A round-up of Sunday editorials from Florida’s leading newspapers:
Tampa Bay Times — Times recommends: Kriseman for mayor
St. Petersburg deserves a mayor worthy of its charm and potential, a mayor who seizes opportunities for the city and helps shape Tampa Bay into one of the nation’s great metropolitan areas. Over the past four years, Mayor Bill Foster has demonstrated he lacks the skill to build consensus, the imagination to solve problems and the vision to move the city forward. Rick Kriseman has the breadth of experience and leadership qualities to lead St. Petersburg with new energy and a fresh approach.
Foster asks voters to judge him on his record. It is not a flattering report card. The Pier is closed on the downtown waterfront because voters would not follow the mayor’s lead. The Tampa Bay Rays are four years closer to leaving Tropicana Field and perhaps the region because the mayor could not negotiate an agreement to let the team consider other stadium sites. Promising city efforts to improve struggling St. Petersburg schools and bring prosperity to Midtown wilted because the mayor failed to make them a priority.
On each of these issues, Kriseman is better positioned to build goodwill and move the city forward. He promises to forge consensus on a design for a new pier and get it built. He wants to help the Rays increase attendance. But he also recognizes the best way to protect St. Petersburg taxpayers is to negotiate a fair agreement that lets the team look at stadium sites in Tampa — and not simply watch the countdown on a long-term lease to play in an outdated stadium.
Kriseman strongly supported public education during his six years in the Legislature. As mayor, he would keep working to incorporate community service more broadly into public schools. In Midtown, he can regain community support that has eroded under Foster. Kriseman is genuinely more interested — and not just at election time — in helping the city’s disadvantaged neighborhoods. He better understands the connection between good schools, more jobs and safer communities. Five elementary schools with a high portion of poor, minority students in south St. Petersburg have lower reading scores than any school in Hillsborough County. Public education is not the mayor’s primary responsibility, but this is a crisis that constrains the city’s future. Yet there is little urgency at City Hall to work with the school district to improve the situation.
The Bradenton Herald — Rep. Vern Buchanan’s pragmatic vote on debt bill is commendable
While the Republican Party falls into senseless internal combat after fringe elements fought to tank the federal government, one of Manatee County’s congressman offered a sound statement after his vote to re-open government and prevent a debt default.
A Longboat Key Republican, Rep. Vern Buchanan issued this common sense remark: “Jeopardizing the full faith and credit of the United States by defaulting on our obligations was not an option. There is no question that we need to reduce spending and balance the budget, but not by degrading America’s credit rating and destroying our credibility.”
Buchanan was one of 87 Republicans in the House and 27 in the Senate who joined Democrats in approving the bipartisan legislation, essential to avoiding another economic disaster. After ignoring the shrill and unreasonable voices against the measure, some leading Republicans lashed out at the opposition.
Manatee County’s other congressman, Rep. Tom Rooney, joined Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and other Republicans in the reckless rejection of the legislation. Rooney’s sprawling district includes East Manatee.
Florida Sen. Bill Nelson joined his fellow Democrats in unanimous support of the bill.
Buchanan also offered an observation in the wake of the weeks-long congressional stalemate: “Final passage at the 11th hour came at a cost of weakened public confidence in Washington’s ability to manage the nation’s affairs.” Indeed, public approval ratings fell — particularly for the GOP.
The Daytona Beach News-Journal — Manfre makes bad call on car
Flagler County Sheriff Jim Manfre called his decision to take his department vehicle on a personal road trip a “mistake.” He’s right.
It’s too bad the sheriff didn’t use better judgment when he decided during the summer to travel to Virginia in his department-issued Dodge Charger. Manfre was visiting his daughter and his son-in-law.
It’s easy to understand Manfre’s personal motivation for the trip.
But it’s hard to defend taking a county-owned car on this long journey north.
Sheriff’s Office policy allows deputies to take department vehicles on out-of-county trips, if they obtain permission from a supervisor. Manfre, of course, is the boss, and answers only to the voters of Flagler County. But the fact Manfre is an elected official doesn’t give him unfettered power over public resources. He should always act with the knowledge that he is accountable to the public for how he uses county resources.
The News-Journal reviewed copies of statements showing Manfre’s use of government-issued credit cards and gas cards. There were no records indicating he used his government-issued cards on the trip to Virginia or on any other out-of-state trips. Charges were associated with trips to a school resource officer conference in Orlando, the State Sheriff’s Conference in Marco Island and lunches with local judges.
These are all legitimate public expenses.
But the trip to Virginia is a different matter. Manfre said he “has the right” to take the car because he could need it to “get back into town quickly.” It’s not likely that he could drive back to Flagler “quickly” from northwestern Virginia. This was a personal trip that offered no real benefit to the county.
The Florida Times-Union — Satire alert: Wake up and take back America
The following should send shivers down the spines of real Americans.
A headline in last Friday’s edition of The Florida Times-Union said it all: “Hispanics rewriting American menu.”
The story below it revealed that salsa is overtaking ketchup as American’s condiment of choice.
Not only is that disturbing, but tortillas now outsell American standard hamburger and hot dog buns.
Americans are eating more tortilla chips than potato chips for goodness sake.
Burritos, quesadillas, tacos, chipolte ranch dressing.
The Gainesville Sun – Mosquitoes not just a nuisance
While cooler weather might have lulled area residents into being complacent about mosquitoes, a case of West Nile virus should alert everyone to the continuing threat of mosquito-borne diseases.
This week, a 64-year-old man became the first person reported with the virus in Alachua County this year. He is believed to have contracted it locally.
Most infected people show no symptoms, but others can develop flu-like symptoms such a fever and fatigue. Although just a small percentage develop a sometimes fatal neurologic illness, the problem should still be taken seriously.
County Health Department Administrator Paul Myers said September had the largest increase in disease-transmitting mosquitoes seen in the county in six years. Mosquitoes will continue to be an problem until the first hard freeze, he said.
Last year, three suspected West Nile cases led to discussions about increased mosquito spraying. While the city of Gainesville sprays for mosquitoes, Alachua County does not.
Health officials recommended the county consider doing so, but commissioners dragged out the discussion and failed to take action. Though there are questions about the effectiveness and cost of spraying, commissioners should have considered the issue again this year before another West Nile case turned up.
In the absence of action, residents will have to be more vigilant. Draining standing water, using repellent and avoiding outdoor activities at dusk and dawn are among the recommended steps.
It’s up to residents to take responsibility for preventing the mosquito nuisance from becoming a more serious problem.
The Lakeland Ledger — Park Award, Attendance: Parks Strike Gold
It’s hard to argue with the experts. So when the National Recreation and Park Association awarded the Florida Park Service its Gold Medal Award for Excellence last week, it was indeed a proud moment for the agency and for all Floridians.
That it was the third time the Florida Park Service earned the gold medal, and that no other state has won it more than once, gave our state even more reason to brag.
It gets even better. The Park Service announced this week that attendance at the state’s 161 state parks, and nine greenways and trails, eclipsed last year’s record number by breaking the 25 million-visitor mark for the first time.
Awards and attendance records are wonderful, and officials at the Florida Park Service and its parent Department of Environment Protection have every reason to feel good, the real star in all this is Florida’s great outdoors.
The winner is our woods and waters, and beaches and trails, that the 25.5 million visitors came to see and revel in last year — an impressive 592,615 more visitors than the year before.
In the process, reports the Park Service, the parks had a $1.16 billion economic impact on the state, generated $75 million in sales tax revenue and supported 23,000 jobs. That’s real gold.
The excellent numbers should serve as an indisputable reminder to policymakers, from the Legislature to the water-management districts to our county commissions, just how much people value Florida’s wonderful outdoors.
ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMY
Saving our rivers and springs is not just environmentally smart, it is economically smart. Setting aside green spaces for future recreational purposes, as well as for watershed and wildlife habitat, is not just environmentally friendly, but economically friendly.
The Miami Herald — Desperation in Venezuela
The incompetence of President Nicolás Maduro’s government in Venezuela, coupled with rampant corruption, is reaching dangerous levels that could portend a social explosion in that politically tense nation. With inflation reaching just under 50 percent for September and shortages of basic consumer goods multiplying by the day, there is no clear path to resolution of the country’s increasingly severe problems.
In the latest sign that the economy is falling apart, Toyota announced last week that it would have to close for two weeks because of delays in getting dollars from the state currency board, Cadivi. A shortage of materials left the company, a prominent multi-national struggling to remain productive amid the economic chaos, unable to keep its doors open.
The shortage of dollars is the inevitable result of the currency controls imposed by the late Hugo Chávez, founder of the Bolivarian Revolution who died earlier this year and left the country in the clumsy hands of his (and the Cuban regime’s) hand-picked heir, Mr. Maduro. Since then, the country has been wracked by a series of crises made worse by a heavy-handed government weighed down by its woeful ignorance of basic economics.
Take the so-called “toilet paper conspiracy.” (No, we’re not making this up.) A few weeks ago, as the shortage of toilet paper became acute, the government seized a private factory manufacturing that basic commodity and declared a “temporary occupation.” Mr. Maduro said the country’s oligarchs and the political opposition conspired to create the shortage, instead of placing blame where it belongs — a rigid system of government-imposed price controls that has destroyed the private sector.
Cronyism aggravates the problem. In 2007, the government nationalized the electric utility of Caracas formerly owned by AES, a U.S. company. Blackouts were rare up to then, but since have become painfully common. Some 70 percent of the country was left in the dark for almost 24 hours last month. Mr. Maduro predictably called this an “electrical coup” and blamed the extreme right instead of the government overseers.
The Orlando Sentinel — Hospice fraud case maddens — and saddens
When I first learned that things were amiss at Hospice of the Comforter, I felt betrayed.
Hospice is an organization that I have personally supported and professionally promoted.
I know many of you have done the same. Once, after I wrote about all the amazing work Hospice did for dying patients in 2009, readers began dropping off donations in the Sentinel lobby. Checks. Gift cards. Even an envelope full of cash.
So when news broke that Hospice’s CEO was getting $200,000 worth of bonuses to fill beds with patients who weren’t actually dying — some of whom were his personal friends, according to a whistle-blower complaint — yeah, it made me mad.
When I learned that taxpayer money was involved — millions of dollars in improperly collected Medicare payments — I got even madder.
Yet now, I’m madder than ever— because it looks like the whole case may end with a slap on the wrist.
According to papers filed last week, the feds are asking Hospice to pay back only $3 million of more than $10 million it was accused of defrauding from Medicare.
This is what’s wrong with America.
With health care. And with our justice system.
Steal a television, and you get locked up for years. Take a few million bucks from taxpayers — and you get a deal.
There’s no disincentive to try to fleece the public. Getting caught and paying fines becomes simply the cost of doing business.
In the case of Hospice — the largest provider of end-of-care life in Central Florida — it was the nonprofit’s own former vice president of finance, Doug Stone, who blew the whistle.
Stone said he learned that Hospice was taking millions in Medicare payments to provide care to patients who weren’t actually terminally ill.
The Ocala StarBanner — Punishment and crime
When Florida executed William Happ on Tuesday, there was palpable grief — but not for him. It was for Angela Crowley, the young woman he brutally killed near Crystal River in 1986, and for her family’s endless suffering.
It should not take nearly three decades for the guilty to get their just deserts. But whenever the state takes a life in the name of justice, it has a moral obligation to be sure the execution isn’t “cruel” and the condemned is genuinely guilty.
Both of those aspects had carried elements of doubt in Happ’s case.
His death — at the state prison near Starke — was administered via an untested mix of drugs that several experts challenged as medically unethical. In the end, the chemicals did their job.
And as for the evidence of his guilt, that too was imperfect. Though compelling, the case against Happ was circumstantial — his fingerprint on the outside of Crowley’s car, but no identifiable DNA anywhere; no eyewitnesses to the kidnapping, aggravated sexual battery and strangling. Happ had an alibi (later disputed). A jailhouse informant, who said Happ confessed, declined to testify but his account of the crime was read to the jury.
When a Lake County jury convicted Happ in 1989, its recommendation for the death penalty was 9-3 — short of the unanimous standard required in some states. There were also trial errors that fueled years of appeals.
All of these factors cast shadows on the certainty of the case and caused many of the delays on the road to execution. Few people believed Happ innocent but, against the high stakes of the death penalty, any doubt is troubling.
The Pensacola News-Journal — We are not pawns
Now that the dust is settling following more than two weeks of a partial federal government shutdown and a deal to increase the country’s credit limit, it’s time to examine the fallout.
President Barack Obama was right Thursday when he said “There are no winners here.” He was referring to the end of the 16-day government shutdown because no federal budget was in place Oct. 1.
Not only did Americans have to suffer through the theater that has become congressional politics, our national parks and monuments were closed.
He also is right when he said if Republicans want to change or repeal laws, they have to get control of the government.
“To all my friends in Congress, understand that how business is done in this town has to change,” he said.
“You don’t like a particular policy or a particular president? Then argue for your position. Go out there and win an election,” the president said. The comments were reported by Michael O’Brien, a political reporter for NBC News.
The fight to defund the president’s Obamacare failed. It is time to move on, not continue to use the American people as pawns in this political chess game.
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio is right when he says this week’s agreement solves nothing; it just delays the problem a few months. The country is nearly $17 trillion in debt because of irresponsible leadership and reckless spending. On Thursday he was interviewed by Fox News and discussed the debt.
“I’ve now been here three years; nothing has been done to seriously address that,” he said during the interview. “And nothing was done (Wednesday) night to seriously address that. So once again we’ve put off this major issue that only continues to grow and gets harder to solve as time goes on.”
Rubio, a rising star in his party, should encourage fellow Republicans to stop the obstructions and start doing their job.
That means finding common ground with Democrats to fund the government and increase the debt ceiling.
Many times a deal, especially legislation, leaves everyone wanting more. That’s the blessing and the curse of compromise.
If that doesn’t happen in the next few weeks, we will be right back to being on the brink of another shutdown in January. Those same Republicans should be reminded they traditionally were the party of personal responsibility. True conservatives should demand stability from their government, not the short-term budgets and a crisis every few months.
As the president said, if the GOP wants to fight the fight over Obamacare, do it through legal, constitutional means, not put our government and economy in peril.
In short, get over it and get on with it.
The Palm Beach Post — Scripps investment still holds great potential
Scripps Florida has not created the biotech jobs bonanza former Gov. Jeb Bush touted when he recruited the famed research institute. But it is certainly premature and probably inaccurate to call the state and Palm Beach County investment in Scripps a failure.
That investment, though, has been considerable. Mr. Bush had the easy part. Ten years ago, he took roughly $300 million from the federal stimulus package his brother signed and got the Legislature to spend it on salaries for Scripps’ employees. That money runs out next year. Former Palm Beach County Commissioner Karen Marcus, now a Scripps consultant, says the institute has drawn roughly $350 million in grants and will be running on its own.
The Panama City News-Herald — Preventing bullying
The story of Rebecca Ann Sedwick, the 12-year-old Lakeland girl who committed suicide last month allegedly because she was bullied on the Internet by other girls, is both heartbreaking and infuriating.
It also is a cautionary tale about the limits of government power.
Rebecca jumped from a cement factory tower on Sept. 9. Her family says she was “terrorized” in school and online for months by as many as 15 other girls. The Polk County Sheriff’s Office last week arrested a 14-year-old and a 12-year-old and charged them with aggravated stalking in Rebecca’s death.
The alleged bullying started last December when Rebecca and the two suspects were middle school students. The harassment allegedly began over a boy that Rebecca had previously been dating. The 14-year-old allegedly sent Rebecca menacing messages on Facebook calling her ugly, telling her to “drink bleach and die,” and encouraging her to kill herself, police said.
Polk County school officials were made aware of the conflict between the girls and intervened, separating Rebecca from the other girls. That didn’t work, though, and Rebecca eventually was home-schooled for awhile before transferring to another school.
However, the bullying allegedly continued online and became too much for Rebecca.
Children have been cruel to each other forever. Modern technology, though, makes it easier for those taunts and torments to reach their victim anywhere 24/7, and for much of the world to see — permanently. That increases the angst and embarrassment (often at an age when kids already are consumed by emotional turmoil) and makes the victim feel trapped — not even a bedroom at home can provide refuge.
The Tallahassee Democrat – When facts and opinion collide
“Comment is free, but facts are sacred.” — C.P. Scott, Manchester Guardian, 1921
C.P. Scott’s famous quote has hung on my bulletin board for several years, but it wasn’t until this week that I wrestled with its implications.
The Los Angeles Times announced that letters to the editor claiming that humans have not caused climate change would not be published. Why? Because it’s not true.
Letters editor Paul Thornton wrote: “Simply put, I do my best to keep errors of fact off the letters page; when one does run, a correction is published. Saying ‘there’s no sign humans have caused climate change’ is not stating an opinion, it’s asserting a factual inaccuracy.”
Then two local environmental activists asked me whether the Democrat would consider such a policy. The short answer? No. The long answer? Here goes …
Indeed, in editing My Views, letters and Zing!s, we try to screen out factual errors. But to quote Pontius Pilate: “What is truth?”
On one end of the spectrum are easily verifiable facts. We won’t let you say Will Weatherford is the Senate president, Obamacare was passed unanimously or the Holocaust never happened.
On the other end is pure opinion. Obama is the worst president ever, the Iraq war was a waste of money and the government shouldn’t insure beach homes.
But, boy, does that leave a lot of space in the middle. It was fun thinking up examples that one person might consider fact but another would consider misguided opinion.
The Tampa Tribune — Medal of Honor delay a shame
The military made amends with a war hero this week in a ceremony that honored his courage on and off the battlefield.
After four long years, President Barack Obama awarded the Medal of Honor to former Army Capt. William Swenson at a White House ceremony.
Swenson braved rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and machine-gun fire to help his fallen comrades during an ambush in Afghanistan in 2009. He helped evacuate wounded Afghan soldiers and fallen Americans. Five Americans, 10 Afghan troops and an interpreter were killed. A moving video of his efforts to evacuate a wounded soldier can be seen on YouTube.
The fact it took four years to award the medal is a shame.
Another soldier caught in the firefight, Marine Cpl. Dakota Meyer, received the Medal of Honor two years ago for his actions.
But Swenson’s paperwork to receive the nation’s highest military honor was “lost” by the military after Swenson complained about a delayed response to his calls for air support. An investigation into those complaints led to reprimands for two Army officers for “contributing directly to the loss of life.”
The “lost” paperwork to honor Swenson is thought to be payback for his criticism of superior officers. But the efforts of a reporter who witnessed the firefight, and the prodding of Riverview resident Susan Price, who is the mother of a soldier killed during the firefight, resulted this week in an apology from Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and the Medal of Honor being slipped around Swenson’s neck.
“Even after the battle, Will was not afraid to point out deficiencies in the operation that caused difficulties in obtaining the appropriate and timely support necessary,” Army chief of staff Gen. Ray Odierno said.
“He recognized the importance of assessing performance and had the character to stick to his convictions.”
Bucking the chain of command in the military rarely results in a medal. The military is to be commended for recognizing its failings and doing the right thing.
Swenson appears to harbor no bitter feelings. He is asking for permission to return to active duty.
His request is expected to be approved.
