Once again, Joe steps up to defend us all
Joe Redner got rich by founding Tampa's most famous attraction. The Mons Venus is known around the world, and casual tourists and businesses travelers who find themselves in the area are often more interested in the location of the Mons than the site of their meetings or reunions.
In an industry with a reputation for sleazy business practices, Joe has always stood out as a progressive minded employer – he treats everyone with respect, makes sure they earn a good living, and generally does more for his workers than the laws of competition and governments demand.
Having made a couple thousand butt loads of cash, Joe feels that it is only fair to give something back to the community in which he made his fortune. He does this through generous charitable giving and, more importantly, through his numerous fights against local bullies for what's right.
To put it mildly, he is a thorn in the side of those who would strip our rights and liberties. He knows the law, and he has the money and lawyers and experience to drive his points home. Even when he loses in court, his actions give pause to those in power who would have us living in a semi-theocratic society ruled by hypocritical moralists who lack the will power to live by their own decrees.
Yesterday, Joe filed suit against the members of the Hillsborough Board of County Commissioners over their hateful Hillsborough Homophobia campaign. Some say he has a weak case because he personally has not been harmed by the ordinance that mandates the county "abstain from acknowledging, promoting and participating" in gay pride events, but Joe and other thoughtful folks realize that on ordinance of this nature hurts all county residents by legislating hatred and fear and encouraging discrimination.
Oh, and since Joe still runs one of Tampa's top tourist destinations, an argument can be made that negative national publicity could very well harm him personally.
Redner said he will serve the nine-page lawsuit to commissioners at 9 this morning as they gather for their regular board meeting at the county center.
"Our county commission members need to be taught a lesson, so I'll try to do it," Redner said Tuesday.
The lawsuit in Hillsborough Circuit Court seeks an injunction against the policy for violating constitutional free speech and equal protection rights.
"Too bad in your law school days you didn't learn about the First Amendment and content discrimination," the lawsuit quotes Redner as saying during the meeting in June when commissioners approved the policy.
His remark was aimed at Commissioner Ronda Storms, who proposed the policy after a few parents complained about a Gay Pride Month display at West Gate Regional Library.
Commissioners Jim Norman, Ken Hagan, Tom Scott, Brian Blair and Mark Sharpe also voted for the policy and a second motion to require a public hearing and supermajority vote by the board to overturn the policy.
Commissioner Kathy Castor voted against both measures and is not named in the lawsuit.
County Attorney Renee Lee said late Tuesday that she hadn't seen the lawsuit.
"I don't know how [Redner] is affected by it," Lee said. "To make these things stick, you've got to generally show you've been affected differently than others."
The SP Times has more.
Activist and strip club owner Joe Redner on Tuesday sued Hillsborough County, saying a June 15 vote by county commissioners to abstain from acknowledging, promoting or participating in gay pride events is unconstitutional.
The suit also names six commissioners individually - Brian Blair, Ken Hagan, Jim Norman, Tom Scott, Mark Sharpe and Ronda Storms. Commissioner Kathy Castor, who voted against the measure and has spoken out against it, was not named.
Redner argues that the policy violates his First Amendment right under the U.S. Constitution to receive information at local libraries. He says the commissioners "imposed a ban on one particular group but not on any other groups" and their actions constitute a "prior restraint on protected speech" that fails to "further a compelling government interest."
Redner's complaint also argues that the policy violates due process and equal protection provided by the Constitution by singling out a group. Commissioners "have not targeted other groups or topics featured in library displays," the suit says.
Redner is asking the court to declare the policy unconstitutional, issue an injunction until a trial is scheduled and require the county to pay court costs.
"They should have known they were violating the Constitution," he said Tuesday. "My goal is to show them they are liable for doing that. . . . Someone has to call them on it."
BlogWood Hillsborough Homophobia coverage.
Hold on while I drop my pants, bend over, and grab my ankles…
The Tampa Sports Authority got its first look Monday at what the legal bill might be to defend the NFL's pat-down policy in court this week. The who-pays scoreboard reads like this: taxpayers, $10,000 to $15,000; NFL, zero.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers, tenants of the stadium run by the sports authority, have not pitched in to help pay for the TSA's legal expenses in a challenge over searching fans. A high school civics teacher sued the sports authority last week over the constitutionality of the NFL-mandated security pat-downs at Bucs games.
Richard M. Zabak, a lawyer at the Tampa firm of Gray Robinson, said the NFL will not reimburse the TSA for defending a league mandate that requires security at NFL venues to search for bombs and weapons.
Instead, the NFL will supply legal research and support to the TSA, said Zabak, who was hired to represent the sports authority in the pat-down legal challenge. Zabak said he did not know the value of the NFL's legal help.
"I hope somebody gets back to the NFL and tells them it feels a bit lonesome out here," Patrick Manteiga, chairman of the 11-member TSA board, said of not getting financial help from the NFL.
Jim Norman, the Hillsborough County Commission chairman, who sits on the TSA board, said the sports authority should move ahead in defending the pat-down policy in court and not agitate the NFL. Norman said it is important to consider the "big picture," which he said includes the NFL awarding Super Bowls to the Tampa Bay area.
Oh yeah... Super Bowls...
The Tampa Sports Authority will fight a lawsuit filed last week challenging the legality of fan pat-downs at Raymond James Stadium, but it wants the National Football League to pay for its lawyers.
Sports Authority members voted unanimously Monday to oppose Hillsborough County resident Gordon Johnston's lawsuit when it goes to court Wednesday for an emergency hearing. But some board members expressed frustration that taxpayers will have to pay to defend a security measure that the NFL mandated.
They were already frustrated that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers have refused to pay the added cost of security to carry out the pat-downs.
"My main concern ... is that taxpayers pick up the tab," said board member Mark Proctor.
Attorneys for the Sports Authority presented board members with an option Monday that they simply not put up a defense of the pat-down policy. With no defense, a judge would likely side with Johnston, who claims the pat-downs violate state and U.S. constitutional protections against unreasonable government searches.
More likely, such a move would have forced the league to bear the brunt of the defense in what is believed to be the first legal challenge of the practice. The outcome of the case could affect how other cities deal with the issue.
Hillsborough Commissioner Jim Norman, who sits on the Sports Authority, cautioned board members against taking a position that would be seen as antagonistic to the NFL. Noting that Tampa will host the 2009 Super Bowl, he urged a more conciliatory approach.
"There is a bigger picture here than just the pat-downs," Norman said. "We have a long-term opportunity in this community with the NFL."
At his request, board members instead voted to ask the NFL and the Buccaneers to join the lawsuit and at least help pay for the cost of defending the pat-downs. That request will be made Friday, when Sports Authority officials were already planning to meet with Buccaneers representatives in an attempt to convince the team to pay for the pat-downs.
Oh, and now that I'm bent over and presenting myself to you, would you mind picking up part of the tab for the lube that I've already paid for? I mean, if it wouldn't be too much trouble. Oh – you're not gonna use any lube? Hmmmmm... Well, I don't want to antagonize you, so I'll just try not to scream or bleed on you. Now, would you like me to squeal like a pig?
Nelson makes some sense
OK – in the recent past, he's stood up for voting rights and shown concern for the perils of paperless e-voting. He's always been a staunch opponent of drilling in the gulf, and he used to be known as a defender of consumers.
But then he went and voted for the new bankruptcy bill which is taking effect this weekend. And he supports CAFTA, and, of course, saw no problem with authorizing the war in Iraq.
It's hard to forgive him for all of that, even when he comes out and sounds this good, but who else is a lefty blogger supposed to support? It sure would be nice if we had meaningful elections with real choices. This 'A' or 'B' crap is just not cutting it.
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson said Friday that he had received a key promise in his attempt to prevent oil and gas drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico: a guarantee that legislation on the subject won't be filibuster-proof.
......The effect of that promise, Nelson said, is that drilling proponents would have to have 60 votes to stop a filibuster. Otherwise, he and Florida's other senator, Mel Martinez, R-Orlando, could filibuster legislation that would bring drilling closer to Florida's shores than they want.
......Asked how he was able to extract the promise from Domenici, Nelson smiled and said: "We were able to provide some things he wanted." He would not elaborate.
......"Do we have a problem in energy? You bet we do, but we can't drill our way out of our problem," Nelson said.
The senator said the oil industry and its advocates in Congress have seized on energy problems caused by Hurricane Katrina to advocate increased drilling in the Gulf, which he called "hurricane alley."
Interior Secretary Gale Norton is "absolutely intent on drilling off the coast of Florida," even though it contains "not much oil and little gas," he said.
Responding to questions from club members, Nelson commented on matters including health care and campaign spending.
•He said his re-election campaign will cost $22 million, "an obscene amount of money," of which $18.5 million will be spent on television advertising. Campaign spending and finance reform, he said, have failed to solve the problem because money finds its way into politics "like water running downhill." The answer, he said, is free airtime and public financing for campaigns.
•Nuclear power, gasoline-electric cars and ethanol made from grass and other vegetation should be among the nation's energy solutions, Nelson said.
Wow. What's not to like? Oh...
•He said he opposes a universal, single-payer health care program but that employers should not be the main source of health insurance for individuals. Large groups of consumers organized into purchasing units should replace employers as group insurance purchasers, he said.
And the bit about nuclear power is a little off putting. And the reference to ''ethanol made from grass and other vegetation'' seems to be a swipe at corn based ethanol for the benefit of Florida sugar producers who would really really like to increase their welfare allotments by becoming government subsidized ethanol producers.
Like I said, 'A' or 'B' is not a real choice, and the stifled dumbed down jingoistic pre-packaged public debate entertainment that passes for politics in this country leads to a farce of a democracy.
New and Improved Santa Sweets: ”A Little Less Poisonous!”
Plant City's Ag-mart was just fined a record amount by Florida for forcing workers into dangerous pesticide-laden fields and harvesting produce too soon after applying poisons.
Florida agriculture officials have slapped Ag-Mart Inc., one of the state's largest vegetable growers, with $111,200 in fines for 88 counts of pesticide misuse.
The "extensive violations" breached regulations designed to ensure consumer and worker safety, according to agriculture documents.
Ag-Mart officials declined to comment Wednesday on the state's action, which came little more than a week after the company announced it planned to stop using many of the pesticides in its arsenal.
The violations were uncovered during an investigation into the births several months ago of three malformed babies to farmworkers in Immokalee.
But in a report made public Wednesday, the state health department said it could find no link between the agricultural chemicals and the birth defects, which left one baby without arms and legs and another with a cleft palate and severe facial abnormalities. The third baby, born with multiple defects died shortly after birth. The mother of that child lost another malformed baby nearly two years before.
"This report might be more important for identifying what we don't know than what we do know," said Jay Feldman of the New York-based National Coalition Against the Misuse of Pesticides.
The infants' parents worked in Ag-Mart tomato fields in Florida and North Carolina and lived near each other during the critical time period.
......Companies that do not comply with pesticide laws put consumers and farmworkers at risk, she said. Pesticide labels specify how soon a crop can be harvested after chemicals are applied, as well as how soon workers can re-enter the fields.
Sixty-five of the 88 violations Ag-Mart was cited for involve harvesting crops before the seven-day waiting period, in some cases picking the vegetables the day after they were sprayed.
Despite this, routine spot checks did not turn up illegal pesticide residues, according to agriculture officials.But that does not equate to food that's safe to eat or a field that's safe to work in, Feldman said.
For one thing, there are many pesticides -- some of them known endocrine disruptors -- for which the federal government has not set legal residue limits."Given this birth defect cluster and what it suggests, it really should be cause for evaluating whether the agency is looking at the problem in the best manner and whether it needs to do a better job of tracking exposures," Feldman said.
A Broward County lawyer representing the three families in the case calls the state's effort "a noninvestigation."
"Clearly they're looking for every reason to find no relationship to pesticides. Yet they can arrive at no other explanation," attorney Andrew Yaffa of Boca Raton said.
Similar fines are reportedly pending in North Carolina, and New Jersey is investigating possible violations in that state.
A day after Florida agriculture officials fined tomato-grower Ag-Mart Produce $111,200 in a complaint citing 88 pesticide violations, agriculture officials in North Carolina confirmed Thursday they had notified the company of at least as many violations in their state.
North Carolina agriculture officials would not elaborate on their findings or the amount of the fine until the company received notice via certified mail, a spokesman said.
An Environmental Protection Agency official in Washington confirmed that in North Carolina, it is alleged that Ag-Mart applied some pesticides more often than allowed by the label. The EPA, along with other federal agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, plans to analyze findings of the investigations in Florida and North Carolina, the EPA official said.
The company, which grows the popular Santa Sweets grape tomato, operates farms in Florida, North Carolina, New Jersey and Mexico.
Other investigations continue. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection confirmed Thursday that it, too, is investigating Ag-Mart's pesticide "use and practices" in that state. North Carolina health officials confirmed this week that they also are investigating Ag-Mart.
What does a company do when it's under fire for misusing chemicals and putting its workers and customers at great risk, possibly even causing birth defects? It slaps an “Organic” label on its products and touts its goal of ''protecting our most precious resources -the air we breathe and the land we cultivate.''
So, human life does not make the top two precious resources, but farm workers already knew that. And a field that was saturated with chemicals last season can be used for organic produce this year, instantly giving the grower some kind of environmental cred. Nice.
And even as the company appeals the decision for over $111,000 in fines by the Florida Department of Agriculture, Ag-Mart's president is among an elite group hosting a political fundraiser for Florida Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson. I bet there's no chemical residue on the tomatoes at that particular soirée.
Ag-Mart President Don Long is on the 10-member host committee for the Nov. 9 event to be held in Naples.
......Invitations listing Long as a member of the host committee have been mailed.
Bronson said Thursday that he does not know who is going to the event, nor does he see a conflict of interest.
"Just because someone has had a fine or someone has had a problem doesn't mean that they can't be a part of the system ... and that means even a re-election campaign," he said.
Bucs fan: ”Don’t touch!”
A Tampa Bay Buccaneers season ticket holder, backed by the ACLU of Florida, has filed suit to stop the pat-downs of fans going to football games at Raymond James Stadium.
The fan, Gordon Johnston, a high school civics teacher, said in a statement that he renewed his season tickets for this year and was never informed he would be subject to the pat-down searches recently mandated by the National Football League. He said the Bucs refused to give him a refund of his season ticket money when he asked.
Now, the ACLU has filed the lawsuit against the Tampa Sports Authority, which runs the stadium, asking the court to declare the rule in violation of the Florida Constitution.
"Football fans should not be forced to surrender our constitutional rights as the price of admission to the stadium," Johnston said in a statement. "I am challenging these pat-down searches because I don't like the idea of myself, my wife and my friends being touched without our consent."
The NFL said in August it was requiring all teams to conduct the pat-downs of fans, in an attempt to prevent a terrorist attack by someone with explosives who gained entrance to a stadium.
Florida missionaries ordered out of Venezuela
Despite their fervent prayers for deliverance from the hateful edicts of a bunch of natives who obviously don't know what's best for themselves, God has allowed Hugo Chavez to oust the proselytizers who seek to foist the wisdom of Jesus as interpreted by a bunch of wealthy white colonialists into the lives of the indigenous peoples of Venezuela.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez threatened to kick some Christian U.S. missionaries out of the country Wednesday, as he presented property titles to indigenous groups who he said had been robbed of their ancient homelands.
Hundreds of people from various indigenous groups gathered in this small village in southern Apure state for a ceremony recognizing their ownership of thousands of hectares of land.
''We are doing justice,'' said Chávez, dressed in military fatigues and a red beret. ``We can now start to say that there is a homeland for the Indians.''
Chávez said that he was also ordering the expulsion of a group of Christian missionaries working with indigenous groups, called the New Tribes Mission, accusing the Sanford, Florida-based religious organization of cultural imperialism.
''The New Tribes are leaving Venezuela. This is an irreversible decision that I have made,'' said Chávez. ``We don't want the New Tribes here. Enough colonialism!''
The New Tribes Mission specializes in evangelism among the 3,000 indigenous groups in the world's remotest tracts, places that remain isolated from the outside world.
It has assembled one of the largest missionary forces with 3,200 workers and operations in 17 nations across Latin America, Southeast Asia and West Africa.
Chávez accused the group of sharing ''sensitive, strategic'' information about Venezuela with the CIA, without elaborating. He also accused the missionaries of constructing luxurious camps next to impoverished Indian villages and circumventing Venezuelan customs authorities as they freely flew in and out on private planes.
''These violations of our national sovereignty has to stop,'' he said.
Chávez indicated the group would not be expelled immediately, but given time to leave.
Nita Zelenak, a New Tribes representative reached by telephone, declined to comment on Venezuela's decision or say how many missionaries were based here.
Chavez held the ceremony on the holiday known to many as Columbus Day, marking the arrival of European explorers in the present-day Bahamas on Oct. 12, 1492. Chávez's government renamed the holiday ''Day of Indigenous Resistance'' three years ago.
Chávez, a nationalist who says he is leading a ''revolution'' for the poor, often praises Indian chiefs who stood up to their Spanish conquerors in the centuries after Christopher Columbus reached Venezuela in 1498.
Christopher Columbus made his first landfall on the South American continent in 1498 in what today is the country of Venezuela. Five hundred years later, the people who greeted him are thriving and enjoying new rights and prestige under Hugo Chávez’s Revolutionary Boliviarian government. Looking at recent political changes in Venezuela from the point of view of its original inhabitants helps reveal the nature of Chávez’s government, as well as highlighting why the elite see him as such a threat to their previously hegemonic control over the country.
......In Venezuela, on the other hand, rich resources allowed a disperse population to thrive based on hunting, gathering, and agricultural production. Without a tradition of social stratification leading to an easily exploitable subjugated population accustomed to providing labor and tribute to an elite class, the Spanish made slower progress in colonizing the region than they did in Mexico or the Andes. Instead, the Europeans turned to Catholic missions to “civilize” the aboriginal population and began to import slave labor from Africa to work on their plantations. Indigenous leaders such as Guaicaipuro led the resistance to European encroachments onto their lands, while western penetration pushed them further to the margins.
......Today, Venezuela has a small but diverse Indigenous population that mostly lives far from the capital city of Caracas on the country’s border regions with Guyana, Brazil, and Colombia. Numbering only about 1.5 percent of Venezuela’s 23 million people, they are divided into about 28 different ethnic groups. The largest group, with about 200,000, are the Wayúu (also known as the Guajíra) who live in the state of Zulia on the Colombia border. Smaller groups live in the southern and eastern states of Amazonas, Bolívar, Delta Amacuro, Anzoátegui, and Apure. In addition to the Wayúu, these groups include the Warao, Pemón, Añú, Yanomani, Jivi, Piaroa, Kariña, Pumé, Yekuana, Yukpa, Eñepá, Kurripakao, Barí, Piapoko, Baré, Baniva, Puinave, Yeral, Jodi, Kariná, Warekena, Yarabana, Sapé, Wanai, and Uruak.
They are all prime targets for civilization by New Tribes, even though it can be very frustrating dealing with ignorant savages who ignore the alarms on their Palm Pilots.
Carlos, who is missionary Fran Cochran’s co-worker in translating Scripture into the Maquiritare language, was saddened that some of his people haven’t learned that time does have a place.
When some church leaders failed to show for the opening day of the seminar, Carlos said, “If they knew the day and time that Jesus was coming back, they wouldn’t be ready.”
But seminar leaders were impressed by one group of church leaders from Mawashiña. They walked more than five days and then traveled another two days by boat to reach the seminar on time.
......Pray for the growth of the Maquiritare church, and pray that they will learn that there are some areas where time is important.
Because God really hates it when you're late for Carlos' seminar.
Bonus link: a little taste of indigenous life.
I’ve said it before…
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Very busy here at BlogWood Central. Hope to have a real post or two up later today. I'll also be posting at the New Super Blog FLA Politics, so check that out too. Register. Contribute.
Children, testosterone and thrashings
I've heard about this kind of stuff on the internets, but I never imagined it went on in the chambers of our very own BOCC.
Later in the meeting, Norman apologized if his "passion for children" was misconstrued as aggression.
"It's too much testosterone, Mr. Chairman. We understand," quipped Commissioner Ronda Storms. A suddenly jovial Norman, then made reference to the many thrashings Storms has handed out, asking her what her excuse was then.
Webmaster arrested…
for porn. Yeah that's the ticket... porn!
A man who runs a pornographic Web site that includes pictures of Iraqi war dead has been arrested on sexual obscenity charges.
Chris Wilson, a 27-year-old former policeman from Lakeland, was taken into custody Friday night on one felony and 300 misdemeanor indecency counts unrelated to the grisly pictures from Iraq. The charges come a week after his site made national news and launched a Pentagon investigation into how war zone photos of charred and dismembered bodies described as victims of U.S. attacks could have surfaced.
Polk County sheriff's officials said he was charged because the Web site also features sexually explicit pictures and videos that users send of women who are supposedly their wives and girlfriends — including those who appear to be active-duty soldiers.
Sheriff's officials insist the charges are unrelated to the Iraq pictures, but Wilson's lawyer, Lawrence Walters, disagreed.
"Of all the hundreds of thousands of webmasters in the country, and even in central Florida, why would Chris Wilson be arrested a week after he hits national spotlight news on the Iraqi war photos?" said Walters, a First Amendment specialist. "I think any reasonable person would be suspicious of that.
Wilson remained in jail Saturday afternoon after the judge in his initial appearance denied his request to lower the $151,000 bail.
Now Thats Fucked Up - the site in question.
Building schools and hatred
Yesterday, the Hillsborough BOCC, led by female female impersonator Ronda Storms (seen here in a fruitless search for an Adam's apple), decided to deal with the county school construction funding crisis by ''studying'' the problem to ensure that a larger regressive sales tax is enacted to ease an increase in school impact fees that would have to be paid by developers – money that would no doubt come right out of the commissioners' pockets in the form of lower campaign contributions in the coming months.
A panel of Hillsborough officials, builders and parents will explore whether to raise sales taxes, impact fees on new homes or both to ease classroom crowding.
Hillsborough County Commissioner Ronda Storms proposed the task force Wednesday as the commissioners discussed whether to restrict development to match classroom capacity.
......Only Commissioner Kathy Castor opposed Storms' proposal for a task force, suggesting it would only delay dealing with growth.
Castor said impact fees could be increased immediately, as recommended by a 2004 study. Hillsborough's $196 impact fee for school sites, the lowest in the state, hasn't been increased in 20 years. The study said a $3,800 fee was necessary to catch up with growth.
But Storms said that if impact fees were increased now, voters wouldn't be willing to approve a sales tax increase referendum next year. "We need both," Storms said, and the tax would "go down in flames."
......Most county schools aren't over capacity, but many in popular growth areas are experiencing severe crowding.
Last week county planners tried to deny rezonings to three developments near crowded schools in east and south Hillsborough under a planning policy adopted in July 2004.
County Attorney Renee Lee stopped the effort, saying the county needs an ordinance to enforce the policy.
Ronda continued her recent attacks against the school board, somehow trying to lay blame for being underfunded at the feet of an agency for which she and her board control funding.
Hillsborough County Commissioner Ronda Storms scolded School Board officials Wednesday for failing to ease a classroom congestion problem that they now call a crisis.
The former high school English teacher criticized them for taking four years to ask commissioners to impose a sales tax or raise impact fees despite knowing for some time that they needed to overcome what has become a $364-million deficit in the school district's five-year construction plan.
Storms also chided School Board members and superintendent MaryEllen Elia for missing Wednesday's County Commission meeting. They were at a workshop on team building that they said had been scheduled for months.
"If the School Board thought this was important, they should have been here," Storms said.
She and five other commissioners approved forming a task force in two weeks, with commissioners, School Board members, builders, parents and activists, to discuss ways to ease crowding.
...and the school board shot back.
"We were told everything was fine," Storms said.
Past school officials' statements about capacity "were true at the time they made those statements," but no longer are, Olson responded. "Surely Ronda knows the difference between then and now."
Rapid growth and the class-size amendment have worsened the problems recently, school officials have said.
Olson said it wouldn't be appropriate for the school board to attend the county board's meeting, and that school officials have tried to schedule a joint meeting with county officials to discuss concurrency. She said Jim Norman, chairman of the commissioners, asked today to delay a meeting scheduled for Nov. 10,
Olson tried to sound a conciliatory note.
"I hope the commissioners and the school board can work together on this," she said. "I know we all care about kids."
School board member Jennifer Faliero, who has tangled with Storms recently, was more blunt.
"This is a deflection tactic this commissioner chooses to engage in when the arrow of accountability is pointed at her," Faliero said.
She said school officials have kept the commissioners fully informed about school capacity problems. "They have our five-year plan, they know our deficit. ... It's ultimately up to the commissioners -- they are the only ones who can approve a zoning permit."
Has Miss Ronda become a tax and spend liberal? Don't worry – she hasn't lost her instinctive hatred toward anyone who does not conform to her narrow notions of normalcy.
Hillsborough County Commissioner Kathy Castor said she was only trying to repair Hillsborough's reputation as unfriendly to gay rights when she asked commissioners Wednesday to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation for private and public employees.
But the request backfired when commissioners, led by Ronda Storms, not only refused Castor, but voted 5-2 to make it harder for voters to decide the issue.
They required that the workplace protection of gays can't be put on a referendum ballot unless at least five commissioners approve it. Before Castor's request, only four votes were needed. Castor and Tom Scott dissented.
......"Don't be mean-spirited," Castor pleaded, but commissioners approved it with little discussion. Two South Tampa residents, Jeanine Minge and Melissa Lewis, waited all day for commissioners to vote, and when they did, shortly before 5 p.m., they shook their heads in disgust.
"It just shows that when they said they weren't discriminating against gays, they in effect were discriminating against gays," Lewis said. "They're doing everything they can to silence a community," Minge said. "It's appalling."