Mitch Perry
The Tampa City Council rejected a proposal from Mayor Bob Buckhorn‘s administration that would have made a serious dent in alleviating the city’s epic problems with stormwater runoff yesterday. The plan wasn’t cheap — $251 million, and it certainly left open a lot of questions about how fair it was for everyone to pay the same in the city.
It wasn’t an easy vote by any means, but I’d feel a lot better about the leadership of this city if the four dissenting council members — Charlie Miranda, Guido Maniscalco, Frank Reddick, and Yolie Capin — could come up with some proposals on their own to be part of the discussion moving forward — maybe even a white paper.
That’s not their responsibility, you might say? That’s up to the mayor. Perhaps. However this council hasn’t had a problem in 2015 in letting us all know how they’re a coequal branch of government in Tampa, and the fact is, this city is never going to be all it can be until there is more money directed at correcting its infrastructure. No, even all this new money wouldn’t fix all the problems, but they’re only going to get worse in the years and decades to come. Mike Suarez proposed a special assessment district just for South Tampa residents, but that was rejected by city Tampa officials, who say that everybody uses those roads. The point is, other ideas need to be promoted.
Again, I get that it was hardly the perfect plan. Not by any means. But as has been said about other pressing issues in this region, just saying no ain’t good enough.
In national news, USA Today reports on their front page this morning that UnitedHealth Group, the country’s largest health insurer, may pull out of the Affordable Care Act exchanges after next year -because it’s not working for them due to low enrollment and high usage, which apparently is costing them millions of dollars.
Forget about GOP congressional votes about killing the plan — if UnitedHealth drops out, that could be the ultimate killer for the plan, as consumers would lose one of the lowest-cost plans available in much of the country. Liberals have always complained about the ACA, saying that it was a boon for the insurance companies. Some conservatives in conspiracy theory mode have feared that it was always a designed to fail, and ultimately it would have to resort to the single-payer system that progressives have fantasied about.
And Donald Trump is coming back to Sarasota on Thanksgiving weekend. The NYC real estate magnate and GOP presidential front-runner was quoted yesterday as not ruling out tracking Muslim-Americans in a database or giving them “a special form of identification that noted their religion.”
Times have certainly changed since “The Apprentice” star got into the campaign. Somehow I think they’ll be more press in Sarasota than in May, when Jeremy Wallace (still with the Herald-Tribune at the time) and yours truly were the only print/Internet based reporters asking him questions.
In other news …
That controversial “Campus Carry” bill sponsored by Republican Greg Steube advanced in the Florida House Judiciary Committee passed yesterday. Next stop: the House floor in January.
Forty-seven Democrats joined all the Republicans in the House of Representatives on the SAFE act regarding refugees that has dominated the national news this week. There were a couple of Florida Democrats who joined that group (Gwen Graham and Patrick Murphy), but Kathy Castor wasn’t one of them.
Utah Congresswoman Mia Love endorsed Marco Rubio. The DNC later mocked the endorsement, linking some financial “issues” that the two Republicans have endured through the press.
Marco Rubio is in third place in a new New Hampshire poll. The bad new is that means he’s still down 12 percentage points to Donald Trump.
