High hopes...

Last Friday, I listened to the Hernando County Legislative Delegation on the small television in my office. It was the first time in 5 years that I was unable to attend this yearly meeting of our delegation. I was chained to my desk attempting to close out our books for the year 2006.

The Honorable Robert Schenck was nominated by Senator Fasano to lead the Hernando County Delegation and seconded by Rep. Charles Dean. Rep. Schenck filled the shoes of David Russell with ease this year.

The first order of business on this delegation's agenda was to listen to the local elected officials. It never ceases to amaze me that each year the local elected officials are given an unlimited time to present their wish lists while the non-profit groups, and local citizens, are given just 3 minutes to speak at the podium. It seems kind of ironic that the local officials stand at the podium promoting pet projects, which will eventually be funded by our tax dollars, while the citizens sit patiently waiting in the audience for their chance to be heard by their delegation.

A suggestion to speed up the process for next year's delegation would be to have either the county administrator, or city manager, present all the requests to the delegation in lieu of having multiple commissioners giving political speeches at the podium. The Hernando County Delegation has been subjected over the years with numerous commissioners taking their turn at self promotion at the podium and this year was not any different with Commissioners' Rowden, Rocco and Kinglsey taking a tremendous amount of allotted time that would have been better spent listening to the non-profit organizations, and just us plain citizens. In fact, I believe that state statutes were written for the benefit of ordinary citizens to have the ability to directly speak annually with their legislative delegation.

The Hernando Legislative Delegation listened quite patiently to all the concerns of the citizens. Two of the most important items brought to the table were homeowner insurance and high property taxes. Encouraging words were spoken by both, Rep. Schenck and Senator Fasano, about soaring property insurance rates and the need for in-depth discussion at the special session of the Legislature this month.

Representative Robert Schenck has been working on methods for equalizing residential property taxes, with updated equations for local property appraisers, which is being co-sponsored by Senator Mike Fasano. Senator Fasano spoke about the need for a 3% cap on commercial property taxes to protect the interests of those Mom & Pop businesses struggling to stay afloat under a sea of bills that include high property taxes, along with extremely high business insurance premiums for their property.

It is a good thing I was in my office alone while listening to this broadcast on channel 19. I shouted out a loud hoo-rah for Representative Charlie Dean when he advocated that he would push for all counties to have zero-based budgets, with line items, so the citizens could better understand where their tax dollars are being spent each year. Zero based budgeting, along with performance management, were key items in my platforms when I ran for commissioner in 2000 and 2004 so I was ecstatic to hear Charlie Dean spout the need for this simple approach to budgeting in local government. By the way, Commissioner David Russell used this same zero based budgeting agenda in his campaign of 2006 and hopefully he follows through with the implementation of this process in Hernando County.

It looks like our Representatives and Senators are ready to hit the ground running this legislative session. I have high hopes that our delegation will do their best to look after the interests of their constituents. Good luck to the Hernando County Legislative Delegation!