Wednesday, July 16

Hello and happy Wednesday. A few different things this morning:

* The weekly Tuesday chat is still going strong, with close to 190 comments so far -- see the mildly testy comment that I added this morning.

* I frowned at our big doomsday 1A headline today asking, "How Safe Is Your Bank?" If we have evidence of looming bank failures, we should say so; if we don't, we shouldn't have doomsday headlines about it. Reminds me of the TV news gimmick: "Is the world ending? Find out at 11."

* Notice the Page 1 story about another big government subsidy for "economic development," with the city's portion approved same day as the Jabil Circuit deal -- also on the consent agenda. At least the city folks now say they will make this process a little more visible. I look forward to getting a handle on how much money local gov'ts are putting into these subsidies, and what benefits we get in return.

* The neo-nuclear era begins -- except this time we're paying for it as customers up front. My prejudice is against a 100-percent "advanced cost recovery" charged to customers; the shareholders should be bearing part of the risk too. But on the enviro side, my starting prejudice is that I'd rather have the waste-disposal problem than the greenhouse-gas problem. I know, I know, we should have wind and solar -- but that ain't gonna generate the MW that the nuke will. (I will duck now.)

* I disagreed with the guns-to-work bill, on the grounds that private property owners should be able to have a no-firearms policy on their own land if they want to. But neither do I think obeying the law is a matter of choice or whim, so I ain't so keen on the new sport of "my business shouldn't have to obey it." See the interesting claim of the toilet-paper maker in this story. National security, my -- well, you know.

* Would the Pinellas Juvenile Welfare Board, despite the noble cause that it serves, be raising taxes if the board were elected directly by the taxpayers?

* In case you haven't seen it, here's a stinky little Pinellas County zoning case where the law firm of super-lawyer Ed Armstrong is representing not only the developer who wants the rezoning -- but one of the government agencies involved in the project! Not to worry, Ed says; there's a "Chinese wall" inside his firm so that the lawyer handling the one doesn't talk to the other. I don't care, myself, whether it's the Berlin wall, Wonderwall or Wall-e -- I think Mr. Armstrong's firm needs to choose.

Monday, July 14

Hello and happy Monday. Still thinking about the Rays in the playoffs? I still am. My own amateur theory is that it was better to have this slump now, to recognize that it's possible, rather than to crash and burn for the first time late in the season in the middle of the race and fall apart completely. On the other hand, no one is paying me for my baseball expertise.

How was your weekend? My Sunday print column returned to the subject of the St. Petersburg City Council -- I wanted to focus the issue squarely on the fact that the city simply can't run an entirely secret government in the name of "economic development." Not quite sure yet about Tuesday's column topic; I have a few things in mind but it depends on what's possible to pull together today. Suggestions welcome (with the caveat I might say thanks and ignore them anyway).

Elsewhere:

* Notice this article about CFO Alex Sink. It does seem to me she is gradually but firmly asserting more of a presence in state level affairs, serving as the responsible financial voice that she should. As far as the speculation that she should run for governor or U.S. senator -- well, being a "responsible financial voice" isn't enough by itself, since we would much rather hear promises of cheap gasoline, low taxes and low insurance premiums than to face hard financial truths. Is that too cynical?

* This interesting story this morning was about the controversy over home birth. My thinkin' is, have the parents sign a fully informed consent form saying they understand the risk of home birth is about twice that of hospital birth -- and that they can't sue anybody if they choose it.

* I'm still not going to refer to Budweiser as "a Belgian beer."

* How much coverage of the governor's engagement is enough? I figure that he IS a charismatic bachelor governor of a big state, at least a distant possibility for a running mate, so it's worth at least this much attention. If we start seeing daily, Hulk-Hogan-style reports, I'm gonna change my mind.

* Jim Damaske has our puppy Louie's sister, so we are in-laws of a sort. This nice sunrise shot by him was in this morning's paper.

* The comments attached to Thursday's post live on, with a momentum of their own.

* Live chat on Tuesday -- full announcement later today.

What's on y'all's mind today? Is that the correct possessive form of "y'all"?

Friday, July 11

Happy Friday. At least it isn't Friday the 13th.

More later. My apology.

Thursday, July 10 -- several topics

Happy Thursday. I've been watching the St. Pete City Council meeting today to see if the Jabil Circuit deal comes up -- no doubt it will, but not yet. In case you missed it, here's a strong editorial from this morning about the council's secrecy. The council today also might take up the question of protecting Al Lang Field, the site of the now-delayed new stadium deal, as a waterfront park.

My friends on the council continue to miss the point on the Jabil deal -- yes, the law lets the city negotiate "economic development" deals in secret. But that does NOT mean the council gets to make a mockery of public meetings when it comes time to approve the anonymous deal. Specifically, (1) holding private "briefings" of council members so they don't have to discuss it in public, (2) sneaking it onto the agenda at the last minute under a fake name, (3) sneaking it through on the consent agenda with no discussion so the public never knows the deal occurs at all.

This ain't the CIA, funding "black box" operations. Even if the law protects the negotiations and the name and trade secrets of the company, it doesn't mean the taxpayers never get to know about the existence of the deal at all. Is this a Sunday column?

I am scattershot today but wanted to mention a few things:

* Here's another paper's story on an attempt to weaken cleanup standards in the Everglades. My layman's understanding is that the existing standard is scientifically necessary to keep exotics from choking the 'Glades.

* Another attempt to weaken environmental protection in Hillsborough. Just in case you thought they were done.

* Speaking of secrecy, how's this -- you're not allowed to know how big your electrical bill is going to be!

* Baseball stadium fight. Not ours.

* I was worried for a minute when I saw this story with the headline, If Zimbabwe can do it, why not Pasco County? Turns out they weren't talking about the same thing.

Lastly, a couple of questions regarding this morning's column on the Warren Buffett deal:

Are you questioning the concept of buying catastrophe insurance, or is it the cost of the insurance that bothers you?  Your article didn't make that clear.  Thanks. -- Lou Kirschbaum, Largo

I am not questioning the need for catastrophe insurance; but I do tend to agree with McCollum and Sink that this was not a good situation to be in and that we can do it better next time.

There are two questions I have not seen answered that relate to the Buffett deal ... 1)  what is the agreed interest rate on the bonds Buffett can be required to buy from the state?  If below market rate (which I doubt), then the deal is not as bad as it seems, and 2)  How hard did they shop for competition to Buffett's proposal? -- Rich Garber

I believe the tax-free interest rate on the bonds was negotiated at 6.5%. The cost of the put option was 5.6%. They say they shopped around; I don't know the details...

St. Petersburg's secrecy is out of control

Good morning and happy Monday. Nice three-day weekend, wasn't it?

My print column tomorrow will probably be on the topic of secret government in St. Petersburg. As we now know from this article and this article by my colleague Cristina Silva, the City Council agenda on June 19 included a deliberately obscure, disguised, misleading item tucked into the "consent agenda" just a few hours beforehand -- which actually was the city's portion of a $34.4-million package of benefits for Jabil Circuit.

Now, make no mistake. We are talking about three different issues here, and we should not use one to justify another. The first issue is whether it is a good idea to give tax dollars to Jabil Circuit to get the company to stay here. The second issue is whether these kinds of deals should be made in secret, as state law allows.

But the THIRD issue is whether, once the deal reaches the public stage, the city of St. Petersburg is right to continue to deceive the public, even as it is conducting public business in an open meeting of the City Council. This disguised agenda item -- not even some of the City Council members knew what they were voting for -- was mislabeled "Project Extreme." I am sure the city staff thought it was being very clever.

I know that this is just fun and games to City Hall, but a meeting of the City Council is, under Florida law, the place that the public's business is conducted. It is the place where decisions are discussed, in the sunshine, and where the decisions are made -- no place else.

Running a fake, falsified or secret agenda strikes at the heart of open government. In fact, it is the OPPOSITE of open government. If enough members of the City Council knew and understood what "Project Extreme" meant, voting on it without telling the public, then somebody had to tell them -- and I question whether a possible violation of Florida's open-meetings law has occurred.

Remember that St. Petersburg ran seven months of secret government during 2007, even conducting fake public hearings and holding sham City Council elections, while it sat on the secret that the Tampa Bay Rays intended to use the city's waterfront for a new baseball stadium. The City Council then said that it would protect that waterfront the very next time it amended the city's land-use rules -- then went back on that statement. Now we see that even the meetings of the City Council itself can't be trusted at face value.

Monday, June 30

Hello and happy Monday. I see that my vacation announcement drew 134 comments, about everything from baseball stadiums and offshore drilling to guy and Jon McPhee discussing their choice of handguns. I'm glad that you managed to stagger along without me. Meanwhile, I hung out in the mountains for a few days and got about 3/4 of the way through Anna Karenina. Don't spoil the ending for me, but I get the feeling it ain't gonna work out for her.

All right. I need to get up to speed on the U.S. Sugar deal -- mostly I saw rave reviews from a distance, but a couple of grumbles about the purchase price... what's the prevailing sentiment? Naturally, the Rays waited until I left town to withdraw their stadium proposal. But I'm going to write my Tuesday print column about it belatedly, with advice for How Not To Do It Next Time.

Hey, I used the Times e-edition while I was in N.C. -- it's a page-by-page electronic reproduction of that day's paper, with clickable articles & links... either it is really cool, or else I am a cranky dinosaur who has to be coddled with an old paradigm. (Did I just say 'paradigm'?)

Let's have a live chat at noon Tuesday. Full announcement coming later today.

By the way, can anybody who is geek enough explain to me why my desktop computer, after being unplugged for eight days, now refuses to talk to the outside world at all? In more precise terms, the LAN ain't workin'.

The Tropicana deal and other Friday topics

Happy Friday, and how 'bout those Rays? I was one of the 34,441 last night. I have to say, it was kind of fun to turn around and see the row of seats behind me, previously filled with smack-talking Cubs fans, vacant after the 7th inning. But I respect the Cubs, appreciate the tradition of a great franchise and realize that they had an off series too.

* My colleague Sue Carlton pays a good tribute to Bill James, the former Hillsborough state attorney. For me, James' 1984 election was the dividing line between Then and Now. He was a mild-mannered, straight-laced ex-fed, a Republican running against the Tampa-based, Democratic, old-guard power structure. 'Course, the old guard got its revenge eight years later.

* I invite my Democratic friends to justify Barack Obama's decision to become the first presidential candidate since Watergate to forgo public financing. I would imagine the replies will be pretty funny, with the general theme of, "We are the good guys and the Republicans are the bad guys so whatever we do is OK, and it doesn't matter that he most vigorously and precisely said previously that he wouldn't do this, because when you are the good guy you can do things like that." I am with Russ Feingold: "This decision was a mistake."

*  Okay, now the St. Petersburg City Council has picked a developer with which to negotiate a contract for the sale of the Tropicana Field site. As you know, the idea is to sell and redevelop the Trop to help pay for a new waterfront baseball stadium for the Rays.

What we have so far in this part of the deal consists of (1) pretty drawings, (2) a proposed price that does not even retire the existing Trop debt, and (3) no guarantees that the Archstone-Madison group actually has to build anything at all. The city and the developer now have a few precious weeks somehow to wring a proposed contract out of this that will be acceptable to the city -- and the voters.

My Sunday print column will return to this subject, after a few columns in which I deliberately avoided it because, mostly, I was tired of it. It is time now to move beyond general concepts and rhetoric and see whether we can make a deal that the voters would approve in November. Both the Archstone-Madison/Trop part of the deal and the Rays/waterfront stadium part of the deal have to get a lot more specific.

* Lastly, I'm off for a few days starting tomorrow on some personal matters, which means no print columns or live chat next week. I'll try to poke my nose in via the blog just to keep things stirred...

Happy Friday to all and best wishes for the weekend.

The Electoral College and other Monday topics

Hello and happy Monday. Anybody betting on Rocco Mediate today? How about the Lakers?

Some interesting coverage of the stadium proposal over the weekend, including Steve Nohlgren's exploration of alternative sites, and Aaron Sharockman's analysis this AM of political missteps by the Rays. My own thinking is that in the event the currnet plan fails, Plan B a couple years down the road will be... the existing site of Tropicana Field.

Goodbye, Don Richards. Another voice of good old-fashioned news stilled.

Here's an early plug for Tuesday's weekly live chat about current events. Full announcement and a link for "pre-filed" chat comments coming later today.

My Sunday column was about Sen. Bill Nelson's proposal to abolish the Electoral College, and I am happy to report that somehow I got on everybody's bad side -- lots of blog traffic elsewhere along the lines of me being an idiot "Goreocrat" who wants to rig elections for the blue states, is ignorant of the Constitution, etc. Actually, I thought I had made it clear I was reluctant to make the change, arguing that there is indeed an important role for the states in the federalist set-up created by our founders.

Excerpts from the comments:

Bill Nelson is not only a fool, but ignorant of the very basis for which the Electoral College was created. Perhaps someday he will study history and learn the meaning of the “tyranny of the majority”... We live in a democratic republic NOT a democracy. -- Dan C.

We can easily fix the Electoral College to be much more likely to match the popular vote.  It only would take a change to one law (2 USC Sec. 2).  No need for a constitutional amendment or potentially unconstitutional state by state compacts.  -- ram

Ram's proposal is to increase the membership of the U.S. House by several multiples to dilute the small-state bias of the College. This would work, but it also has the minor drawback of, uh, giving us more members of Congress...

Your article in the Tampa Bay section of the St. Petersburg Times for Sunday, June 15, 2008, repeats a common error. In the campaign to be elected as President of the United States, there isn't any such thing as the popular vote. Presidential campaigns are conducted  to garner a majority of the votes of the electoral college. If the campaigns were to be conducted for the popular vote, they would be quite different. -- Edmund A. Hamburger, Pinellas Park

Indeed there is no such literal thing as a "popular vote" in the presidential election, only 50 separate state elections. But I think a colloquial use of "popular vote" is OK as a synonym for either "the sum of the state elections" or "a hypothetical national direct election." Mr. Hamburger is quite correct in saying that a truly national popular vote campaign would be quite different, and in my own opinion, not an improvement as the candidates focused largely on the big pools of voters. If I were a Republican (although I'm not a Democrat either) I would suspect an attempt to pile up votes in the blue states.

Wednesday, June 11

Hello and happy Wednesday to everyone. Sorry the Rays lost last night but maybe they'll win the rubber game with the Halos this afternoon. If you missed yesterday's live chat, be sure to check out the transcript -- we had a good turnout and touched on a lot of topics. Or at least get a laugh out of this photograph from the Mars probe. Or this one.

This morning there's an interesting meeting going on of an outfit called the Pinellas Tourism Development Council. The board is supposed to talk about whether to recommend continuing to use one penny of the county's tourism tax to help pay for a new baseball stadium. The board doesn't have final say, but if there's a lot of opposition, it could be a factor in the decision of the Pinellas County Commission. My colleague Aaron Sharockman is there; check the web site for news.

A couple of thoughts:

* If you were bothered by the news that we have to pay even more for the 2004-2005 hurricane season, through more assessments on insurance policies in Florida, just remember this is the basic model for "insuring" ourselves against hurricanes in Florida. By continuing to freeze Citizens' rates artificially and not doing anything fundamental about the market structure in Florida, we are putting ourselves on the hook for massive assessments in the event of a major storm.

* This accident at the Pinellas waste-to-energy plant was unfortunate at the least, and is going to cost the county some money. But as a side issue, notice that it happened back in mid-May and we are only finding out about it now. In fact, a reader told me about it yesterday on TroxBlog and I passed along the news to our editors. (You might say, "What kind of newspaper are you, to find out things this way?" But newspapers have always learned about news from tipsters; the Internet makes it all the more likely and this seems like a Good Thing to me.) With an incident of this scale, the county should have announced it itself, via its web site, a news release, an announcement to the County Commission.

* I was thinking a similar thing as my fellow columnist Sue Carlton and am glad she said it in her column this morning. I ain't defending vile and disgusting pornography, but wonder whether this is the right priority for the U.S. government...

* I continue not to care about this. Or this. On the other hand, I was glad to see this. But not so much this.

* Comments welcome from folks who were at last night's meeting about the Brooker Creek Preserve in Pinellas County. One e-mail I got this morning made the point that the county seems to be engaging in a large-scale and unnecessary "pre-approval" of using swaths of the preserve for utility purposes, instead of taking it on a case-by-case basis.

Memorial Day 2008 and other topics

Happy Monday and a happy but solemn Memorial Day to you. So far I have erased several different versions of trying to say how much I appreciate this day, because they came across as corny and hackneyed and insincere, especially from someone born in 1959, too young for Vietnam, too old for the rest. in the end I'd just like to say that, if there are those who fear that too many Americans have forgotten what this day means, there are those who have not.

Now, if it is not too trivial, onward to the topics of the day. My Sunday print column returned to the topic of the proposed baseball stadium in St. Petersburg. I argued that with less than two weeks before the St. Petersburg City Council is supposed to start the clock toward a referendum, we know almost nothing about the actual details of the proposed deal. There does seem to be a rising skepticism among both Pinellas County and city officials, but it is hard for me to imagine the City Council won't at least take the first step, on the theory that it can always change its mind before the final decision in August to call an election. But I am wrong about predictions all the time.

Already today I've heard some complaints about this morning's coverage of a traffic accident involving the Bollea family. See the post below and my response.

My Tuesday print column will probably be about whether Gov. Charlie Crist should veto a bill passed by the Legislature that, apparently, makes it easier to destroy sea grasses in Florida. Looks like it was sneaked through at the last minute...

Also, let's pick up the weekly live chat here on Tuesday -- I had to miss last week's and it will be good to catch up.

See you at the Rays game tonight? I went Sunday and saw Carl Crawford's catch and Evan Longoria's game-winning, walk-off hit. Tied for the best record in baseball on Memorial Day! Anything is possible after all.

Which ship is sinking faster, Hillary's or the Rays'?

So, which is in worse trouble, the Tampa Bay Rays stadium plan or the Hillary Clinton campaign?

Lots of grumpy questions from the St. Petersburg City Council at Thursday's workshop about specifics of the plan, including my own personal axe-to-grind: Where is the guarantee that redeveloping the Tropicana Field site will generate enough in new taxes to pay for a new stadium? Later, stadium opponents outnumber supporters by 2-to-1 at the public hearing. Of course that is not necessarily a scientific sample, but you know, everybody had the same notice and the same welcome mat to come.

I mention the presidential race because several interesting things are happening, including the side debate over whether Barack Obama as president would just trot off, wide-eyed, to meet with any durn-tootin' nutbag and tinhorn dictator. I actually think Obama's critics have a point here, and although I usually cannot abide Charles Krauthammer's righteous know-it-all-ness, I thought he made an excellent case in his column we ran this morning.

I was thinking about some sort of satirical presidential-race column for Sunday's print column. Like, I took my car to the Obama Car-Repair Shop, where I find a great crowd of customers oohing and aahing over what a good speech he can give about repairing cars...

How about them Rays?

Hello and happy Wednesday. Check out Aaron Sharockman's story this morning about the Tampa Bay Rays' relatively poor attendance, despite their unprecedented success in the season so far.

My own thinking is that this will improve with time; you can't have an unbroken team history of 10 losing seasons in a row and expect fan support to turn on a dime. I certainly think it's too early to make any kind of declaration that the Tampa Bay area "isn't a baseball town."

I say this as somebody who spent my share of time sitting in a partially filled Tampa Stadium watching the old Bucs under an indifferent ownership, before they became a regular playoff contender (with a new stadium!) in the 1990s. And even the Bucs, at least, had reached the playoffs early in their history, before sliding into a 15-year slump of mediocrity.

The still-new Rays ownership has done everything right when it comes to building fan enthusiasm and community support -- including the most important ingredient, putting a competitive team on the field. I gotta tell you, this is the most exciting and promising Rays team ever. Even so, it wouldn't be surprising to see attendance stay below hoped-for figures for a while longer; the full effect of the team's surge might not even be felt until 2009. But it is hard to imagine the team remaining in the hunt after the All-Star break without seeing some improvement in the attendance numbers.

Now, does anybody besides me feel an emotional tug-of-war between supporting the team and being excited about it, and being skeptical of the Rays' proposed waterfront baseball stadium? I did get one e-mail this morning that made me laugh. It said, in its entirety: "Save the Trop. Go Rays." I am eager to see the team's financing proposal that is supposed to be made public Thursday, but I am worried about whether it will "work," in terms of not requiring tax revenues, or guaranteeing that the sale and redevelopment of the existing Tropicana Field will cover the taxpayers' share of the cost.

Thursday, May 8

Good morning and good Thursday to you. My print column today is about specialty license tags. I propose that before we create a new plate from now on, enough people have to pay in advance. I also propose that we set a fairly high requirement for minimum sales before plates are discontinued. Somehow I do not think the Legislature will rush to take these suggestions. This is hardly the most important topic in Florida but I do try to keep a mix and this seemed like something a lot of people would relate to. I have been thinking a lot lately about "mix" and resolve not to just keep writing columns that say, "Here's yet ANOTHER public issue we should be mad about."

The main story in the newspaper today was the shooter who got shot at the courthouse in downtown St. Petersburg. Congratulations to the bailiffs who reacted quickly and protected the public. It sounds as though the guy had simply gone south, mentally speaking -- not even, necessarily, a rage-filled spouse in a divorce case, which is sort of the stereotypical courthouse risk.

The guy's mother said she didn't think he intended to shoot anybody, but that is not very convincing since the man showed up at the courthouse with a gun in a knapsack, produced it and started firing. She also blamed his downturn on reading conspiracy-oriented web sites. But if web sites could make otherwise "normal" people nutty, we would have more nuts than we already do. It's a modern twist on blaming bad music for bad behavior, etc... or Socrates for rebellious kids in Athens, for that matter.

I did check out the web site the mother mentioned, www.freedomforceinternational.org. I did not see any open advocacy of violence, just the general accusation that much of the world is falling under "collectivist" power and that a minority of informed individuals in the world need to resist it. The group's Latin motto is, Impotentes defendere libertatem non possunt, which translates more or less as, "The powerless cannot defend liberty." (Hey, that degree is paying off already.)

Elsewhere: my Sunday column was about St. Petersburg's attempt to annex part of Tierra Verde; the latest news is that the city has delayed today's hearing in response to the county's objections. But the article doesn't reflect much concern on the part of the city officials to reports of voter intimidation -- instead, it's portrayed as a routine delay in an otherwise apple-pie annexation that the city intends to pursue. I'd like to see a little more acknowledgment of these problems from the city, along with SOME expression of concern on the impact on Tierra Verde, instead of just, "Hey, the property owner wants in and we want to grab some land, so what's wrong with it?"

The Rays lost last night but are still above .500 this late in the season, and in second place in the AL East. The Orlando Magic aren't done yet. My puppy Louie, now almost four months old, is briefly wearing that medical device known in my house as "The Cone of Shame" to protect a couple of stitches in his belly where we had an umbilical hernia fixed. It's getting hotter and more humid around here, in other words more like a "normal" May.

Lastly, either you know what I mean, or you don't care in the slightest, when I say that I wonder if tonight we will meet Jacob. Does this mean I am hypnotized by the mass culture? Probably. Please forgive this stream-of-consciousness blog post. I am off to try to learn something new in the world, if that's possible, despite the claim of Ecclesiastes that there is no such thing. Maybe not, but maybe it will be new to me.

Friday, April 25, 2007

* Okay, so we Floridians will definitely get to vote in November on a proposed "tax swap." We would get rid of most of our local school property taxes. We would replace it in two ways: (1) An increase in the state sales tax of up to another penny on the dollar, and (2) Other tax increases passed by the state Legislature. This is according to the state Taxation and Budget Reform Commission, which meets every 20 years to propose changes to the state tax structure.

Certainly, this idea would reduce property-tax bills by something like 25 percent on average. But we'd be paying back some of that money elsewhere -- in sales taxes at the cash register, and in other taxes that the Legislature chooses to levy. The big problem with this proposal is that it's only HALF a proposal. In theory, the Legislature has to "hold education harmless" by not reducing its budget. In practice, who knows WHAT the Legislature will end up doing?

* Meanwhile, the tax commission also has just voted to put expanding school vouchers on the November ballot as well -- a measure to make sure the Constitution permits the use of tax dollars for private schools even if they are religious. This idea was driven by former Gov. Jeb Bush's appointees to the commission and to me is pretty ideological and small-bore -- more of a legislative agenda than the kind of basic "reform" the commission was created to consider. I'm sure others disagree.

* A surprising note on the baseball stadium in this brief item in today's paper. Tampa Bay Rays finance guru Michael Kalt is quoted as saying that the Rays will NOT ask for the tax revenues generated by redeveloping Tropicana Field to help build a new stadium What does this mean? I don't know yet. It might mean only that the Rays are now proposing to "de-couple" the Trop site from paying for the new stadium -- and outright asking taxpayers to foot the bill in general, with only the HOPE that the Trop site generates offsetting tax revenues. If so, this is a fundamental movement away from the entire original deal and I can't imagine it being acceptable to the local governments at all. More soon.

* Happy Friday.

And these other Wednesday topics

* In case you missed it, Tuesday's live chat on the proposed baseball stadium in St. Petersburg drew a record turnout and number of comments posted, more than 330 at last check. I'd say overall there was more opposition expressed than support, but supporters made well-stated arguments for the possible benefits of the new stadium and a redevelopment of Tropicana Field. When pinned down, I put my support at 5.5 on a scale of 10 -- one poster (probably rightly) characterized me as thinking it was a neat-o idea, with a lot of financial and potential environmental problems. Check out the chat transcript.

* The Pinellas County Commission voted to ban discrimination against heterosexuals, homosexuals and bisexuals -- but not against the transgendered (think Steve Stanton). This seemed to make just about everybody mad, from family-values crusader David Caton to leading human-rights supporter Karen Doering, who called it "not even close to a victory." The ordinance prohibits discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodation -- I like to point out that if my landlord or boss is gay, it keeps him or her from kicking me out just because I'm straight. At the least, the county agreed to keep studying the transgendered issue...

* Bruuuuuuuuuuuce!

Oh, nuts, and other Friday topics

This is almost too obvious a point to make, but -- doesn't the Florida Legislature have anything better to do than to debate fake testicles that some folks choose to hang from the back of their trucks? As my colleague Jennifer Liberto reports this morning, this issue has taken up precious time over the past couple of days in Tallahassee. My own thinking is that the "truck nutz" are tacky but not obscene, and not exactly the business of the government. If you have a coherent argument as to why this is a legitimate exercise of the police power of the state -- other than, "I don't like it'' -- I am all ears.

Elsewhere:

* This is a novel idea from state Sen. Dan Webster, R-Winter Garden, to let the state's tobacco trust fund "buy" Alligator Alley for $500-million, and then collect tolls over future decades. My first reaction is that it's a step better than just turning over the state's major arteries to private corporations.

* Florida's sheriffs who have taken over child abuse cases from the Department of Children and Families have generally done a good job. But they can't do more work for less money, and this is one place where their warnings of budget cuts should be taken seriously. I also thought we had a strongly written editorial this morning about the Legislature's refusal to close even the smallest tax loophole to meet any of the state's needs.

* My co-columnist Sue Carlton lets the headlines do the talking about the history of Hillsborough Elections Supervisor Buddy Johnson.

* I'm planning to get back to our weekly live chat at noon on Tuesday -- a separate announcement to come, but I figured I'd throw in an early plug. Topic A these past few days has been the proposed baseball stadium -- if you haven't checked out the lively comments on the past few blog posts, give it a whirl.

Tuesday topics: Hillary, Barack, corporate welfare, no tax reform

Okay, happy Tuesday to everybody. No live chat today, remember. Just to get things started, these quick observations from the morning's news:

* I am already tired of hearing Hillary Clinton blinking her eyes innocently and saying Florida's votes "deserve to be counted," as in this morning's interview with Times political editor Adam Smith. She's the one who signed the no-campaign pledge, and went along with snubbing Florida in the first place. Does she think we're stupid? No, wait, don't answer that. At any rate, Barack Obama apparently does, given his observation the other day that folks who support gun rights or religion might just be "bitter." I don't say this often, but I thought George Will had an insightful column about this today, invoking memories of the intellectual superiority (and vote-total inferiority!) of Adlai Stevenson.

* See Theresa Blackwell's story about the Nielsen Co. laying off workers and outsourcing jobs to "consultants" from India, after receiving $3.1 million in state and local "incentives" to locate to Oldsmar. I assume the company will be paying back the money on a pro-rated basis?

* Hmm, is ANY further chance at tax reform in Florida dead for this year? That's the implication of the latest news from the Taxation and Budget Reform Commission. If so, it's a shame. I argued in a recent column that the commission already had failed to take a fundamental look at Florida's tax structure. Now, not even the proposed "tax swap" of school taxes for a higher sales tax might not make the 2008 ballot. Couple this with Florida's relative inability to do anything about insurance and this state's political leadership, over the past two years, will have failed to address the two fundamental problems of the state.

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.

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.

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...

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?

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.

... and these other Thursday topics

Okay, I think I am officially finished with "jail inmate claims to have been abused by deputies" stories.

Consider this from this morning's news account:

The Hillsborough Sheriff's Office said Wednesday that deputies moved to subdue Rayburn after he tried to stab a deputy with a glass crack pipe on Oct. 3, 2006. He then threw the pipe, which shattered and sent fragments flying at a deputy's head, according to a sheriff's report....

Rayburn has been arrested 17 times in Florida since 1993, state records show.

* * *

Meanwhile, I do not know whether it even warrants a comment, but did you see this story about two teens who believe they were discriminated against by Southwest Airlines because they are, you know, young and pretty? I suppose that lying across rows of seats, getting into a shouting match with other passengers and generally acting like brats had nothing to do with it. "They were discriminating against us because we were young, decent looking girls," one of them says. Of course, that must be it!

* * *

On a more serous topic, here is my colleague Asjylyn Loder's story this morning about the aftermath of the big power outage. One angle that caught my eye was the bit about "aging equipment." Considering the favorable regulatory environment in Florida and the profits that energy companies make, I would think they would be keeping things perfectly up to date... if they have been hauling away the cash all these years without doing that, something needs to change.

Monday, Feb. 25 -- assorted topics

Happy Monday. I thought Julie Christie should have won best actress. But I just saw Michael Clayton the other day and thought Tilda Swinton did a great job as supporting actress. On the other hand, maybe she was born to play an uptight corporate lawyer... it'll be interesting to see her range.

But what the heck do I know? Let's catch up with a few other things:

* Another goooooood investigative story by my "retired" colleague Lucy Morgan on Saturday. This one is about a loophole in state law that lets folks "retire" and collect a pension while keeping their salary. It's now costing $300 million a year. In general, may I add, government is the last bastion of the "pension" in the first place -- a vanishing institution in the private sector.

* Another little gift from the insurance industry, with State Farm's announcement that it will no longer write new homeowner policies in Florida at all. If I understand the story right, it's the STATE's fault, for trying to get premiums to come down in exchange for putting the taxpayers more on the hook last year. The nerve of the state! Here's how it should work, I gather: the public sector takes all of the risk, and the private sector makes all the money.

* Shouldn't St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker have been at the first public hearing on the baseball stadium on Thursday evening? It is his staff, after all, that signed the secret deal with the Tampa Bay Rays and that has been pushing this whole thing. It's Baker who has put the City Council in the position of being the front guy. Meanwhile, the mayor is officially "uncommitted." Right. Looks to me like his strategy is, if the deal falls apart or the voters kill it, no fault of his; if it's a success, heck, it's another Great Day in St. Petersburg.

* My Sunday column had a little fun with Attorney General Bill McCollum and U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor for sending out tons of press releases. In McCollum's case, he is vigorously focused on child pornography, gangs and the threats of computer crime, which is of course a good thing in itself, but overall he conveys the impression that he lives in a Dark and Dangerous World, kinda like Rudy Giuliani. As for Castor, well, she is Fighting for You, and says so on the hour.

* My favorite article of the weekend dealt with the question of whether our society is becoming stupid on purpose. I am wondering whether I can develop a column out of this...

* Lastly, let's have a live chat about current events at noon on Tuesday! I'll post a separate announcement later today with details.

Thursday, Feb. 21, 2008

Happy Thursday. Happy fourth-episode-of-the-season Lost day. Any Losties in the crowd? Any theories on what's going on? Who is Mr. Abbadon?

Here's the link to today's column (We don't need no stinkin' higher ed) as it appeared in print and on the web. My editor suggested a slight rephrasing near the end but otherwise I think it's the same as what I posted yesterday. I also see our lead editorial is on the same subject today.

This puts me in the market for a Sunday column topic. I have been saving some string for a column about our state attorney general, Bill McCollum, whose focus is considerably different from our last attorney general, some guy named Crist. My plan B is a column based on the chef who, uh, seems to have gussied up his resume -- not as much about him, per se, as about our society, how eager we are both to spread and to accept b.s. these days... the more "reality" TV there is, the bigger a liar everybody is. I mean, really, if a guy tells me he's a Knight of the Royal Whatchamacallit, I am pretty much gonna want to see a photo of him and the Queen.

On various other fronts:

* I tend to believe this woman. I tend not to believe this woman. I am content to wait for the case to unfold to hear EVERYTHING that led up to the incident involving this guy. The video is harsh and maybe it does tell the whole story. But we'll see.

* The issue in the case of these two guys is not whether "the deputies were racist, so the evidence is thrown out," but whether it was "the deputies had no reason to stop and search the car." If their only reason was that it had Florida license tags and there were two guys who looked like "terrorists" in it, then the case is in trouble.

* I just wanted to give a big thumbs-up to my colleagues Alex Leary and Connie Humburg for this report on how much is spent on lobbying our state Legislature -- more than $200-million, they figure from poring through the records.

* The first in a series of public hearings on the proposed baseball stadium in St. Petersburg is this evening. Both sides are gearing up supporters who will wear color-coded T-shirts. The timing is weird to me, since the city has already issued the invitation to developers, and won't even get their proposals back until March 18. At any rate, I am not prepared to conclude anything about overall public opinion from which side gets the most T-shirts...

Cheers to all.

Wednesday. Feb. 20, 2008

Hello and happy Wednesday. Happy lunar eclipse day, with totality just after 10 p.m. I noticed that the newspaper story added the helpful fact that you can look at it without it burning your retinas. Whew! :)

A couple of things:

* Thank goodness the Board of Education made a decision on this evolution business. The board agreed to keep it in the curriculum although labeled as a "theory." That's OK by me, since gravity and light are just theories too. Next up, I understand the board will be voting item by item on the periodic table of the elements.

* I am with those folks who say Fidel Castro's resignation is not especially significant since the regime has not changed. Now, if they let everybody ought of prison, apologized for murdering and torturing folks and gave everybody their stuff back, it might be different. (There are some folks who might say the same thing about Guantanamo.)

* This story about the Tampa Bay Rays says the team is willing to put up its $150-million share of a new stadium up front, instead of borrowing that sum against future team rent payments. This actually is not that big a difference from before -- the team would still borrow the $150-million against its own credit, instead of creating a new entity to borrow against the future rent. But at first blush I like this better, since it creates a total separation from the team's share and the public's share. Now, as for guaranteeing that we get the other $300-million out of redeveloping Tropicana Field...

* And notice this story about the president of our state Senate, Ken Pruitt, who wants to go back to having an elected state education commissioner, and wants a constitutional amendment making it clear the Legislature -- and not the Board of Governors -- is in charge of setting tuition in this state. Now, since it has been less than a decade since the voters said they did NOT want an elected education commissioner, and less time than that since they said the wanted a Board of Governors to run the universities, both ideas seem a little rash to me...

* Jim Johnson, I saw your note about "skedaddled." You caught me -- I did not post on Tuesday because I was still in shock from actually having to pretend to work. I was not happy with Tuesday's column, sort of discombobulated from not having a chat, and still answering a bunch of e-mails. Also, if it didn't involved a footnote with a Latin citation, I didn't remember how to write it.

What's on everybody's mind today? What should I write about for tomorrow's print column?

This is a Wednesday morning blog entry with an entirely gratuitous photo of Alanis Morissette

First of all, I would just like to say that it is not fair that Sean Daly gets to interview Alanis Morissette and I have to write about Amendment 1 and property taxes. So there.

On today's fronts:

* This is an important story about Florida's universities. For my money, higher education is the Biggest Crisis Nobody Gets Yet in this state. In fact, we are in deep denial over the problem: a recent statewide poll gave higher ed in Florida a bigger "excellent" or "good" rating than any other institution.

* Apparently, state CFO Alex Sink will say all sorts of interesting things --provided that you ask her first.

* At this news of a possible countywide recycling program in Pinellas County, will longtime opponent and St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker twirl his mustache and try to figure out how to keep it out of the city?

* My colleague Sue Carlton, in a nice way, calls out Linda Saul-Sena of the Tampa City Council for her freelance and somewhat clumsy threatening of Ikea. Here's hoping Linda doesn't post an anti-Sue video on YouTube!

* They're trying to regulate a swingers' club in Pasco County. Speaking as a former resident of Pasco County (Port Richey, 1982-1983), I feel kinda like those cranky establishment guys in the '60s who were cranky because they missed out on the Summer of Love.

Thumbs up, thumbs down

* Thumbs up to state Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty for smacking Allstate. The company is being disingenuous by claiming it has "cooperated" with the state's investigation of its homeowner rates -- most of what the company provided was merely information the state already had. Blocking new auto business hits the company where it hurts.

* Thumbs down to the Tampa Bay Rays and to the local politicians who are taking their money. Good grief! Is this Hicksville, where the way for the big-city big-shots to curry favor is to waltz into town and spread around a little symbolic dough? Are both parties too dense to understand that they are not supposed to be all buddy-buddy with each other?

* Thumbs down to Tampa Bay Water, the regional utility that decided to hire a new executive director on its own speeded-up schedule without bothering much about notifying the public. I don't care whether they can get their own lawyers to give them a friendly opinion that it was within the letter of the law. I would think that a board that is responsible for the Biggest Boondoggle That Finally Works in local history -- the desalination plant -- would not be messing around like this.

* Thumbs down to Barack Obama especially, and the Democratic candidates in general, for continuing to trash Florida in the primary race. Here an article by my colleague Aaron Sharockman. How can these folks stand up to the world, if they're too cowardly to quit pandering to South Carolina? South Carolina!

* No thumbs, just a shout-out to my pal Wayne Garcia at Creative Loafing and his current story dealing with the proposed baseball stadium in St. Petersburg. Personally, I think most of the "12 reasons" listed can be overcome. But as you can tell from my own columns, including today's, I too am plenty skeptical of the city's handling of this so far.

I'm off to St. Pete City Hall for two events today, the approval of the request for developer proposals for the Tropicana Field site, and a public hearing on a proposed annexation of part of Tierra Verde by St. Petersburg, much opposed by local residents.