Recent editorials from Florida newspapers:
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Nov. 9
Sun Sentinel of Fort Lauderdale on proposed spring break rules city leaders are considering:
On the rowdy meter, Spring Break dialed up a notch this year on Fort Lauderdale beach. More young people were arrested for disorderly conduct and public intoxication. Fights broke out. Garbage cans overflowed. And photos captured college kids shotgunning cans of beer, playing raucous games of beer pong and - horror of horrors! - pouring beer on bikini-clad coeds.
As a result, city leaders are considering a crackdown on coolers, floats, speakers, tents and tables for future big crowds at the beach. Violators could be arrested and face a $500 fine.
Commissioners are talking about one more over-the-top idea, too. That is, a request by the police department to install license-plate readers that would scan every car headed to the beach.
How this Big Brother device would keep young people from chugging beer is not clear. For a lot of young people take cheap flights from the Great White North to visit #HelloSunny in March. Plus, it’s far more likely that those who drive have outstanding campus parking tickets than outstanding criminal warrants.
But in April, volunteers on the Fort Lauderdale Parks and Recreation Advisory Board wrote a letter to City Hall saying they were “very concerned about observations of disorderly conduct and disregard of City laws” during Spring Break. They suggested a “more pro-active strategy” before the deluge returns next year.
And in a classic case of overreaction, administrators came back with proposed rules that scream: “You kids get off my lawn!”
Fort Lauderdale already has ordinances against drinking alcohol on the beach, littering, fighting, loud music, lewd behavior and doing anything to interfere with the police.
Plus, concerts and other special beach events already require permits that address additional security and restrictions on what you may carry.
If approved, Fort Lauderdale’s city manager could single-handedly enact the crackdown rules for any “high impact” event, defined as one that attracts more than 5,000 people.
But which events will be considered high-impact?
The Fort Lauderdale Air Show? The Tortuga Music Festival? Urban Beach Weekend, which attracts a largely African-American crowd around Memorial Day?
Fort Lauderdale appears to have copied its get-tough rules from Miami Beach, which faces questions of selective enforcement for how it handled Urban Beach Weekend this year. Actually, the sudden appearance of those license-plate readers spurred accusations of racial discrimination.
Does Fort Lauderdale really want to go there?
Before punishing all beachgoers for the wrongdoing of an over-exuberant few, the city should better anticipate Spring Break crowds and enforce existing regulations, without going overboard.
Garbage and skirmishes aside, it was nice to see young people return to a beach marketed mostly to families and upscale retirees. Let’s remember these college students will soon be joining the working world. Perhaps their memories will make them long to return and create tomorrow’s economy.
Part of the problem was that the city didn’t expect such a large turnout. Even still, Mayor Jack Seiler said in early April: “I think we’ve gotten a really good grip on the issue after what I would call a rocky start.”
Without question, the combination of young people and alcohol can lead to bad behavior.
In March, Fort Lauderdale police responded to 131 incidents along the central beach, a 72 percent increase over two years ago, the Sun Sentinel’s Brittany Wallman and John Maines recently reported. Those calls resulted in 43 arrests, mostly for disorderly conduct, drug use and disorderly intoxication.
Bigger crowds over Spring Break certainly warrant a bigger, though restrained, police presence. But the arrests of an average 1.3 people a day does not warrant a crackdown on all beachgoers.
Yes, coolers make it easier for people to hide alcohol. But families also use them to chill water, soft drinks and food for the day.
The city should focus on catching that frat boy with the beer can, not that family with an insulated oasis next to their sandcastle and beach blankets.
City Manager Lee Feldman offers a good place to start. Contact the big colleges with a warning: “Your students are welcome here, and here’s the rules, but we prefer to send them back without a police record.”
In the meantime, city commissioners should kick sand on this crowd-control overreach.
Online: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/
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Nov. 13
Tampa Bay Times of St. Petersburg on visas for Cubans:
The health attacks reported on American diplomats in Cuba deserve a serious investigation, and the Cuban government’s cooperation in the case will - for better or for worse - shape the emerging relationship between the two nations. But the Trump administration should not link that probe with the processing of visas for Cubans seeking to visit the United States. That only hurts ordinary Cubans and their Tampa Bay relatives, not the island’s communist government, and it is yet another example of the harm from this pinched approach to foreign policy.
The U.S. Embassy in Havana stopped issuing visas to Cubans six weeks ago after slashing the embassy staff by 60 percent. The action was taken after some U.S. diplomats and their families complained of hearing loss and other health-related effects from what may have been a campaign involving sonic weapons aimed at embassy workers. Tampa Bay Times staff writer Paul Guzzo reported Monday that the scare has shut down visa operations, with huge fallout in the Tampa Bay area, home to the third-largest population of Cuban-Americans in the United States.
Cubans who were claiming oppression at home and who had hoped to find refuge here suddenly find themselves out of luck. One local woman who is undergoing chemotherapy had hoped for her son in Cuba to join her at her side. A Cuban man who arrived in Tampa in 2014 and had established himself had hoped to bring his wife and young daughter to the area. But plans for both collapsed after the United States suspended visa services in the Cuban capital, Havana, on Sept. 29. They are among 100,000 Cubans seeking visas to the United States and are now in limbo. “In essence the Trump administration has barred the people of Cuba from visiting loved ones in Tampa and across the United States,” said U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Tampa, who has called attention to the issue.
A U.S. investigation into the sonic attacks is ongoing, but there is no reason that visas cannot be processed in a normal manner at the same time. As it stands, Cubans can still apply for one of the 20,000 immigrant visas available each year to move to the United States, but only at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, Colombia. Forcing Cubans to travel there for in-person interviews is too costly for citizens of a country where the average wage is $25 per month. Castor has asked U.S. authorities to consider allowing online applications or for other nations to help by opening up their embassies in Havana. The State Department told the Times it would announce alternative plans soon, but it provided no details or time line.
This is a good issue for Castor, whose constituents need the United States and Cuba to cooperate. Already the Trump administration has announced curbs on the Obama-era policy easing trade and travel restrictions with Cuba, and the two sides have developed a frosty tone after what was considered a promising new era. Any attacks by the Cuban government on the health or safety of U.S. personnel deserve a harsh response. But this reaction hurts those Cubans most interested in maintaining or nurturing ties with America. That doesn’t serve U.S. interests at all, and it’s out of proportion to what authorities know about the case so far.
The embassy pullout reflects this administration’s inclination to disengage. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is pushing ahead with plans to cut the department staff by nearly 2,000 people, or 8 percent, even as America’s historic adversaries, Russia and China, move to the fill the political and economic void. Though the pullback in Cuba was a response to a specific concern, shutting down the visa operation is the same abandonment tactic that this administration is pursuing on the broader diplomatic front. Washington should quickly find an effective way to process these visa applications. This nation has no interest in keeping Cuban-American families apart, or in curtailing the exposure of Cubans to a free society.
Online: http://www.tampabay.com/
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Nov. 9
Orlando Sentinel on the next U.S. census:
With Congress preoccupied by health care, tax cuts and other hot-button issues this year, a critical priority for the nation - and especially Florida - is at risk.
The next U.S. census isn’t due until 2020, but the federal agency in charge is way behind schedule in preparing for the massive undertaking of accurately counting more than 320 million people. The Census Bureau has only fully developed a few of the dozens of technology systems - designed to save money, improve efficiency and simplify participation - that it had planned to test next year. The head of the bureau quit in June, and President Trump hasn’t named a permanent replacement.
Congress bears at least part of the blame for the bureau’s struggles, because lawmakers have been starving its budget for years. And the next installment of funding for the 2020 census in pending bills would fall almost $300 million short of what’s needed, according to independent experts.
The Constitution requires a count of Americans to be conducted every 10 years to determine how congressional representatives and federal funds are apportioned among states. The 2020 census will become the basis for the next round of congressional redistricting in states across America, including Florida. The next national count also will largely determine whether Washington directs more than $675 billion a year in federal funding where it is most needed. It will provide critical economic, social and demographic details on the nation’s residents to inform decisions for governments at all levels, as well as for many businesses.
President Trump’s Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, whose department includes the Census Bureau, asked for an additional $3.3 billion to complete the 2020 count at a House committee hearing last month. His total request of $15.6 billion was more than 25 percent above the $12.3 billion price tag the Obama administration projected, which Ross called “overly optimistic.” The secretary said the extra money was needed to catch up on developing the technology systems and to help boost responses amid growing public distrust of the federal government and anxiety about cyber security. This is a credible appeal, especially from an administration better known for trying to slash government spending.
Rather than pressure Ross to reduce his funding request, key members of both parties in the hearing questioned whether he was asking for enough. “The Census Bureau is dangerously underfunded and has been for years, and unless we do something about it right now … this massive deficiency could imperil the fairness and accuracy of the census itself,” said U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, a Maryland Democrat and the committee’s ranking member. “This is not a partisan observation. Both progressives and conservatives agree that current budget projections are way, way, way too low.”
A thorough and accurate census that doesn’t leave people uncounted is especially important for Florida, now the nation’s third-most-populous state and still growing. Florida’s 27-member U.S. House delegation could expand by two after 2020 based on population growth if all the state’s residents are accounted for. Florida also would be due billions of additional federal dollars.
Former U.S. Rep. Pat Schroeder, a Democrat who represented a Colorado district for 24 years before relocating to Celebration, chaired a House committee that oversaw the census in the 1970s. She’s also worried about the 2020 count. “If we don’t have an accurate census in 2020, Florida stands to lose a lot,” Schroeder said.
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the panel that Ross addressed last month, includes three members from Florida: Republicans Ron DeSantis and Dennis Ross, and Democrat Val Demings. Those three belong at the head of the parade in Congress ensuring that the Census Bureau gets the resources it needs to conduct a thorough and accurate count in 2020.
For as Schroeder noted, “States that have lost population are not interested in an accurate census.”
Online: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/
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