Guest Columnist: Victoria Tschinkel on tcpalm.com
Amendment 1 supporters around the state have been voicing their outrage that the Legislature is ignoring their will.
The amendment, approved by 75 percent of voters in November, was written primarily to restore funding to Florida Forever, historically budgeted at $300 million a year. The program bought carefully prioritized lands for their environmental and state historical value.
The Legislature and Gov. Rick Scott don’t get it. Let’s be clear about one thing: They are carrying out exactly what they started in 2011, and are counting on our passivity to use Amendment 1 to further their goals.
Here’s how: In 2011, Gov. Scott launched his tax-cutting frenzy by cutting more than $700 million from the budget of the five water management districts, with $520 million specifically from the South Florida Water Management District. At that time, Gov. Scott knew full well that this water management district had the capacity to make the U.S. Sugar land purchase. The Caloosahatchee River and the St. Lucie River and Indian River Lagoon would be recovering right now if the governor had not slashed the districts’ budgets.
Just to complete that picture, remember that the water management districts (except for northwest Florida’s) have adequate ad valorem taxing authority (by virtue of a second ignored constitutional amendment) to fund water conservation and supply projects, including land acquisition, to help local governments. But disgracefully, the governor and Legislature balked in 2011 at the thought of the districts independently funding their own regional projects and further capped their taxing ability.
This year, for the first time, they begrudgingly realize that Florida is running out of clean water. They are scrambling for general revenue and other taxing sources and fighting each other to fund the same projects that could have been completed with district tax dollars — which would have cost the average household the price of a pizza or two, if they had not meddled with the will of the people.
Read the entire column here:
http://www.tcpalm.com/opinion/victoria-tschinkel-lets-be-blunt-tallahassee-is-ignoring-us-again_55102295