I knew the day would come when I had to again write the phrase "single-member districts." It was as certain as death and taxes.
Let me say straight away that I have a whole lot of respect for the people who are uttering that phrase these days, mainly La Gaceta newsweekly publisher Patrick Manteiga and historian/author Doris Weatherford.
They have started a political action committee and petition drive to change the way the dysfunctional and misdirected Hillsborough County Commission is elected. I'll skip the long, boring civic lesson and just say that the proposed change would make running for office less expensive and make each county commissioner more accountable to a smaller number of voters.
The "single-member district" campaign dovetails with another planned 2008 referendum to create the new political job of county mayor. The theory behind that drive cites the lack of a single, accountable elected chief executive in the county as the reason local government has gone astray on issues of growth, transportation and diversity.
Both of the referenda groups have plenty of valid points, and maybe the structure of the County Commission really is a problem.
But all I can think is:
Who gives a crap?
The problem runs deeper than structure. It is fundamentally a personnel matter.
Let me put it into nonpolitical terms: All of us have worked at a job where there was an employee who wasn't getting it done, and everyone in the workplace knew the employee wasn't getting it done. But the bosses, for whatever reason, couldn't or wouldn't fire the underachieving employee. The solution always seems to be to restructure the company. Take away some vital job responsibilities from the slacker. Reconfigure the organizational chart to minimize the crummy worker's harm.
The fact is that the company won't ever run properly and achieve its financial goals until you fire the offending employee.
Government is the same way. We are to blame for that. We elect people we know very little about and then hand them billions of our tax dollars to spend without checking back on how they're doing — until it's too late. Until our property taxes have gone through the roof. Until we realize that people living on the same street in the same size houses are paying vastly different tax bills thanks to a crazy law put in place a decade ago to mollify elder homeowners who are frequent voters.
We are the board of directors of this thing we call local government. If we're not willing to step up and hand out some pink slips, we're only rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Maybe down the road, once we get the right people in the right jobs, we can further enhance performance with some structural changes. For now, though, we need to look in the mirror. We elected these politicians. We let them get away with murder — obsess over gay-pride book displays, try to gut environmental protections for wetlands and spend $500 million for road widening without a clear plan for transit and alternative methods of moving people. Our political leaders have seen the projections of growth over the next 50 years, paving all of Tampa Bay with subdivisions and strip malls, and yet throw their hands up and say, "Landowners have a right to develop their properties."
If you are involved in trying to create change, then you have to work harder. If you're not involved, you have to ask yourself why you are not. I don't want to hear about being disillusioned, burned out, disconnected, unhappy with your electoral choices. We're beyond all of those things.
There's an election scheduled for 2008. What are you willing to do for the sake of change?
Assault on wetlands continues: A packed classroom at the Hillsborough Environmental Protection Commission last week showed just how much energy has gathered behind the push to preserve what's left of Tampa Bay's wetlands.
Government officials, lawyers, activists and farmers were there to review new rules being written by EPC regulators that would provide specific exemptions for farmers to disturb wetlands, generally if they are less than one-half acre. The rules are the result of a desperate attempt by the EPC and activists to prevent the abolition of local wetlands laws when county commissioners earlier this year tried to wipe them off the books, under the guise of cost-cutting and eliminating duplication.
EPC staff members said the new rules were better than the current vague guidelines for farmers, which lead to uneven enforcement. The activists weren't buying it.
"If you start whittling away [wetlands protection] piece by piece, quarter acre by quarter acre, why have the EPC?" said Denise Layne, who has followed the issue locally and in Tallahassee for many years. She promised "a war in front of the county commissioners" if the EPC moved the proposed changes forward to a planned Nov. 15 commission vote.
Speaking of the EPC: Sn effort by the Tampa City Council to gain a seat on the EPC (it is now composed of only county commissioners) is headed to a showdown with Mayor Pam Iorio, who doesn't support the idea. I wrote about this fight last week, and since then, City Councilman Thomas Scott has questioned the objectivity of City Attorney David Smith, who sided with the person who hired him and can fire him: Iorio. Smith previously opined that the city charter gives the mayor the power to "speak for the city." The issue is set to be aired at Thursday's council meeting.
And another EPC note: In 2004, Medicare contractor WellCare — the No. 1 campaign contribution bundler at the county commission level in Tampa Bay — bundled $10,000 for Commissioner Brian Blair, the current EPC chairman. Blair is running for re-election to the County Commission and has received a total of $2,000 in his latest campaign from four different WellCare corporations.
There is no indication that the current federal investigation of WellCare has anything to do with its political activities.
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This article appears in Nov 7-13, 2007.