Phil Ammann
A round-up of Sunday editorials from Florida’s leading newspapers:
Tampa Bay Times — Hard choices on climate change
Midway through the climate talks in Paris, world leaders will make the uneasy transition this week from soaring rhetoric to hard promises. But with nothing on the table so far that achieves the goal of limiting future global temperature rises to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, negotiators will have to work creatively to keep a deal alive and at the forefront for both industrial and developing states.
The two-week conference, which is scheduled to end Friday, has already succeeded in part by tempering expectations for quick and easy solutions to managing a warming planet. The industrial states still have not committed enough to reducing emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. And developing nations still have to get serious about charting a responsible course as they seek to limit pollution while growing their economies.
Still, the voluntary plans put forward by more than 170 nations amount to a meaningful step. The talks have forced the biggest polluters, including the United States and China, to start acting as models internationally by taking new efforts at home to contain emissions. Big emerging-state polluters, such as India, have been forced to acknowledge the human and environmental costs of their dirty industrial practices. And smaller states are focusing on growth policies that are more sustainable for the long term.
The hurdles are still great to reaching even a consensus on a strategy for cutting emissions, much less moving to a deal that calls for nations to agree to hard emissions cuts. But the message from Paris last week was equally important: Climate policy will evolve, technology and public-private partnerships will play an increasing role, and states will be expected to massage their energy policies over time — even under a nonbinding agreement.
The Bradenton Herald — State College of Florida trustees should rescind tenure elimination, Manatee AAUW asserts
On Oct. 10, the Manatee County branch of the American Association of University Women voted unanimously to ask the Board of Trustees of State College of Florida to rescind its decision to eliminate the tenure program at State College of Florida.
We are a group of college-educated women dedicated to education, its betterment and its furtherance. From the formation of our branch by Marge Kinnan in 1952, we have emphasized support for Manatee Community College and SCF, giving thousands of dollars in scholarships to students.
Unlike other branches, we believe in supporting community colleges as the incubators for further higher education. However, your decision on faculty tenure gives us pause, since it threatens the long tradition of academic freedom and does nothing to improve on an existing faculty evaluation system before awarding continuing contracts.
If the current evaluation system is inadequate to the task of weeding out the ineffective teachers who fail to remain current in their fields, to meet the needs of the students as expressed in their evaluations, and to find ways to motivate students to succeed, then fix the system. Don’t punish the teachers for your failure to identify the real problem.
We ask that you convene a special committee of educators and business people who understand the problems that need to be addressed.
The Daytona Beach News-Journal — Fairer districts for the state, and area
Florida finally has a congressional map that meets constitutional muster — and Volusia and Flagler counties finally will have their interests represented by a single district.
The state’s Supreme Court on Wednesday signed off on the new political boundaries first approved by Circuit Judge Terry Lewis earlier this year — a map created by plaintiffs who successfully challenged the legality of congressional districts drawn by the Republican-controlled Legislature.
This legal journey began in 2012 when a coalition of groups, including the League of Women Voters of Florida, filed suit against the congressional map approved by legislators in 2012 alleging it violated the “Fair Districts” amendments to the state constitution. Those standards, approved by voters in 2010, prohibit legislators from drawing districts intended to help incumbents or a member of a political party.
Legislators produced a second map, but it still wasn’t good enough for the Florida Supreme Court, which in July ordered lawmakers to redraw eight of the state’s 27 congressional districts.
Lawmakers convened a special session in August to adopt a third map, but the House and Senate couldn’t agree on which version to pass. Judge Lewis recommended a map drawn by the plaintiffs, and the high court agreed it complied with Fair Districts.
The Florida Times-Union — Cheers: Students present ideas on obesity to surgeon general
Congratulations to 25 student members of Jacksonville’s I’m A Star Foundation’s Leadership Program who recently made a presentation to U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy on fighting childhood obesity.
The visit with Murthy was just the latest impressive accomplishment in I’m A Star’s ongoing campaign to promote the need for programs to reduce childhood obesity. Just over the past year alone, I’m A Star has hosted a youth obesity summit that drew Jacksonville’s top educational and city leaders and won a first-place award from the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
Shortly after meeting the I’m A Star contingent, Murthy made a point of noting the youths’ great work in Jacksonville during a speech to members of the American Public Health Association.
A nonprofit founded by former Duval School Board Chairwoman Betty Burney, I’m A Star is a student-driven group that helps youths develop leadership skills
Florida Today – Small gifts, huge rewards
My Grandma Bess, a former teacher who lived with my family as I grew up, always started her Christmas list in the summer.
By November, she was stressing over whether she had enough cards and stamps. Whether the small, inexpensive gifts she bought for friends who were alone would be delivered on time.
“She doesn’t really have anyone,” she’d often say, examining a trinket or a card. “I think this is just right.”
As a child, I didn’t understand her obsession with reaching out to others year-round. As an adult, seeing the unspoken anguish of older people who might spend much of their life with little social interaction, the “whys” are sometimes painfully clear.
As we filled out those birthday and holiday cards with personal notes and wrapped scarves or handkerchiefs, I was learning that no matter the gift’s worth, sometimes, simply being remembered means more to the recipient than what’s inside the box or bag.
Time with Grandma serves me well as we kick off another year of FLORIDA TODAY’s Reaching Out program, which has given books and toys to thousands of children in need for almost 25 years.
Two years ago FLORIDA TODAY teamed with nonprofit Aging Matters in Brevard, the county’s lead agency for senior services, to add holiday gifts for local seniors to the mix. In 2013, 1,091 seniors were on our list. And it was such a success, we continued it: This year, gifts are going to 1,300 people.
The Gainesville Sun – Cheers and jeers
Sixty years ago this week, Rosa Parks showed a single person can inspire social change when she refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus. Her action sparked a bus boycott and other efforts to end segregation.
It’s a fitting remembrance of her legacy that local residents are recognized annually for making our community better by standing up for what is right.
Cheer: Recipients of the 2015 Rosa Parks Quiet Courage Committee Awards, for their work in the civil rights movement as well as the fight for equality and justice that continues today.
This year’s awards recognized Doris Edwards, a community activist and chair of the Lincoln Estates Neighborhood Watch Committee; Lizzie Robinson Jenkins, a community activist and retired teacher; and June Littler, a civil rights advocate and retired librarian.
Parks was arrested on December 1, 1955, for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, city bus to a white passenger. The Rev. Milford Lewis Griner founded the local Rosa Parks committee, which in addition to giving the awards was the driving force behind naming Gainesville’s downtown bus station in honor of Parks.
Jeer: Gainesville Regional Utilities, for a wastewater release that killed fish at Kanapaha Botanical Gardens and being less than forthcoming about it.
GRU has long provided treated wastewater from its nearby water reclamation facility to the gardens. Late last week, a problem with too much ammonia in the water led GRU to add in more chlorine to better disinfect it. But as The Sun reported, the higher chlorine levels killed fish in the botanical gardens’ ponds.
The Lakeland Ledger —Thompson’s work, LRH success worthy of high praise
In this space just ahead of Thanksgiving, we praised the remarkable generosity of the Hollis family, who, in the name of its late patriarch, Mark Hollis, a former president of Publix Super Markets, donated $5 million to help Lakeland Regional Health expand its cancer-treatment clinic.
As important as that was, it is also worth noting the donation in the context of the growth at the hospital during the short tenure of LRH President and CEO Elaine Thompson.
In June 2010, LRH’s board of directors plucked Thompson from a Philadelphia-area hospital that was less than half the size LRH was then. She succeeded Jack Stephens, who had retired after serving as the hospital’s chief administrator for 26 years.
The growth the hospital has experienced, and is eyeing in the future, since she came aboard is nothing short of phenomenal.
The biggest, most readily identifiable piece of that puzzle will be the eight-story, $250-million Pavilion for Women and Children expected to open in 2018 on LRH’s main campus. But in addition to the Hollis Cancer Center, LRH has overhauled its emergency department, added an inpatient rehabilitation center within the main hospital — the $13 million Bannasch Institute for Advanced Rehabilitation Medicine — extended outpatient services with a newly opened clinic in Auburndale and one on the way in Bartow, and is building a $25 million, 60,000-square-foot facility in the Grasslands community, next to a 20,000-square-foot site LRH owns at the corner of Harden Boulevard and Edgewood Drive.
The Miami Herald —Venezuela on the brink — again
Although President Nicolás Maduro and his cronies in Miraflores Palace have done everything in their power to rig Sunday’s National Assembly elections in Venezuela, all signs point to a huge defeat for the government.
To judge from opinion surveys, the outcome of the vote is foreordained: The opposition coalition, the Democratic Unity Roundtable, leads the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela and its allies by as much as 35 percentage points. Mr. Maduro’s own popularity has been hovering around 20 percent.
The electorate is fed up with rampant crime, a corrupt government and consumer shortages of everything from ketchup to diapers. Even onetime supporters are disgusted by the government’s incompetence. Anywhere else, this would spell the end for a ruling party. But under Mr. Maduro and the late Hugo Chávez, Venezuela long ago became a crypto-dictatorship determined to stay in power at all costs.
Facing long odds, Mr. Maduro’s forces have mounted a campaign of unprecedented ferocity to thwart the opposition.
The Orlando Sentinel — Exert political will to end carnage
The time has come to politicize gun violence in the United States.…It is going to take a lot more political energy to reduce the gun carnage in this country.
It seems we barely catch our breath after one gun rampage before we are watching another unfold. Newtown, Conn.; Aurora, Colo.; Charleston, S.C.; Colorado Springs. And this week, 14 people slaughtered in San Bernardino, Calif.…
It seems like once a week, President Obama goes on television to talk about his inability to move Congress to implement gun legislation. Then we hear the Republican candidates for president offer their prayers and thoughts to the families of the victims.…
Mass shootings have become the new normal. “We make it too easy [for people to get guns],” Obama said Thursday.
Of course we do. But nothing ever changes, and it won’t change until voters elect leaders at all levels who are angry enough and determined enough to try to enact change, rather than throwing up their hands and saying there is nothing we can do …
The fact is, with the right leadership, there are things that can be done. No, these things won’t stop all people, especially terrorists, who are determined to kill. But we can make it harder for them to carry out their bloody mission.
Nobody should be talking about taking away all guns.…But we need leaders who are
The Ocala StarBanner —It’s red kettle time — please help
The ringing of the Salvation Army Red Kettle bell is a timeless reminder that it is Christmastime. For 124 years, the Salvation Army has been collecting spare change outside community businesses around the holidays in an effort to help bring some cheer into the lives of the neediest among us at this time of year.
The red kettle bellringers, though, are more than another holiday tradition. They serve as uplifting reminder that this is the season of giving, of charity, of caring for others.
The Salvation Army of Marion County is in the midst of its annual red kettle drive. It has a goal of $270,000, and so far donations are running slightly behind last year, when $263,000 was raised through the red kettles.
The money is vital to the Salvation Army’s programs. The Salvation Army is the largest homeless services organization in our community. Last year, for example, it provided more than 88,000 meals to the hungry and more than 30,000 nights of shelter to those with no roof over their head.
But the Salvation Army does so much more than what its traditional slogan of “soup, soap and salvation” suggests. Besides the meals and shelter, it provides an array of services to try and help as many as possible to get back on their feet and become self-sufficient again.
For instance, some of the red kettle money helps offset the cost of providing holiday meals to local families who otherwise would do without. The Salvation army provided Thanksgiving meals and groceries to more than 500 families and is expecting to do the same for nearly 800 families at Christmas, complete with toys for the children. It’s a massive undertaking, and one that every red kettle donation helps make a reality.
The Pensacola News-Journal —PSC’s efforts provide help and hope
The world and the work that makes it tick are changing. We see advancements in medicine, science, information technology and across virtually every industry.
The downside of those changes means that many of the tools each of us acquired in high school are quickly growing outdated. For those still out of work from the Great Recession, the challenge to compete in the 21st century workforce is even more daunting. Some just give up, settling for low-paying, dead-end jobs.
Others have the courage to get additional training, including classes at Pensacola State College, which has taken a leadership role in reaching out to the two-county area to help our neighbors get trained for jobs in demand now and for the future.
That’s why we applaud the efforts of PSC President Ed Meadows and the faculty and staff at the main campus and satellite sites. Shannon Nickinson of the Studer Institute reported about the college’s efforts to reduce “roadblocks” to help students, especially nontraditional ones, ease into the rigors of college-level courses. As Nickinson reported, that includes virtual tutoring, mentoring and tracking progress during the semester.
But Meadows knows there are challenges that go beyond the classroom. There are issues of transportation and even more-basic needs, such as food and clothing. He jumped at the chance to partner with this newspaper in our efforts during our “Saturday in Century” events at PSC’s Century campus.
The Palm Beach Post —Fighting a segregationist’s legacy with more segregation
Call me naive, but I really thought it would end with the Confederacy.
It made sense that Civil War-era iconery would come under heavy fire in the wake of Dylann Roof’s race-driven shooting spree in Charleston, S.C. last summer. Images of Roof proudly posing with the Confederate flag made it impossible for Americans to sidestep those discussions.
Thanks to that dialogue, it wasn’t surprising to see symbols of the Civil War come down in certain places, like South Carolina’s capitol grounds where the Confederate flag was finally lowered, or on the campus at the University of Texas where a statue of Jefferson Davis was recently removed.
But apparently it’s not just the sight of centuries-old slave owners and the emblems of their short-lived nation that are no longer fit for public spaces. According to a cadre of Princeton students, neither are the forefathers of American progressivism — most especially their school’s most notable alumnus, former president Woodrow Wilson.
Recently, Princeton students — led by a group called the Black Justice League — forced university leadership to acquiesce to a list of demands including potentially removing a mural of Wilson from a campus cafeteria and retitling Princeton’s public policy school, which bears his name.
Woodrow Wilson was not a slave owner. He did not fight for the Confederacy and he never led a lynch mob.
So what makes him so unfit for public view?
The Panama City News-Herald — Can we learn from Europe?
Earlier this year, my column asked, “Will the West Defend Itself?” I pointed out that America’s leftists and progressives believe that the U.S. should become more like Europe (http://tinyurl.com/nfk2c4d). I wonder whether they also want to import European policies that created barbaric extremism among its Muslim population.
France’s recent tragedy is not surprising, given some of its policies that are not widely publicized abroad. France has no-go zones, which are officially called “zones urbaines sensibles,” or sensitive urban zones, where police are reluctant to go. Some of these zones are dominated by Islamic extremists. According to some reports, there is hardly a city in France that does not have at least one ZUS. It is estimated that there are more than 750 such zones in France. According to The Washington Times, “France has Europe’s largest population of Muslims, some of whom talk openly of ruling the country one day and casting aside Western legal systems for harsh, Islam-based Shariah.” It appears that much of France’s Muslim population has no intention of joining the French culture. Many French Muslims are hellbent on importing the failed components of their motherland, such as Shariah, the subjugation of women, suppression of free speech and honor killings.
But France is not alone in tolerating people who have little desire to abandon the culture from which they fled. Ingrid Carlqvist has written an article titled “Sweden Descends into Anarchy.” Carlqvist says, “Once upon a time, there was a safe welfare state called Sweden, where people rarely locked their doors.” She adds: “Since the Parliament decided in 1975 that Sweden should be multicultural and not Swedish, crime has exploded. Violent crime has increased by over 300 percent, and rapes have increased by an unbelievable 1,472 percent.”
One Swedish policeman says, “The situation is slipping from our grasp,” referring to some no-go areas, such as Tensta and Rinkeby. “If we’re in pursuit of a vehicle, it can evade us by driving to certain neighborhoods where a lone patrol car simply cannot follow because we’ll get pelted by rocks and even face riots.
The South Florida Sun Sentinel – Hard to call Florida bear hunt a success
Florida officials actually have called October’s black bear hunt “highly successful.”
We can think of a lot of things to call it. “Successful” most definitely wouldn’t be one of them.
Last month, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission released final numbers on the state’s first bear hunt in 21 years. The FWC said a total of 304 bears were “harvested” during the two-day hunt, which is a clean, antiseptic way of saying they were shot and killed.
“We had a safe, sustainable and highly successful bear hunt,” said Thomas Eason, director of FWC’s Habitat and Species Conservation Division.
Again, success is in the eye of the beholder.
The bears that were killed during the hunt included 38 mother bears, whose bodies showed evidence of milk production. That would indicate there were many orphaned cubs left behind. Eason said the fact 21 percent of the mother bears were lactating indicated compliance with the rules, because about half of all female bears would be lactating at any time.
The Tallahassee Democrat – Cities, counties should be able to say no to fracking
What ever happened to the conservative notion that the government that governs best is the government closest to the people?
Or home rule, local control, citizen input, and all those other feel-good, grassroots concepts that candidates pledge allegiance to in every election year? Florida’s Republican-run Legislature seems oddly committed to centralized regulatory and fiscal controls.
Business interests trump local control far too often, when cities and counties try to regulate certain activities within their borders.
Statewide standards are a good thing in many cases. About 30 years ago, Florida passed important laws allowing designation of areas of critical state concern environmentally, and regulating developments of regional impact.
This helped to rein in the greed of developers, who were building malls and housing tracts and passing the infrastructure and pollution costs along to the taxpayers. Often, counties and cities – whose commissioners depended on the builders for campaign money – winked at common-sense land use facts, eager for the property tax revenues new developments promised.
But surely Florida can have sensible local control without creating a crazy quiltwork of conflicting and overlapping state, county and city regulations. It’s hard to put on paper, but you know it when you see it – that certain, undefinable quality long-time Sen. W.D. Childers of Pensacola used to express as, “Now you’ve gone from fixin’ and got to meddlin’.”
Over the years, there have been legislative initiatives to supplant local government in gun regulation, gambling and some other legal matters in which rules could vary from one locale to another, without harm. Next session promises a renewed debate over city and county regulation of Uber, the popular ride service, and a mandate that local governments spend 60 percent of their resort tax revenue on promoting tourism.
The Tampa Tribune — Deal to enhance Raymond James Stadium a win for fans, taxpayers
A deal between the Tampa Sports Authority and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to spend as much as $100 million on improvements to Raymond James Stadium is a win for the team’s fans and for taxpayers in Hillsborough County.
After nearly collapsing two months ago, negotiations between the Bucs and the Tampa Sports Authority, which owns the stadium and leases it to the team, resulted last week in a tentative agreement for the TSA to spend $29 million on the improvements and the Bucs to spend a minimum of $58 million, though the team is expected to spend $70 million.
The team also agreed to enhance the TSA’s share of receipts from certain stadium events. In return, the Bucs can play two preseason games at another site while the renovations are underway, and a single preseason game and a regular-season game at another site thereafter. The current lease allows for either a single-season or preseason game to be moved.
Final approval is needed from the TSA’s board, the Hillsborough County Commission and the Tampa City Council. They should vote in favor of the deal so the work can get started as quickly as possible.
With college football’s national championship game set for Raymond James Stadium in January 2017, there is no time to waste. The game will showcase the stadium and Tampa to the nation. At the same time, the improvements will boost the city’s chances of landing another Super Bowl and the economic windfall that event brings.
County Commissioner Ken Hagan, who is also a TSA board member and had a hand in the negotiations, says the deal protects taxpayers while enhancing the fan experience throughout the stadium, not just in the luxury suites.
Most noticeable will be enlarged video boards, an enhanced sound system and upgrades to the concession and concourse areas.
For taxpayers, there may be an additional $250,000 each year from the renegotiated revenue-sharing deal for non-Bucs events at the stadium. Under the current lease, the team keeps the first $2 million from those events and splits anything above that amount 50-50 with the TSA.
