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GOP chair right to push tax cut to help seniors

Re: County GOP chair needs to take Politics 101, July 18 letter

The GOP chair can teach Politics 101. Letter writer Robert Ryan should review the governing documents of an organization before he complains about the leadership. He is wrong when he says that the Pasco GOP chair is "responsible only for recruiting, supporting and helping elect GOP candidates."

The fact is that one of the objectives is "the determination of public issues." The Republican Party of Pasco has consistently supported the Republican Party position of less taxes and less government. Another objective is to "promote an informed electorate through political education." Voters should know that the proposed $1.1-billion budget is up $228-million over last year's budget of $872-million - a 26 percent increase. They say the millage is less, but the truth is that this new budget is a 13 percent tax increase.

I think there's plenty of room for cuts in the proposed budget while still giving the sheriff, the parks and the libraries the increase they are asking for. For example, the Transportation Capital Improvement budget went up 40.9 percent from $193-million to $272-million. Also included in this budget is $1.6-million for land for a new Tax Collector's Office.

Seniors and young families are the ones hardest hit by the increases in insurance and taxes. Seniors helped build Pasco County; increasingly, they can't afford to live here. Bill Bunting is right when he says that we need a tax cut.

Ann Bunting, Bayonet Point

Commission's choice to repeal water ordinance needs review

The decision of the Pasco County commissioners at a recent meeting to repeal rather than retain the water utility ordinance requiring utilities that receive a significant number of complaints of black water and rotten egg smell to adopt forced draft aeration or a method that is functionally equivalent for underground water processing requires careful evaluation by the citizens of the county. The stimulus to this decision was a legal threat by a utility in the county to litigate the legal authority of the county to pass such an ordinance in the first place, even though the ordinance was instituted at the specific mandate of the state Legislature to the county to take measures to provide citizens of the state and inhabitants of the Pasco County with drinkable water.

The bill that made this ordinance possible was generic in nature and made no specific reference to any utility, even though the immediate impact was felt by one particular utility, which by agreeing to the settlement it entered into with the Public Service Commission in April had already met the requirements of the ordinance.

I am not a customer of this utility, but as a resident of Pasco County and a citizen of the state, I am concerned. The surrender of the legal responsibility of Pasco County to the customers of all utilities in the county in response to the legalistic threat of a particular utility that had to meet the requirements of the ordinance is an unacceptable response of government, which at all levels is supposed to be of the people, by the people and for the people. One might argue that pragmatism must be the guiding principle of government action, and prevention of any delay in achieving the production and distribution of drinkable water is the No. 1 priority of the Pasco County Commission, and the decision to repeal the ordinance was a way to facilitate that end. That was the argument put forward by the Public Service Commission also when instead of giving customers the opportunity to present evidence against the utility's inability and unwillingness to provide good quality water to its customers, it offered a settlement to the utility.

Part of that settlement was expeditious implementation of a new method without any reference to repeal of the Pasco County ordinance. Any delay in the implementation of the settlement by the utility by claiming that it cannot officially proceed until the Pasco County ordinance is repealed smacks of a form of terror that has been indulged in the past by the legal personnel of the utility. Suppose for a moment that the state attorney general was to menace Pasco County for not fully implementing the directive of the state Legislature to enforce the above referenced consumer protection bill signed into law by Gov. Jeb Bush and threaten to withhold state funds! What would the Pasco County Commission then do? Will the commissioners also take the same weak-kneed approach in responding to the attorney general as it has done with reference to the utility's threat and restore the ordinance?

What if the customers of another utility in the county were to experience the same problems the inhabitants of Seven Springs experienced? Does not the county now find itself without an ordinance to deal with that situation?

In the actions of the Public Service Commission a year ago and now in the recent action of the County Commission, citizens may be witnessing evidence of the erosion of the concept that government must not only be of the people (sovereignty of the people) and by the people (representational government), but also for the people (must serve the collective interest of the citizens). When the Public Service Commission and the Pasco County surrender that principle and governmental authority exercised on behalf of the people to individuals or corporations who have the legal might to frivolously challenge such authority, the Republic is weakened and politics become a form of pandering to an influential minority.

I am heartened by the warning of Sen. Mike Fasano and Rep. Tom Anderson to the utility not to test the forbearance of the Legislature.

V. Abraham Kurien, New Port Richey

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[Last modified July 19, 2006, 07:58:33]