County's Got That Fishy Smell

Skip directly to the full story.

By STEVE OTTO

http://www.tbo.com/news/columnists/steveotto/MGBIO2RU67F.html

Published: Sep 30, 2007

The smell had been around for some time and I couldn't tell where it was coming from.

It has that distinct, permeating odor of rotting fish. If you've lived in South Tampa for any length of time, you know the familiar aroma that drifts in over Bayshore Boulevard when there is a bad stretch of red tide.

But there hasn't been much red tide this year and the stench was a little hard to trace. I drove around town with the windows down until I cruised by the County Center, where it seemed to be the strongest. Yep, it was the smell of rotting fish all right.

I put in a call to Jan Platt. Not only was Mrs. Platt a county commissioner for about 300 years, she is a terrific fisherwoman. I'm serious: This woman knows fish as well as she could smell a bad deal on the county commission.

"You're right," she said. "That smell is definitely coming from that direction. I think it's still left over from that slick deal they pulled on wetlands regulation, but there is also that fundraising thing. Did you see that fundraising invitation for Brian Blair and Ken Hagan?"

Are you kidding? Actually, I didn't get an invite from either campaign, but more than a few e-mails from the rest of you came in, just in case I wanted to go.

What made them intriguing was that the two commissioners decided to hold their re-election fundraisers at the same place, using basically the same letters, with essentially the same "honorary hosts" and "host committee."

In fact, my guess is if you went to the first one Thursday for Blair and then showed up for Hagan's on Oct. 11, you would get that dejÀ vu feeling. I noticed Sheriff David Gee is a host for both of them, which means at least someone will be directing traffic.

There's nothing wrong with birds of a feather flocking, or whatever it is they do at these things, together; it happens all the time in politics. In this instance, both candidates have been drawing from similar money pots for some time.

It gets a little more uncomfortable when you see names such as Hung Mai, who was appointed by the board to the planning commission, listed as a member of the host committee, but I suppose that's politics, too.

'So-Called Compromise'

"Maybe they can all talk about that so-called compromise they pulled on the public," Platt said, referring to a decision by the board to cut back on the regulatory division of the planning commission. "I believe they [the commissioners] had that compromise in mind from the very beginning, and this way managed to look as if they were actually compromising."

It's not so much that the commissioners have bonded together as it is who they have bonded with. Any pretense at preserving the environment, and dealing with the reality of a region in danger of imploding under the weight of a massive sellout to special interests, has disappeared.

Getting Pumped

That ought to pump you up for this week's gathering at County Center, which includes somewhere in the discussion commission chairman Jim Norman's $40 million proposed sports complex. It would be built northwest of Plant City in another rural area that my old friend Lee De Cesare would call the "fens and bogs" of Hillsborough County.

Actually, it may not be exactly $40 million as they haven't really come up with the proposals for the commissioner's luxury box or the giant "BIG JIM'S PLACE" that can be seen as far away as downtown Plant City.