State Rep. Halsey Beshears (R-Not From Panacea) supports small government, except when he doesn’t.
Beshears was elected to the House in 2012 from Monticello, in Jefferson County. He’s all in for making a city out of Panacea, located in Wakulla County, inside his sprawling district, but an hour’s drive and a world away from where he lives and works.
Florida law requires approval from the Wakulla County Commission and from the Legislature before there can be a City of Panacea, where the locals can be taxed to pay for a council, a manager and other bureaucracy that Republicans generally think we need less of.
Last Tuesday, Beshears went before the House Local Government Affairs Subcommittee carrying water for Panacea Waterfront Partnership, a group of Wakulla County One Percenters who are making their third attempt to create a City of Panacea. They contend that a city would be eligible for state and federal grants that would otherwise be off limits.
Beshears wasn’t very specific about whose pockets such grants would come from, nor whose properties and businesses would benefit. Wakulla County residents who are not members of the One Percent, on the other hand, were very specific in describing the ways in which their taxes would go up and their mom-and-pop businesses would be damaged if incorporation advocates prevail. Subcommittee Chair Debbie Mayfield thanked them for their testimony before kissing off their concerns. Without discussion, the subcommittee unanimously blessed Beshears’ bill.
If Beshears succeeds in carrying HB 539 to the legislative finish line, the matter of incorporation would then come to a referendum vote June 30, and a five-member city council would be elected on August 18.
One wonders where the candidates will be coming from. Who knew there was such a pent-up lust to hold public office in a place where most people are barely getting by?
It’s one thing for the Legislature to defer to the wishes of a local lawmaker on a local issue. But the supine performance of Mayfield’s subcommittee was unsettling. You had the feeling that The Three Wise Men could have gone up against Beshears, and they’d have been blown off, too.
