Bradenton Times News Articles

Republicans put a full court press on U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice that ultimately squashed plans to appoint her as Secretary of State. They have also waged an unprecedented campaign against Chuck Hagel's nomination as Defense Secretary, based on perceptions of whether or not he'll be hawkish enough in the Middle East. But if they want to find fault in nominations to key positions which are likely to gain real traction with average Americans, there are much better battles to be fought.

How Will We Grow? A Conversation With The Community is a 190-page staff report, analyzing, what it says to be, alternative growth plans for Manatee County. The premise is: keep doing what we're doing and we'll keep getting what we've gotten -- and that would be, sprawl, sprawl, sprawl. The important question is: who is responsible for that?

At Tuesday's BOCC meeting, no one disputed that Ed Hunzeker performed his duties as county administrator competently, or that the county wasn't in a better place than many others that have also had to wind down budgets in the face of declining revenues. But it wasn't a question of whether he should be kept on. The board was voting on whether to significantly increase Hunzeker's compensation package, stuffing it full of lucrative benefits at taxpayer expense, while setting dangerous precedents for future administrative-level employees. In that regard, they failed to make an adequate case, in part because the board's chair was not even honest with the public about the proposal.

Programs like DROP were designed to provide a path for younger, and presumably cheaper, public employees to move up, while those who had become eligible for a retirement pension were given a sweetener in order to clear the way. In theory, there are multiple benefits to such policies in an economy that suffers from overcapacity and the high unemployment it helps to promote. But in Florida, it has too often been used to pad paychecks for the well-connected at the expense of the taxpayer. Cash-strapped governments should think long and hard about spending extra taxpayer money to keep retirement-eligible employees on the public payroll.

Those little mini-casinos, which continue to inhabit more and more strip malls throughout Manatee County and the rest of Florida, got yet another reprieve this week when Manatee County Commissioners gave a cold shoulder to Sheriff Brad Steube's pleas for legislative assistance. Often called “internet cafés,” these businesses operate within a shady legal loophole that every member of the Florida Legislature with an IQ above 70 understands is being knowingly abused. The state's outright refusal to act has nothing to do with the validity of Steube's concerns and everything to do with a tangled web of special interests.

The FairTax is an idea whose time has come. The Congress, both House and Senate, both Republicans and Democrats, have demonstrated time after time, that they are unable to restrain themselves with the public purse. This renders them “unfit to govern.” Even the “fiscal crises” legislation passed by the current congress had enough pork in it to add $74 billion more to the deficit.

At a work session this week, Manatee County staff presented the board of county commissioners with some possible ways to “lower taxes” in a way that would be “revenue neutral,” one of which was to assess a stormwater collection fee from residential and commercial taxpayers. This sort of shell-game in which governments can disingenuously advertise a lower property tax while making up revenues with other “fees” has several negative impacts, from tax consequences for the property owners to inequitable distribution of the costs and fees. We believe Manatee County taxpayers should reject any measure to move toward such policies.

If ever a school district needed a fresh start, it would be Manatee. Plagued for the last three years by publicly discussed yet unaddressed budget problems, an overmatched superintendent, and an inattentive board, the district imploded in mid-2012. Angry, puzzled residents are asking how things got this way.

2012 was a particularly gruesome year for firearm deaths, capped off by the tragic massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT last month. Arriving on the heels of several historic mass shootings, as well as a host of arguments which had escalated to deadly altercations, often with claims of “self-defense,” the event has flung the gun control issue back into the center of our society. But the debate is often clouded with delusions on both sides that simple solutions are available, a fallacy that fails to recognize the complexity of our culture, especially when it comes to our relationship with guns.

The long awaited forensic audit of the Manatee County School District finances has been presented to the School Board amidst a haze of semi opaqueness. The board has been challenged by how and when to present these findings, but in a typical MCSD fashion, it was presented at a time during the day virtually impossible for most mortals to attend.