March 8, 2012

A House bill intended to resolve a legal challenge to last year's sweeping growth management law rewrite received final approval in the Senate on Wednesday  and is heading to the governor. The 2012 legislative session has been largely quiet on growth management issues. Last year, HB 7207 eliminated most state oversight of most local land-use decisions despite opposition from environmental groups. Click here to read the entire article.

March 8, 2012

Here's what we're watching on Day 59 of the 2012 Legislature: • On the next-to-last day of the lawmaking session, most of the action is in the Senate. Senators will take up SB 1368, which would authorize state agencies to allow for random drug testing of employees. The bill would also permit the agencies to fire any employee who receives a first-time positive drug test result. The House already passed the measure. Click here to read the entire article.

March 8, 2012

An 11th-hour deal in the Florida Legislature is expected to salvage funding to the state's homeless agencies, but the move is a one-time-only arrangement that advocates say will still cut a range of services to the state's most desperate citizens. Click here to read the entire article.

February 1, 2012
 

A lesson in political math

I know, I know . . . Every major network and political pundit called Florida for Romney last night long, long before the last ballot was counted.  The Romney volunteers were so cocky about it that they apparently counted down the seconds to 8 p.m., when the last polls closed in that portion of the Panhandle that is on Central Time, knowing that it wouldn't be more than a few moments before the word would come.

Romney won.

January 30, 2012

A conversation sparks reflection on how things remain the same

My friend is a business man in his early fifties.  Married, two kids, college expenses, a mortgage, and an IRA, plus other investments. He's successful by any measure, but his success isn't the kind that grabs headlines.

Still, he's almost certainly part of the 1%.

January 27, 2012

With a title like the one I've chosen, one might expect a piece on former Speaker Gingrich's fall from grace and power in the 1990s. But that's not my theme at all.

I'm much more interested in a short exchange in the debate that illustrates, in my opinion, a clear misunderstanding about the burden public leaders must bear.

January 26, 2012
 

A bipartisan standard of government purpose

Near the end of President Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday evening, he favorably quoted a Republican presidential predecessor. The predecessor was Abraham Lincoln, and the quotation was interesting for what it said then, and what it says now, about the purpose of government.

January 23, 2012

“Makers” and “breakers”

I am told that in the business of security, there are the “makers” and the “breakers.” The “makers” are the ones who create the systems we use. The “breakers” test those systems, sometimes to help ensure that they are as effective as they were designed to be, sometimes to get inside them and steal or disrupt things.

January 20, 2012
 

Sometimes the political system can be very responsive

Contrary to folk wisdom, you can fight city hall. As a city councilmember, I both participated in and was overwhelmed by efforts to “fight city hall” (sometimes the mayor, sometimes the council) during my tenure in office.

Of course, we need to give city hall its due. Mayors and councilmembers and commissioners are elected. No one else in most communities has a comparable claim to the mantle of political leadership. There may be those who can attract cadres of followers, earning a degree of influence by so doing.

January 18, 2012

The toughest job in the public sector

I received an email this week from someone unhappy about a blog I had written some time back.

If you are a regular reader, or if you have skimmed the archive, you’ll note what probably is both obviously and necessarily true of a blog like this one; I often write about specific individuals, especially public servants. Often, though certainly not always, what I have to say about those individuals is not entirely positive, and sometimes it’s quite critical.

January 17, 2012

Breaking away from a bad habit

January 13, 2012

We need to listen to what our leaders say for what it says about them . . . and us

In the spring of 1977, I moved into an apartment in Washington, D.C., for a three-month stint as an intern in the Department of Commerce. Even though it was March, the carrying and unpacking and sorting and storing was thirsty work.  So I wandered down to the front desk to find out where I could get a cold drink.

"Excuse me," I said to the young man at the desk, "is there a pop machine in this building?"

The dangers of drawing conclusions from elections and polls

The news from the Iowa caucus today is not very surprising, at least if one has been following the news from Iowa the last few days.  That Rick Santorum ended up in a dead heat with Mitt Romney is quite an achievement. That the top three were Romney, Santorum and Paul, however, is hardly surprising in light of recent trends.

December 21, 2011
 

Here’s hoping Lincoln was right

Politics always has involved the artful (or clumsy) use of words to convey more than information. Political battles are, at their core, a kind of emotional warfare, a struggle for the “hearts and minds” of the people, with at least as much emphasis on hearts as on minds.

December 19, 2011

Lessons for and from the Rattler Nation - To thine ownself be true

In Act 1, Scene 3 of Hamlet, Polonius, father to Ophelia and Laertes, pours forth a flood of wise counsel upon his son, apparently for no other reason than he feels so prompted by the moment. His counsel to Laertes is not the continuation of or response to some prior conversation (as near as the audience can tell); it simply flows from within him like water from a spring.

Beyond party and ideology, there are facts we need to face

Whatever one’s view of the government’s role in the nation’s healthcare, the ongoing dialog between the State of Florida and the federal government on the subject bears watching.

The state’s position on these issues generally is to get out from under federal regulations where the state believes there are reasonable grounds for so doing. One of those grounds, recurrently, is the need for innovation in the public role in health care.

December 14, 2011

Getting our priorities right

There is almost nothing I care about more than being a good father, and even those couple of things I might list ahead of this awesome duty are directly implicated in it. I am a dad, and I know what a powerful (frighteningly powerful) position I hold.

This does not mean that I am a good dad. It does means that I aspire to be a good dad, which compels me to examine all kinds of choices in the light of their impact on my wife and kids.

Is it a tax increase if it is about tax justice?

Toward the end of last week, the news was about a proposed committee bill to emerge this session that would impose a sales tax on Internet sales.

The Florida Current reported late Friday that the Senate Budget Subcommittee on Finance and Tax, led by committee chair Senator Ellyn Bogdanoff, was working to draft a bill that would impose an equivalent sales tax burden on Internet purchases as exists today for “brick and mortar” stores. 

December 9, 2011

Something missing from contemporary talk about public employees

There’s no question that “joy” is on my mind. ‘Tis the season for it, after all.

From a religious perspective, of course, this season is a joyful one for both Christians and Jews. While my understanding is that Hanukkah is not one of the most significant festivals or holy days in Judaism, it has become prominent in many Jewish families particularly in countries like the U.S. where Christmas has become so fully integrated (albeit transformed) into the mainstream culture.

December 8, 2011

The latest presidential poll results and their meaning

We’re less than a month away from the Iowa caucuses, the official start of the 2012 presidential primary season. There’s a chance of snow in the Iowa forecast through the weekend, and an assurance of chilly temperatures but warmer receptions in the homes and social clubs of faithful followers.

Please tell the kids, however, that the candidates won’t be home for Christmas.

December 5, 2011

 

City politics and national politics

Mayor Buddy Dyer of Orlando had unexpected company on Sunday evening. Jon Busdeker and Mark Schlueb of the Orlando Sentinel report that about 25 Occupy Orlando protesters went to the mayor’s home around 9 on Sunday evening to speak to him about the city’s plans to evict demonstrators from Senator Beth Johnson Park.

December 2, 2011

Public observances in the month of December

We were talking about ritual. The student spoke of her upbringing in a household where one parent was Catholic and the other was Jewish. Both parents were committed to ensuring that both traditions were honored equally.

November 30, 2011

Lessons in mediation and reality

What his staff had been saying for a month, U.S. Rep. Connie Mack IV made official this past Monday; he is a candidate for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Bill Nelson.

November 22, 2011

Systemic failures and the waiting game

In a parliamentary system, we’d already be at the point of elections . . . most likely.

In a parliamentary system, when the ruling party (which typically holds both the executive and legislative branches under its control, more or less) is unable to pass a key piece of legislation, the government falls and elections are held. Some few weeks later, a new government will be installed.

What we know and what we can learn from it

Let me start by saying that I don’t know what happened here. The allegation, in the November 18, 2011, edition of the St. Petersburg Times and elsewhere, is that taxpayer funds were used for improper purposes by former Lee County Commissioner Vicki Lopez Lukis through a nonprofit agency working with troubled girls called Girls Advocacy Project (GAP).

November 2, 2011

Magic ordinances and perennial problems

Hobo. Bum. Vagrant. Tramp. Panhandler.

Disreputable names for a disreputable position on the bottom rung of the social ladder.

They stink. They are unkempt. They behave in strange ways.

They make us uncomfortable.

October 31, 2011

Unintended consequences of voter reform legislation?

In To Sir With Love, a great and challenging 1967 film starring Sidney Poitier, a teacher learns that the most important lessons one teaches often are the lessons about life itself. 

October 28, 2011

First steps have lifetime effects

The Associated Press reported on Wednesday that former U.S. Representative Howard Wolpe (D-Kalamazoo, Michigan) had died at the age of 71 (I read this story in the Miami Herald). Not obviously the sort of story I would blog about here.

But I knew Howard Wolpe . . . well, at least as well as any hard-working campaign volunteer would have known him.

October 27, 2011

The transformative power of simple troubleshooting

My story today isn’t about a city, or a government agency, for that matter. The example comes from another kind of community: a parish church. But because it is about community, and about troubleshooting, I think it has value for all of us who serve the public.

As I was walking out the door of my parish church yesterday evening, a woman was walking up, obviously not familiar with the church, equally obviously seeking some kind of assistance. So I asked if I could help her.