SARASOTA Observer
YourObserver.com
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2012
She’s the mother of three children, all under the age of 10. She put herself through the University of Miami’s law school. She’s a former Sarasota County prosecutor. She started her own smallbusiness family law practice. She is a former member of the Sarasota County Planning Commission and former trustee with what was then Manatee Community College. And after being appointed to the Sarasota County Commission, her fellow commissioners obviously respected her professionalism and smarts so much they named her commission chair. But here’s the part we like best: As the daughter of a masonry construction company owner in Buffalo, Robinson has never forgotten what it took her father and uncle to operate their small business. She remembers how they didn’t pay themselves at times to be able to pay their employees. She remembers the hassles they endured from business-killing government regulations. In short, 38-year-old Robinson gets it — every bit of it. Her primary goal: To make Sarasota so attractive economically and in quality of life that “I will be surrounded by my grandchildren” who live and work here. Robinson is destined to be a Sarasota force for good. Recommendation: Robinson.
Sarasota Hospital Board
This is a contest between a career nurse, incumbent Teresa Carafelli, and a business owner, Alex Miller, CEO of Sarasota-based Mercedes Medical. It doesn’t really matter their political parties. The hospital board essentially is a non-partisan place. What matters is what skills and talents board members possess. In her tenure as a board member, Carafelli has absorbed the issues and challenges well. She knows what’s ahead for the Sarasota Memorial Healthcare System, and she brings the nurse’s perspective — an employee’s perspective — to the board discussion. That’s OK. Indeed, over the years, we’ve often heard the argument that nurses need an advocate on the board. In truth, they don’t. They have a built-in advocate in CEO Gwen MacKenzie, a former nurse herself. Instead, in a billion-dollar enterprise, taxpayers should have all of the business expertise at the board table they can get. What’s more, it always helps to have the eyes, ears and experiences of an outsider; someone who can think and look at hospital issues from a different and nonself-interest vantage point and who has had the pressures of meeting a payroll. Read Alex Miller’s responses in our
Voter Guide. She would make a solid addition to the hospital board. Recommendation: Miller
are reserved for super occasions. While the items listed in this amendment can be big, in our view, they are not so compelling to require supermajorities. Recommendation: No
Sarasota County Charter Review Board
Amendment: Derivatives prohibition. The city shall not enter into any derivatives (including but not limited to options, forward contracts, futures, stripped mortgage-backed securities, structured notes and swaps) in connection with bonds issued by the city. Government investment and pension funds lost a lot of money in the financial meltdown because they invested in sophisticated derivatives they didn’t understand. In typical fashion, groups reacted the way they do with any calamity — by creating more laws and regulations to prevent similar losses in the future. That’s not the answer — banning derivatives. The answer is hiring investment managers who know what they’re doing. Recommendation: No
It seems like every two to four years, there are efforts by various groups to infiltrate the Sarasota County Charter Review Board with new elected members who either have a legislative agenda or who want to convert the elected board to an appointed board. In this year’s crop of candidates, two candidates best understand the role of the board. Recommendation: Donna Barcomb and John Fellin.
Sarasota City Charter Amendments
Amendment: Require a super majority vote of the City Commission to approve a franchise, contract or lease of more than 10 years; to approve any changes to city’s pension plan which increase the actuarially accrued liability of the plan; exempting contracts which can be terminated at will with no cost to the city. Here’s one way to look at this: If commissioners are compelled to commit the city to long-term obligations like cable TV or electric power contracts or higher city pensions, so the thinking goes, these should require more than a simple majority. Such contracts should be difficult to approve. That sounds sensible — that big decisions should require overwhelming approval. Flip the coin, though. A lot changes in five years, not to mention 10. If, because of technology or big recessions or other compelling reasons, a contract needs to be amended, would a supermajority be required? When James Madison helped craft the U.S. Constitution, he worried about “the tyranny of the majority over the minority,” whereby simple majority votes could run roughshod over minorities. But he also recognized the opposite was disconcerting. In the Federalist Papers, he said with supermajorities “power would be transferred to the minority … An interested minority might take advantage of it to screen himself from equitable sacrifices to the general weal, or, in particular emergencies, to extort unreasonable indulgences.” In other words, with a supermajority required, you could end up with a commissioner in the minority trading his vote for future favors. This amendment sounds like a good idea, but supermajority votes typically
Amendment: Citizens’ initiative petition to provide that signatures affixed to a citizens’ initiative petition to amend the City Charter must be affixed within a period of 180 days prior to the date such petition is submitted to the Office of the City Auditor and Clerk for presentation to the City Commission; lengthening such time period to obtain signatures from 90 days to 180 days. When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, he said citizens have the right to alter or abolish their government. Increasing from 90 to 180 days to gather petition signatures is fortifies that right. Recommendation: Yes Amendment: Amendment to delete alternative minimum-wage provision which requires employers receiving a subsidy from the city of more than $100,000 per fiscal year and having 50 or more employees to pay covered employees an alternate minimum wage exceeding the minimum wage required by federal and state law. Duped by anti-Walmart activists, Sarasota voters erred when they adopted this amendment. Now they need to kill it — the way this amendment killed Walmart when it wanted to build one of its stores near Newtown. Recommendation: Yes AMENDMENT: To create an Elections Canvassing Board; require candidates to hand-deliver campaign treasurer’s report on sixth day prior to election rather than on fourth day; revise and clarify powers and duties of City Auditor and Clerk; to
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allow insurance as an alternative to surety bond for city officials; delete verbiage in “Bonding” article covered by state law; delete requirement for mayor to deliver annual state of the city address; make other “housekeeping” type amendments. The crafters of this amendment forgot one thing: the kitchen sink. This amendment has too many items — some good, some bad, some neutral — but too many for sure. Recommendation: No Amendment: To provide that certificates of participation of the city shall not be issued for any purpose until the question of issuing such certificates of participation shall have been decided in favor thereof by a majority vote of the electors at a referendum held for that purpose in the manner provided by Florida law and by ordinance or resolution of the City Commission. Come on. Voters elect commissioners to make decisions for the public welfare. Government by referendum is no way to run a government. This is unnecessary. Recommendation: No Amendment: Splits the office of “City Auditor and Clerk” into a city auditor, who remains a charter official appointed by the City Commission, and a separate office of city clerk under the city manager. The city auditor retains and is limited to audit and investigatory duties.Existing duties of the “City Auditor and Clerk” unrelated to auditing are transferred to the city clerk, except that administration of city pension plans is transferred to the city manager. We have advocated many times, and will continue to do so, that the city of Sarasota desperately needs an elected, CEO mayor who has a vision, can set the city’s agenda and lead. But alas, that amendment is not on the ballot. Instead, we have the Commissioner Terry Turner amendment. And it makes sense. Let’s try to simplify this: The operations of a municipal government can indeed be run like a business. And most of us know that for a business to succeed, it needs one leader directing operations and with the sign on his desk that says: “The buck stops here.” This amendment would bring an end to the incessant power struggles that have existed because of the bifurcated responsibilities assigned to the city manager and city auditor/clerk. The auditor should audit, that’s it. City Hall has been broken for years, in part because of its organizational structure. Quit the insanity of doing the same thing over and over with lousy results. Recommendation: Yes
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