Delegation votes 2-2 on consolidation plan
The Northwest Florida legislative delegation this evening failed to come to a decision on the proposed consolidation plan. A motion made by State Sen. Don Gaetz to forward the plan to the Legislature both failed by a 2-2 vote.
An attempt by Rep. Greg Evers to extend the Consolidation Study Commission through November 2011 failed.
After public input was cut short due to time constraints, Sen. Gaetz made a motion to forward the plan to the Legislature; that motion died for a lack of a second. Rep. Evers then moved to extend the Consolidation Study Commission through November 2011, provided that 50% of meetings were held outside the Pensacola City limits and 25% were held north of Nine Mile Road. Consolidation Study Commission chair Ken Bell got up at this point and indicated that it was his opinion that the members of the Study Commission would not be willing to reconvene and continue their work.
Sen. Gaetz seconded the motion for discussion purposes, but Rep. Evers’ amendment failed by a 2-2 vote. Voting for the Evers Amendment were Reps. Evers and Ford; voting against were Sen. Gaetz and Rep. Murzin.
Sen. Gaetz then remade his motion to forward the plan to the Legislature. Rep. Evers seconded the motion out of respect for the fact that Sen. Gaetz had seconded his. Sen. Gaetz’s motion failed by a 2-2 vote, with Sen. Gaetz and Rep. Ford voting to move the plan forward, and Reps. Evers and Murzin voting against.
After brief discussion Sen. Gaetz made his motion a third time, and it failed for lack of a second. The legislative delegation then adjourned.
With the delegation’s deadlock, and the deadline for bill submissions looming, the consolidation plan seems unlikely to move forward as a local bill.
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Huge success for the citizens and for Progressive Pensacola and North Escambia.
The citizens and the elected officials were heard. Ford said it tonight. “The folks you have here to stand up dont effect me, because I know what I have read and heard from the elected officials and the citizens”
Now we can focus on our first strong mayor in the City and how we move forward as a city.
I guess Evers didn’t appreciate Remmington claiming he was “under control”!!!!!!!!
Mr. DeWeese,
Huge success for Progresseive Pensacola & North Escambia? How do you figure? Please inform me.
These 2 public forums informed the citizens of key aspects of the plan that the PNJ never touched. Murzin said on BLAB yesterday he read all the emails. Murzin also named these blogs as places he monitored to gauge the community input. NE and PP posted links to send emails to the delegation. The delegation stated last night that their email boxes were full.
Both NE and PP not only took editorial positions but led readers to action.
That is a win for both of these publications
The News Journal never touched the true issues because they were intimately involved in promoting “consolidation” from the start, running puff pieces on Remmington and violating the sunshine laws by meeting with Commission members in private.
So I guess Bell and the commission were unwilling to do the right thing and solicite input to create a document that we all could be proud of and agree to hold public meetings in the county. If they really wanted consolidation, they would have.
The commission didn’t want to reopen the can of worms they created now that folks have had time to read it .
I still would like to understand what on earth the commission was thinking when they included provisions that blocked the public input or objection to so many things pertaining to government.
And I’d like to know why Gaetz and Ford thought including these citizen obstructions in the document is good government.