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Senator gets more parking for office
By JEFFREY S. SOLOCHEK © St. Petersburg Times, published January 21, 2001 BROOKSVILLE -- For the past several months, state Sen. Ginny Brown-Waite has wanted an additional parking space for her downtown Brooksville office. Her employees routinely got tickets for parking too long on the streets, and constituents sometimes complained that they could not find a spot nearby. City officials would not accommodate the senator on the roads, and area businesses had nothing to offer. So Brown-Waite turned to the county government, which controls parking at the courthouse where her office is located. Former County Commission Chairman Paul Sullivan, now a full-time aide to Brown-Waite, appealed to the county administration on her behalf and, soon after, she got an additional reserved spot. And now she's seeing the truth in the familiar warning: Be careful what you wish for because you might get it. To meet Brown-Waite's request, County Administrator Paul McIntosh decided to move one of three spaces for handicap parking from next to the courthouse to farther down the hill on Jefferson Street, closer to the Utilities Department. Calling the space "underutilized," McIntosh suggested it might get more use in a new location closer to a ramp. The spaces are used sometimes by county employees with handicaps and visitors to the county Social Services office. At least one usually is vacant. Brown-Waite agreed that the handicap designation is poorly placed. "My office regularly gets complaints about the fact that they have handicapped spots there, but there's no handicapped access to the building there," she said, noting that the spaces lead to a steep set of stairs into the courthouse. "They're pretty darned irate that they can park . . . but they can't get access to the building." But Brown-Waite also was keenly aware of the perception that might arise if it looks like she displaced a handicap parking spot for one of her four employees, especially if Sullivan ever parks there. She quickly distanced herself from that decision. "It never was my intention to take the handicapped slot," she said. "I myself did not request it. I thought the parking spot was going to be down in the regular lot." McIntosh has asked all county commissioners if they have concerns about the arrangement, and so far none has contacted him. The issue is strictly administrative, Chairman Chris Kingsley and others said, making it clear they did not care to create any sort of political scene with their powerful senator, who is second-in-command in the Senate leadership this year. Only Commissioner Nancy Robinson, long considered a candidate to succeed Brown-Waite, would comment. The administrator's approach seems fine, Robinson said, as long as the needs of people with handicaps do not take a back seat. "We need to make sure we have something for everybody," she said, "that the handicapped are not disenfranchised."
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