Home  News Local News South Florida has had it!
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South Florida has had it! |
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Written by Sonia Morgan
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Sunday, 11 May 2008 |
If the mayors of North Lauderdale and Margate get their way, South Florida would be the 51st state and Tallahassee would have nothing do with the way it is governed.
Mayors Jack Brady of North Lauderdale and Pam Donovan of Margate are asking more than 300 other cities to join them in their bid to make South Florida the 51st state and have sent out a resolution to the U.S Congress for the split to those cities, citing legislature concerns.
The cities of Margate and North Lauderdale are proposing a split between North Florida and South Florida with the boundary line from Palm Beach County down through Monroe County.
In an interview with the National Weekly, Mayors Brady and Donovan said Tallahassee was out of touch with South Florida. “They want to run our cities from up there, but they have no clue what is going on in our cities,” said a concerned Donovan. The decisions made in Tallahassee, she added, are adversely affecting education, low income families, health care, senior care and legal aid.
Brady, whose commission spearheaded the effort said, “This has been going on far too long. We are here trying to give good service to our residents at the cheapest possible costs and we keep getting hammered by the State Legislatures.”
They contend that the Florida Legislature makes it difficult for local governments to generate revenue and perform their functions effectively.
South Florida a highly diverse and densely populated area is very different from North Florida, the Mayors maintain, and as such has many different issues and requires different solutions than North and Central Florida.
“For example,” Donovan said, “It requires us here in South Florida to have our voting ballots in English, Spanish and Creole. That’s an expense we have to endure; the state doesn’t pay for this. Counties and Cities do.
“They like to do one size fits all. They want cities to all be one and it cannot be that way,” she laments.
Brady believes that the local officials are the ones on the ground who know what is happening in their cities and are prepared to do what’s best for their constituents.
One of the major areas to suffer is education. “Because we’re an urbanized area, highly concentrated, we have more of the school population than the rest of Florida it makes it difficult because we’re getting the hardest hit,” Donovan said. She pointed out that 10 years ago the state used to pay 55 percent of the cost to run Florida schools, and they now provide only 45 percent leaving the local tax payers to foot the rest of the bill.
According to Mayor Donovan, South Florida alone generated $716 billion in revenues for the state last year and only about $600 billion was returned to South Florida.
“We seem to get the bottom of the barrel,” she said adding that “Tallahassee has approved 471 unfunded mandates in the last several years for cities and counties.”
Are cities responding?
Mayor Brady said he has presented his arguments to the Broward League of Cities and some are already on board. The Mayor of Pembroke Pines is in favor, he added, and is hoping that other cities will join the effort.
Brady is optimistic about their mission, and said “Once we get everybody on board then we’re going to set up a delegation to go and speak to congress on behalf of the four counties.” He said winning this statehood would allow them to properly educate the youth, take care of the elderly and perform other social economic functions to meet the needs of South Floridians.
What are the chances of winning this statehood? According to both mayors, the chances may be slim, but they were not fighting a losing battle.
But according to Lauderhill Commissioner, Dale Holness, “I believe what we should be working towards is getting rid of the people in Tallahassee who are causing harm and damage to South Florida by not giving us a fair amount of the revenue and unfunded mandates to the counties and the cities. We need a change in government in Tallassee from the Governor’s mansion to the state Legislature and hopefully the people reading this paper will know in this election cycle to put Democrats in power.”
Even if statehood is not achieved, the mayors are hoping that the state senators will take notice and come and see the problems in South Florida. “Drop the politics of Republican vs. Democrats and come and see how it is for residents,” Donovan Said.
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