Burying public notification

(via Flablog)
Apparently, when the Legislature isn't trying to kill DCA they spend their time trying to do end runs around the public:

This legislation (SB 2292; HB 1477) by Sen. Ronda Storms, R-Brandon, and Rep. Juan Zapata, R-Miami, is the antithesis of open government and should be allowed to expire without further ado.

These proposals are, in fact, a great example of how government can labor in obscurity — and sometimes menacingly — if citizens, and the media, don't have ready access to information about city, county, school, state and federal agencies.

Legal notices are but one way, yet an important way, to be forewarned and thereby forearmed regarding proposed changes to your neighborhood, your street, your school zone or your wallet.

So, I think that public notification in newspapers is a good idea whereas the website approach is not as good. On the other hand, the view that says that your municipal planning staff is a Menace 2 Society is...uh...not exactly the most positive take.

Friday Fun: ReDistricting Game

Fair Districts Florida has all sorts of important information about the re-districting issue. It's an important issue to be sure. I say, however, why bother reading about it when you can play an online video game in which you become the tawdry re-districting official yourself!

Play the ReDistricting Game. Have a nice weekend everyone.

Florida snark

Flapolitics reviews the deteriorating budget situation in the state

and finds a silver lining:

The saving grace in all this of course, is that Floridians aren't saddled with that "insidious" intangibles tax on wealthy investors, that raised hundreds of millions in tax dollars.

Oooh, burn.

Progress on SBA investigation

FPC reminds me about a subject I've been thinking about for a while:

In Wednesday’s NY Times, this article: New Jersey Sues Over Its Lehman Losses - DealBook Blog - NYTimes.com served as a reminder of how Florida got ripped off in the same way. Has Florida sued? Not mentioned in the article, though California was cited as having sued before
New Jersey.

Where are we? Why no suit?

New Jersey is out $180 million thanks to the collapse of Lehman. Florida also lost many millions, though a light search doesn’t reveal how much. There is an interesting similarity between Florida and New Jersey, in that both states had a board of officials supposedly overseeing the operation of the fund — like the money market funds we ordinary citizens have been forced to use by our friendly banks — where revenue was parked until needed by local governments to pay their staff and other obligations. In Florida it’s the State Board of Administration.

The Bond Buyer reports that the wheels are actually starting to turn in the investigation by the SEC of the State Board of Administration (I can't copy and paste the text, so here is a snap):
The SEC letter is here. As FCP notes, there seemed to have been connections between Jeb Bush and Lehman Bros.

"Up" is "down", "In" is "out"

This is insane, "Florida began this year with a budget of $66.5''billion, but general revenue was only about 35 percent of the total". [emphasis mine] Economix has a map showing that Florida budget deficit declines in the last quarter of 2008 (vs. that of 2007).

Supply-side economists tells us that if we lower taxes, we get more revenues. In Florida, one primary revenue generator is the sales tax. Our sales tax has many, many exemptions (adult entertainment being one of them). I guess this means we need to raise more revenue by exempting more.

Meanwhile, Florida is one of only seven states in which taxing the Madoffs income is illegal.

One email to screw them all...

PBP reports:

The federal transportation stimulus money that's supposed to create jobs the fastest is being held up in Florida by Palm Beach County.

Ouch. Why the hold up?

Palm Beach County Commissioner Jeff Koons...blamed the county's tardiness on confusion over when cities had to submit their lists of projects for stimulus consideration. For example, Riviera Beach, Royal Palm Beach and Wellington never responded to the MPO's call for cities to submit wish lists.

Koons said the MPO never gave the cities a clear deadline by which to respond.

With all correspondence being publicly available, you'd think that we could actually see if the MPO is covering for someone or if they shot off an email without a date.

Cheap dates

The Herald has a story about lobbyist dollars, and points out something I didn't know:

Florida law bans legislators from accepting more than $500 from each donor who contributes to their individual campaign accounts.

But there is no limit on the amount of cash that lawmakers can collect from all manner of special interests in separate fundraising committees that the lawmakers create to advance broadly defined public purposes, such as getting one another reelected.

So who are the biggest givers?

The Hospital Corporation of America, a major hospital chain seeking to change the way more than $1 billion in hospital money is awarded each year, donated the most money to the committees: $269,500 in the past two years. HCA also donated an additional $865,000 to other committees and to individual lawmaker campaigns in the same two-year period.

U.S. Sugar Corp. of Clewiston, which has hired 41 lobbyists in seeking to sell much of its land to the state, is next with $226,260. It donated an additional $365,000 to lawmakers and other political groups this election cycle.

AT&T, which is seeking favorable phone legislation this year, was the No. 3 contributor with $151,500.

Meanwhile, one in ten floridians uses food stamps.

The annals of poor tax policy

Take it away, Gary:

Back in 2005, former Gov. Jeb Bush trumpeted the fact that Standard and Poor's increased the state's bond rating to AAA, citing the "state's strong reserves and long term planning to avoid budget crises" as reasons for the decision. The reason it was big news is that with a better bond rating comes a much better borrowing rate.

All of the rating agencies have placed Florida on a negative outlook, said Ben Watkins, director of the State Division of Bond Finance, although none have yet downgraded the state's actual rating. [emphasis mine]

Of course, the point Fineout makes is that there is more information that the agencies haven't accounted for:

Right now it appears that the state will drain another $700 million from the [Lawton Chiles Endowment] by June 15 in order to balance this year's budget.

It looks like the hole may very well get deeper soon. Meanwhile, the legislature is debating whether or not Super Bowl tickets and skybox seats should be taxed.

Newspaper filler

There is a difference between knowing something and talking like you know something. Some people are good at the latter. Andrew B. Hellinger shows us he is not one of them:

Initiatives to lure suburbia's residents into Miami's urban core need to be considered to maximize what development has already occurred and to prevent Miami from becoming an urban wasteland. Given the scarcity of local, state and federal funds, this will be a challenge for our civic leaders.

I emphasized the words above because they make the author sound like he is knowledgeable. I am going to say that its a bluff, because someone who actually knows about urban planning in Miami would know that something along those lines already exists. But there is nothing substantive in Hellinger's "view" about that plan, or Miami's Comp Plan, or the many, many other plans that are available to the public to read regarding Miami. If Herald editors are hard up for planning analysis, I'd suggest that they solicit fewer Hellingers and request more opinions from people in the know.

Public financing of sports

I don't know why 26-P doesn't use permalinks, so I'll start by re-posting his piece below:

My problem here is the statement, "Sports can and does bring money". This conveniently misses the point, which is do sports investments bring in more money than they cost? There is much controversy on this. Here comes the research (pdf):

• By 2001, the public sector had spent $16 billion to participate in major league construction projects
• Stadia were found to provide little economic benefit once substitution effects were accounted for
• Real costs of public funding are likely to be under-reported.

It is difficult to argue using this type of reasoning, however, when a more politcally powerful argument is being made to the decision-makers.

FPL vs its employees

(via Eye on Miami)
The Herald reports:

At 1:09 one afternoon last year, 90 metal rods slid into the cores of the two nuclear reactors at Turkey Point, part of an automatic shutdown that had been triggered by a utility worker's blunder moments earlier at a substation miles away. A million customers lost power.

Florida Power & Light executives ordered that the reactors be back online within 12 hours, according to court documents. The plant's top nuclear operator, David Hoffman, said that would be dangerous. When FPL executives disagreed with him, he walked out at 8 p.m., refusing to participate in actions he felt were unsafe.

Why bother with experts when you have executives in charge? Anyhow, the article goes on to say that employees are not allowed to publicly talk about the company. They do have an internal policy to deal with employee concerns and the Herald helpfully quotes an employee about it, "'Most are afraid of coming forward,' said Mike Kohl, a nuclear operator at Turkey Point."

Understanding the mechanics

I simply cannot overestimate the importance of understanding the mechanics of any particular regulatory or governing structure. It is step one. Step two, understanding the ways that stakeholders may use and/or abuse the system, needs to come after one understands the processes of government.

I like Eye on Miami, but gimleteye does not seem to be clear on how the Department of Community Affairs (DCA) operates when it comes to local decisionmaking.

Herald editorial writer Myriam Marquez says the [DCA] "keeps locals honest". The truth is murkier: local power brokers and their political hirelings, like the unreformable majority of the Miami Dade County Commission, continually shove-off zoning decisions that offend their campaign contributors, allowing the state 'to decide'. Once the public is gamed at the local level, then the blood sport moves to Tallahassee, where powerful lobbyists (we know who they are, and so do you, if your read our blog) strong-arm and otherwise pressure agency staff to do the wrong thing. They put enormous pressure on DCA by getting other agencies, from FDOT to the US Fish and Wildlife Service of the US Army Corps of Engineers , to do their bidding: some government agencies are just very, very cheap dates.

The DCA reviews Comprehensive Plan amednments. The way this works is that the DCA has a copy of the local government's approved Comp Plan. They then look at the State's criteria (FS 163 and FAC 9J-5) for a Comp Plan change alongside the amendment. If they determine that the amendment can be changed per the State's criteria, they then see if the amendment complies with the local government's own Comp Plan. DCA will do this for the land use portion of the amendment, but since amendments have effects on other portions of the Comp Plan other agencies will review sections relevant to their own expertise.

This is how local governments are kept honest...to their own Comp Plans. I am not going to say that gimleteye is wrong about the corruption. I am saying that the DCA is not where the buck stops. It stops with the writers and stewards of the Comp Plans, themselves.

Having said that, my position is that the DCA needs to stay.

School sports funding

(via FLA Politics)
PBP reports:

[Broward] School Board members are considering the elimination of several sports - golf, tennis, water polo and boys' volleyball in high schools, and volleyball, softball and swimming in middle schools - to help cut $55 million from school budgets next year...

The suggested reductions were part of proposed budget cuts at the county's middle and high schools given to the board on Monday. The total cuts represent 4 percent of school budget...

Interestingly, football funding isn't being affected because it is, "the only revenue-generating sport they have", according to Scott Fiske, Western High School's principal. That may be the case, but couldn't they centralize the sporting events into regional venues instead of the School District needing to fund a field (plus lights, stands, etc.) at every school? What percentage of the budget would that represent?

Water, water, everywhere...

It is hard to fully grasp the abuse that some corporations are perfectly willing to commit. Carl Hiassen reminds us,

[I]t cost Nestle Waters of North America the grand sum of $150 for a permit to remove as much water as it pleases from the Blue Springs in Madison County. Every day, Nestle pipes about 500,000 gallons, enough to fill 102,000 plastic bottles that are then shipped to stores and supermarkets throughout the Southeast.

Meanwhile, The states of Alabama, Florida, and Georgia are engaged in a water war. But that war involves another watershed, so I guess the Madison water deal is ok.

Gelman: How the rich and poor voted

FiveThirtyEight posts on the voting patterns of the rich and poor in the 2008 election. He has more about his methodology (and he's open about the troubles in his model) at the link, but the takeaway for us here in Florida is that both rich- and middle-income groups voted for McCain. In fact, the middle-class voting pattern was similar to rich voting patterns in all but five states.

This, for me, is something to think about as we gear up for a redistricting fight.

Corporate Socialism

(via FPC)

I believe in mass transit. Congestion in Florida is a serious issue, and our auto-dominated land-use policies need reform. Investing in rail is one good idea, but it seems so difficult in this state to create meaningful change in a way that doesn't involve crony capitalism.

Florida Department of Transportation is prepared to dole out$795 million in state money - $432 million to CSX for acquisition of its A Line and to make improvements on CSX's other Florida tracks.

Meanwhile, local governments in Orange, Volusia, Seminole and Osceola counties are on tap to kick in another $764 million toward the project. Add to that hundreds of millions in federal matching money, and start-up and operational costs, and the state DOT's own estimate for the total tab for getting SunRail up and going comes in at about $2.6 billion.

Noticeably absent is any outrage from the right on this.

The consequences of faithlessness

Let's say that I am a person who does not believe in the power of religion to change a person's life. Let me also say that, due to some odd twists of fate, I am placed in a powerful position in an evnagelical church. This position would require me to go out and recruit new churchmembers.

In such a situation, it would be fair to predict that I would not do as good a job as someone believed things I did not. My point is faithlessness alone can subvert a mission. Along those lines, if you don't believe in the power of government to solve problems, you may not make a whole-hearted effort to secure the resources by which your government can solve problems (regardless of popularity).

The Government Lobby

On one hand, it seems to me that it is very odd that a government entity would hire to people to lobby the government. But the oddity comes from the fact that it is very easy to think of the government as a singular entity. It isn't. There are many agencies/jurisdictions fighting for budget dollars. It, therefore, does ultimately make sense that government lobbyists exist.

Recognizing this, though, is not to say that having government agencies lobby government policymakers is optimal in any way. And having the combined agencies and jurisdictions of South Florida fork over 8 million dollars of tax money back into lobbying efforts seems to all but scream for reform of the budgetary decisionmaking process.

Undercount Redux

(via Fineout)
In the aftermath of the 2000 Florida recount, quite a bit of time, effort, and money was spent in trying to ensure that the votes of the citizens of this state would be properly counted. As of the last election cycle, it looks like more work is needed:

A study has found, however, that twice as many ballots were rejected as invalid in 2008 as in 2004.

Now, the article notes that this is still an improvement over the 2000 election, but it seems that election races are getting tighter and tighter. The .75% rejection rate may cost someone.

More bad news from the front line

(via PBP)
"Legislative economist Amy Baker said it now looks like the national recession is going to last through the end of this summer, a quarter longer than previously forecast.

Florida's economy, though, is expected to remain flat for another year after that because it was affected more than the nation as a whole by the housing decline."

Bold & italics mine, not much else to say.