Mitch Perry
Watching the Hillsborough County Commission Wednesday discuss the latest with the Go Hillsborough effort was a fascinating glimpse of where this experience may be heading.
The headline was that county commissioners beat back a feeble attempt to stop Sheriff David Gee‘s office from investigating the charges on how consultant Parsons Brinckerhoff received its $1.35 million contract to lead the county’s transportation effort of the past two years.
The board also rejected Commissioner Stacy White‘s call to fire Parsons immediately, even though it’s expected to provide its final report next month on what should be in the plan, and whether commissioners should choose a half-cent or full-cent sales tax in December if they want to put one on the 2016 ballot.
Assuming the Gee report finds no criminal behavior (and how many months will it take for that report to be concluded?), will the BOCC even vote to put the measure on the ballot? That appears now to be very much in doubt.
Fact: White has already declared he’s a no vote, and he was essentially joined Wednesday by Al Higginbotham, who ran and won countywide office last year by saying that he would back the Policy Leadership Group if they came out in support of a transportation tax. Two months ago he said he was “undecided.” He says that he always gave himself some wiggle room if there was a lack of transparency in putting the plan together, something that he now says that the Noah Pransky WTSP report has provided for him.
Kevin Beckner, Les Miller and apparently Ken Hagan look supportive of the measure as of now, and Victor Crist and Sandy Murman? Who knows where they stand on it now, or more importantly, will in a few months.
Murman says that she’s now convinced that Gee’s investigation will be independent enough, after saying in the past week that she agreed with GOP activist Sam Rashid‘s criticism that it wouldn’t be appropriate.
Speaking of Sam, he apparently was disappointed in his fellow Republican when Hagan blasted the Go Hillsborough critics.
Hagan cited “blind ideologues” who he claimed had hijacked the process. “The hysteria has gone far beyond philosophical differences of honest intellectual disagreements and I think it’s time for the board to say enough is enough,” he said.
Rashid responded via his Facebook page. “If you think my asking for an independent review is ‘absurd,'” he wrote, “fasten your seat-belt because that will not be the word you will be using to describe my efforts to provide a semblance of integrity to the process of an investigation to which you will be held responsible for failing in your fiduciary duty to the very taxpayers that elected you 4 terms ago.”
There’s so much more to say about this, but those are just reflections on what went down Wednesday …
In other news …
The Draft Joe Biden movement released its first television ad Wednesday; no word on whether the VP intends to actually run for office.
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The Tampa City Council votes Thursday night on different proposals for the composition of a civilian review board.
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Activists at the University of South Florida say they aren’t giving up their quest to have former Pinellas County U.S. Rep. Bill Young’s name removed from an ROTC building on the campus because of his association with the homophobic Johns Committee in the 1960s.
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Alan Grayson files an ethics complaint against House Republicans Kevin McCarthy and Trey Gowdy regarding Benghazi.
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And Patrick Murphy airs a web ad calling out his Democratic Senate opponent for saying contradictory things on housing to two different audiences.
