Some undeserved lumps over a few speed bumps

MORGAN

By LUCY MORGAN

© St. Petersburg Times,
published June 9, 2001

It's time to take Sen. Jim Horne off the hook for a provision in the state budget that deals with speed bumps.

Horne has been pilloried over the little item slipped into the state budget at the last minute. The item, repealed in a subsequent bill, would have denied all state transportation money to Leon County, home of the state capital, unless the county removed a series of speed bumps on a road leading to the Tallahassee airport.

The item was accompanied by a second clause demanding that Tallahassee and Leon County officials restore the rightful name to the Donald L. Tucker Civic Center, a building named for a former House speaker who helped get some of the money for its construction in the 1970s.

Horne took the blame for the budget items because he was appropriations chairman in the Senate, where the language was slipped into the budget. He felt it was his responsibility to accept the blame for whatever was in it.

But Horne, appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush this week as the new secretary of education, was merely falling on the sword for Senate President John McKay.

Horne didn't even know the speed bump language was in the budget until it was printed. Up until then he thought it was all a joke.

Bush didn't think it was a joke. He denounced the attempt to interfere with local government.

Editorial writers and others denounced Horne, oblivious to the possibility that he might have been taking the blame for someone else.

Few realized that Horne would have little reason to object to speed bumps on a road to the airport. He lives in Orange Park, a suburb of Jacksonville, and doesn't fly back and forth between his home and the Capitol. He drives.

And the move would have been out of character for Horne, who has a reputation for even-tempered fairness.

Only later did McKay admit having a role in the budget item and that he has never fully taken responsibility for it.

On Friday, McKay said, "I had a lot to do with it," but he insisted he was working with others, including Horne. He admits the idea originated with him.

"I thought the speed bumps were absurd," McKay said. "I still think they were pretty dumb."

McKay also put the civic center language in the bill, attempting to restore an honor given to Tucker many years ago. McKay happens to be married to Tucker's niece.

On the last night of session, McKay came close to admitting his role in the plot, saying the speed bumps threw his car out of alignment. But he left Horne dangling on the hook all these weeks.

You can imagine what the folks who live along Lake Bradford Road think. The bumps were installed because so many people were turning the road into a racetrack to the airport.

I confess to a little lead-footedness on this stretch of road myself. Horne had never driven across the speed bumps until he made a recent trip with the governor. Bush took him over the bumps just to harass him a little bit.

"It's gotten kind of old," Horne said earlier this week. "People have been having fun at my expense."

It was the kind of thing that gets public officials into more trouble than much larger mistakes.

It happens in a Legislature where mysterious things get slipped into the budget and into bills at the last second. Sometimes nobody admits knowing who put them there, and it becomes impossible to identify the perpetrator.

Floridians would have been better served if everyone had been honest in the first place.

And even better served if legislative leaders didn't try to use the budget to make a point on an unrelated issue.

Horne, 42, is a certified public accountant who was elected to the Senate in 1994. The speed bumps were the first blemish on an otherwise good reputation. It will take years to erase them.

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