Editorials
Drop compensation clause
Workers' compensation is on the table for surgery in the Legislature. As always, there's concern that some of it may be misplaced or cut too deep. But for the most part, a bill on the Senate Banking and Insurance Committee's agenda Monday strikes a fairer balance than the House's proposal. It makes it tougher for contractors to evade insuring their workers, and it provides for a more reasonable legal fee schedule when injured workers need help in getting their due.

Funding mental health
From day one, Florida officials warned that closing G. Pierce Wood -- the state mental hospital in Arcadia that serves the Tampa Bay area -- would prove successful only if lawmakers poured more money into the community programs that would be expected to house and treat the patients for whom hospitalization will no longer be an option.

Pure fiction
Based on faulty assumptions and callous cutbacks, the president's budget simply doesn't add up. It is aprescription for deficits reminiscent of the 1980s.

Letters
Charge against boy should be dropped
Re: Teen lovers stumble into sex offense, April 8.

Bill Maxwell
The beauty of journalism
Believe it or not, journalism can be a dangerous profession. In 1999, 34 journalists were killed around the world just for doing their job -- reporting and writing. Eighty-seven others were imprisoned. A Tampa Tribune reporter, whom I knew, was killed in Peru several years ago as he investigated drug trafficking in the mountains there.

Martin Dyckman
Could it really be any worse?
TALLAHASSEE -- It would be hard to top the new Florida motto that Charles B. Reed suggested when he quit four years ago as Florida's university system chancellor for a similar job in California.

Philip Gailey
Rep. Jim Davis wants to fix the Republican problem in Tallahassee
U.S. Rep. Jim Davis, D-Tampa, dropped by last week to meet with the Times editorial board. He had a political itch, and we were happy to give him an opportunity to scratch it. This third-term congressman is seriously considering running for governor next year. He doesn't like what President George W. Bush and the Republican Congress are doing to the country, but he likes even less what Gov. Jeb Bush and this Republican Legislature are doing to Florida.