Local Florida Ballot Stuff

I find it very difficult to make an informed decision on the local stuff. You can read a bit about the judges up for election in The Merit Retention Pamplet prepared by the Florida Bar Association.

JUDGE STUFF

Shall Justice Kenneth B Bell of the Supreme Court be retained?

Sure

What about Raoul Cantero III?

Ya know, I have this unreasoning prejudice against people with numbers after their name . . why is that? Poor guy. Maybe his grandma made him do that. He can stay.

Second District Court of Appeals
Canaday - Yes
Kelly - ?
Northcutt - ?
Villanti - ?
Wallace - ?


County Judge Group 11
Henry Gill or Liz Rice?

The Tampa Trib endorses Liz Rice. But she's eeewwww a commercial litigation attorney.

Henry Gill disagrees with the Trib's endorsement (imagine that!) but he, too, is a litigation attorney.

sheez. The Trib screwed up Gill's online rebuttal, so Gill may get a sympathy vote anyway.

Hell. Some actual information would be nice.



My local concrete company sent me some info on Bob Buckhorn, Hillsborough County Commissioner, District 6:


AN OPEN LETTER
TO: INTERESTED PARTIES (PLEASE COPY OTHERS)

Bob Buckhorn (D) - Candidate County Commission District 6 - is commited to the imposition of $4 billion tax and fee increase in unincorporated Hillsborough County over the next 15 years.

Mr. Buckhorn stated that this tax increase in needed to fund "our $4 billion transportation deficit."

Note: Mr. Buckhorn's opponent, Brian Blair (R), disagrees with Mr. Buckhorn. Mr Blair states - "We do not have a revenue problem in this county - we have a spending problem"

The facts are we do not have a $4 billion transportion deficit. We have a $1 billion transportation backlog. Further, funds are in the pipeline to fund this backlog. (source: Public records)

Mr. Buckhorn proposes a significant increase in impact fees, a $0.05 per gallon increase in our local option tax and an increase in our local option sales tax. He should know that an increse of $0.01 in our local option sales tax would be required to yield $4 billion over a 15 year period. He also should know that this would increase our local sales tax to $0.08 - a 14% increase.

If Mr. Buckhorn is successful, Hillsborough County would then impose the highest sales tax in the State of Florida. In fact, if Mr. Buckhorn's agenda is adopted, businesses and residents would relocate out of our county - and few, if any - businesses would relocate to our county. Needless to say the loss of jobs would be substantial and our local economy would be decimated.

Yours very truly,
Cast-Crete Corporation

Ralph W. Hughes
Chairman

P.S. A $4 billion tax increase over a 15 year period would result in an additional $267 million being taken out of the pockets of the people each and every year.

I had to re-type the above letter, and I'm pretty tired. All typos are mine, not Mr. Hughes.
I wish Mr. Hughes was running for something. or working as a reporter.

I've gotten tons of pretty postcards with pictures of candidates looking serenely and pompously at flowers & stuff, but Mr. Hughes is the only information with actual facts and figures.

yikes.