This handsome fellow to the right is Louie. He is eight weeks and two days old. He is half Weimaraner and half black lab. We brought him home from his foster parents yesterday and he is doing famously.

Now, on other fronts:

* If Florida Democrats can raise $6-million and hold their own mail-in, "do-over" primary, that's fine by me. They can vote as many times as they want. But to prevent this mess in the future, here's an idea: change state law to allow each major party to set its own primary date as long as the party is willing to pay for the election itself.

* Check out this summary of the political fights in St. Pete Beach written by my colleague Nick Johnson. It's as bitter and divided as a community has been around here, and the dividing line is growth. I still stand by my last column on this topic -- I supported the citizens when they petitioned for voter control over growth, and I support those citizens who are now petitioning for different rules that would allow more growth. In short, I am a petitioning kind of guy.

* Speaking of which -- I think my print column tomorrow is going to be about the fact that Florida needs better rules for citizen petitions. The Hometown Democracy movement got caught up in a weird no-man's-land of Florida law. Petitions are supposed to be submitted before Feb. 1 -- but that's the same deadline for them to be verified. Basically, the government is able to block a petition drive by the expedient of simply not counting the signatures in time! There are other problems too. The key point is, even if you don't like citizen petitions, shouldn't they at least be treated fairly?

* Just in case you missed it, I highly recommend this article from Sunday's paper by my colleague Aaron Sharockman about the "true" cost of the existing Tropicana Field, which he pegs at $233-million to date, and at least $323-million by 2016 whether a new stadium is built or not. This does not "prove" whether we should build a new stadium one way or the other, but it is a highly instructive demonstration of how the costs of these things add up.

* One more time -- live chat, noon Tuesday. Stop by to join in, or just to see what folks are talking about.

Friday, March 7: Red lights, baseball stadiums

Hello and happy Friday. Given that I have made arrangements for a seven-inning lunch, I hope the weather holds. Meanwhile...

* Okay, so Hillsborough County is moving ahead with red-light cameras. But it's NOT about the money, okay? Okay. If it's not about the money, the county should prove it by (1) signing a contract that pays the vendor a flat rate, instead of by the ticket, (2) agreeing not to spend the "profits" on general government expenses, and (3) promising never to monkey with its yellow lights to create more violations, as some places have.

* So, the city of St. Petersburg held a public forum last night on future alternative uses for Al Lang Field, and once again, the preponderance of citizens said the waterfront site should be used as a park. This is what most folks said during last year's public hearings as well. Can we agree, at least, that if the proposed baseball stadium doesn't get built, that the leading alternative is to preserve Al Lang as a waterfront park? Or will the city keep balking, claiming that even more "visioning" is needed, until the city finally gets its way on whatever Plan B it really has up its sleeve?

* On the issue of the stadium itself, remember that we're approaching the March 18 deadline for developer proposals. At last we will start to get SOME idea of how this deal is supposed to work, and what supposedly would be built by developers on the site of the old Tropicana Field that would help pay for the new stadium. The way I see this decision, you can have good reason today to be opposed to the stadium, no matter what, but it's hard to be for it until we see the business deal. Give us a guarantee that the taxpayers are not on the hook -- no matter what -- and then we can talk about the rest.

Letter: A gratuitous insult to chiropractors

[Sorry for the length of this, but I figured, why not print the whole thing instead of trying to edit it... my brief reply is at the end.]

While it is rare that we agree in context on much that you write, I have always tried to view your column as “just a different opinion” from mine, and tried to look at your point of view with detachment.  However, today you went over the line between opinion and outright bigotry.  I am sure that you will agree that bigotry is hatred or intolerance based on ignorance.  Generally this ignorance is despite obvious and copious amounts of literature that belie the belief of the bigot.

There was absolutely no reason to drag the chiropractic college controversy into your article.  It added nothing to it.  And if you feel that it did, certainly your first reference to it was adequate.  However, when you again had to put “schools of chiropractic and skull reading in our universities” in the same sentence in the last paragraph, you went far beyond your poor attempt to amuse or make a point.  Your profound disrespect for a complete profession of over 70,000 Doctors of Chiropractic Medicine and their multiple millions of patients should be a part of this article.  Surely in an editorial such as this you should be able to express your own opinion, but your profound bigotry and disrespect are appalling.

Oh, sure, NOW they love us

So, the Democratic Party turns out to have situational principles. It was easy to take a firm stand against Florida's Jan. 29 primary back when Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and the rest were still trying to suck up to the early states such as Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Now -- not so much. Especially since each candidate might be able to play Florida (and Michigan) to his or her advantage, and the party itself might need Florida to lend clarity to its confused nominating process.

I realize I am arguing against Florida's short-term political clout here. But if party chairman Howard Dean, Clinton and Obama actually had principles about early primaries, they would stick to them. They would tell Florida, "We told you we would not seat your delegates, and we are not going to."

This business about Florida Democratic voters being "disenfranchised" is not quite right. We are not throwing out anybody's votes in a general election, when the citizens are choosing the office-holders of the government.

We are talking instead about a party primary, and the internal rules of what is basically one big political "club." That club said on the front end, if you want to be in our gang, here are our rules for choosing our party's nominee, and if you don't play by those rules, we won't count your vote.

Of course, being its own club, the Democratic Party can go right ahead now and change its rules any way it wants. Heck, it can hold a new election in every state. It can hold caucuses, elections, coin flips or flapjack-eating contests for all I care -- as long as it doesn't cost the taxpayers of Florida anything else.

I do wonder, however, whether in the general election, the voters of Florida will remember getting the cold shoulder from the Democrats on the front end, or whether the voters of South Carolina, New Hampshire and Iowa will remember how they were once wooed and promised their special status, only to be thrown over like yesterday's news once they had yielded up their votes.

The universities and the Florida Senate

Here's the news story about yesterday's committee meeting in the state Senate, where senators got pretty huffy about taking over the state university system. They have worked themselves into the conviction that they are the good guys, and that it entitles them to bully, snipe at and feel superior to the university chancellor. Here's my column in today's newspaper on the same topic.

The most surreal exchange, I thought, was where the committee chairman, Don Gaetz, a Panhandle Republican, criticized the performance of the universities under chancellor Marc Rosenberg's "watch'' -- when the very factors driving that performance, low tuition, worst teacher-student ratio in the nation, etc., are precisely the fault of the Legislature.

I hope that Floridians recognize this for what it is...

A simply horrible idea for Florida's universities

[UPDATE: Naturally, the first Senate committee passed it this afternoon, after belitting the state university chancellor for a while. The yahoos rule.]

It is early in the session of our Legislature to be yelling, "red alert!" But it's necessary. The president of our Senate, Ken Pruitt, is determined to wreck Florida's entire university system -- yet again -- for his personal purposes. Amazingly enough, the full Senate might be willing to go along, starting today. Cue the dueling banjos and the bib overalls! Cue the schools of chiropractic and skull-reading! Hire more state senators for university payrolls! Good grief!

The measure in question is Senate Joint Resolution 2308, which would YET AGAIN abolish our state university system, reversing the decision of the voters in 2002, and creating a system under the control of the Legislature itself. SJR 2308 is a proposed amendment to our state Constitution, which still requires voter approval -- but the idea ought not to get that far.

Instead of the independent Board of Governors created by the voters, our state universities would be under a five-member board, with its members confirmed by the state Senate, which would have to run the universities as the Legislature directed. The 2002 amendment clearly gave the Governors the policy control over higher education -- and this takes it away.

This is just an awful power grab by the Legislature. On top of that, the same constitutional amendment includes an entirely separate question, whether Florida should return to having an elected education commissioner. Again, this is an abuse by the Legislature, cramming two different measures into the same amendment, forcing the voters to take one offensive idea if they want to vote for the other.

SJR 2308 is on the calendar for today's meeting of the Senate's Education K-12 Committee. Here's the link to the committee's web page and its list of members, none of whom is from the Tampa Bay area. In the Senate, the measure has one other committee, and then in theory could be passed out of the Senate in short order!

At the very least, the voters are entitled to consider the question of an elected education commissioner and the State University System as separate matters. But beyond that, putting the universities back under the Legislature's thumb is a huge step backwards for Florida.

This is an ego-driven fight about control of university tuition. The official story is that the Legislature just wants to "clear up" who controls tuition in this state. I think the voters settled that question in 2002 by creating the Board of Governors. But SJR 2308 doesn't just "clear up" that question -- it destroys the Governors' independence altogether.

I cannot imagine any state senator who cares about the future of Florida -- or his or her future political career -- voting to put this on the ballot. What kind of political platform will THAT be? "I killed our state un