St. Petersburg Times: Gov. Rick Scott undermines Florida's water policy

[seafan]

There is no end to the destruction by this criminal sitting in the governor's office.

How the HELL people voted for this thief is beyond my comprehension.



Times

June 8, 2011

Piece by piece, Florida's water policy is being dismantled. First, Gov. Rick Scott and the Legislature forced the state's water management districts to slash property tax collections. Then the Scott administration pressured the Southwest Florida Water Management District to eliminate its local basin boards, and its executive director to resign. Now the administration is overturning decisions by water management districts to buy property to protect water supplies. Such political interference by a governor is unprecedented, and it undermines the professional management of the state's water resources.

Last month, Swiftmud's board was poised to approve the purchase of 800 acres in Pasco County to expand the 20,000-acre Starkey Wilderness Preserve. The water management district had studied the purchase for a year and a half, and it wanted to create an additional buffer between planned development and the preserve, a critical watershed. The land, on the north of State Road 54 between Odessa and Trinity in southern Pasco, had a below-appraisal sale price of $7 million that would have come from the Florida Forever Trust Fund.

Then the Department of Environmental Protection, which routinely signs off on such purchases, abruptly signaled it was reconsidering its position. By June 1, just 13 days after approving the transaction, Mike Long, the assistant DEP director for state lands, wrote a second letter rescinding the approval. The DEP contradicted the Swiftmud experts, maintaining the additional acres weren't a critical acquisition after all. A similar series of events also has unfolded in the Suwannee River Water Management District in North Florida, where the DEP approved and then rescinded permission to purchase 30 acres and a conservation easement for another 120 acres.

Environmental advocates cannot recall a previous administration overruling the technical expertise of water management districts in land-buying decisions. Florida's regional water management districts were designed so that scientists most familiar with natural systems could implement sound policy with minimal political tampering. Scott's maneuvers also break from the state's decadeslong, bipartisan commitment to land conservation.

.....

The take-home message to voters in the face of this accelerated destruction of Florida by Rick Scott:


Don't issue the keys to our government to an unindicted criminal.

[atreides1]

1. Once again, the majority decided

Tell me again how the majority of voters in Florida aren't really 1st cousins?

[seafan]

2. Nothing about elections in Florida has been the same since the theft of 2000.

For the record, Rick Scott *won* the governor's race by a mere 61,550 votes.


And, again, there was "a delay" in reporting the totals from Palm Beach County, where, interestingly, Alex Sink beat Scott in Palm Beach County by more than 69,000 votes....


And we had no runoff election pitting the top two vote-getters against each other. The extra 3.4% of the vote that went to the other 6 candidates in this Governor's race would have been definitive, if there had been a runoff allowed.


We also received updated polling of Sink's strong lead over Scott as near to the election as Oct. 18-21...

From Scott's "chosen hometown" paper, the Naples News:


October 25, 2010

NAPLES — Driven by the overwhelming support of independents and moderates, Democrat Alex Sink has opened a nearly 5-point lead over her Republican opponent, Rick Scott, in the race to be Florida’s next governor, a new Naples Daily News/Zogby poll shows.

.....

Both candidates saw their favorable ratings drop and their unfavorable ratings rise, thanks in part to their seemingly incessant negative advertisements.

However, Scott’s numbers appear to be reaching politically unhealthy levels.

The poll showed that 47 percent of overall respondents — including 61 percent of moderates and 33 percent of conservatives — view Scott either somewhat unfavorably or very unfavorably. Forty percent of respondents — including 24 percent of moderates and 20 percent of liberals — said the same about Sink.

That should be a red flag for Scott, said John Zogby, chairman of Zogby International.

“This poll doesn’t really have any good news for him,” Zogby said. “She doesn’t have it locked, but clearly he’s the one that’s on the ropes.”

Publicly, the Scott campaign wasn’t concerned.

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Genealogy has nothing to do with the outcome of this election.



Something much more calculated and ominous is at work.