Mitch PerryHappy Monday! (Well, maybe not if you’re a Seahawks fan).
As we lean into the work week, what do we have here on the front page of today’s Tampa Bay Times? A story by the Miami Herald’s Julie Brown and Mary Ellen Klas that features another deposed government agency head in Tallahassee — in this case, former Department of Corrections head Mike Crews — accusing Rick Scott staff members of political interference with his job. Specifically, he says Scott staff “asked him to fire people Crews didn’t believe should fired; it wrote press releases that said things he didn’t say, and orchestrated hastily arranged news conferences that were little more than smokescreens designed to distract from the real crisis that Crews was sounding the alarm on for years: Florida’s prisons were so rundown and understaffed that they had become dangerous.”
Here we go again?
The front-page news comes four days before the governor and the Cabinet will meet in Tampa where they’re scheduled to discuss the aftermath of Scott’s firing former FDLE head Gerald Bailey in December without the OK of at least one Cabinet member, required to make the change. None of them say they were aware Bailey was forced out; instead they say they were told by Scott staff that Bailey was resigning.
The Herald piece is packed with details from Brown, who has been doing major work in covering the crises at the DOC during the past year. The money paragraph is this:
Crews said it became more apparent to him that few people in Tallahassee — and especially not the governor — were focused on ensuring that the state’s prisons were secure and the agency’s $2.2 billion budget was spent where it needed to be spent.
Scott’s critics may seize on this story because it makes the governor look bad, but let’s face it: There is very little constituency in this state (or this country) for prisoners and prisoners’ rights. People may get upset when people die in prison from abuse, but not that much (unless you know someone in the system). There are so many problems inside those facilities, however, that we need to address what nobody cares about. Certainly not the substandard health care there, as I documented in a story last year. Prison systems throughout the nation have a lot of problems. We’re in Florida, though, and maybe this will lead more of our legislators to actually give a damn about the various problems needing more funding to fix.
In other news …
The front page news Saturday in both dailies was about a conference call held that new MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred conducted with the local baseball scribes. Manfred has got to learn that misusing “Tampa” for “Tampa Bay” carries more implications than ever it regard to the competitive situation between the two cities over which will ultimately be the home of the Rays.
Mike Reedy is getting an early start in campaigning for the HD 63 Hillsborough County state legislative seat currently held by Republican Shawn Harrison.
Everyone who follows Florida politics eagerly awaits what might happen at Thursday’s Cabinet meeting — being held at the Florida State Fairgrounds in Tampa — a la Baileygate. Republican State Sen. Jack Latvala says that from his perspective, Pam Bondi, Adam Putnam and Jeff Atwater are the ones who need to get their act together.
