Winning Through Simplicity

posted by Alan Greenblatt

Florida Governor Charlie Crist is not a details guy. No matter how big the issue, he leaves it up to others in the legislature or elsewhere to work out the fine print. You'll never get bored listening to him rattle off intricate policy proposals, because he just doesn't do that.

But that hasn't necessarily been a hindrance to him. I hesitate to compare him to Ronald Reagan, but Crist is similar in the sense that a top political executive can concentrate on a few big ideas and leave it to the little people to work things out.

You could make the case that Crist can seem disengaged, not deeply committed to core ideas. But by not being hindered by an overly complex view of the world, Crist has been able to score some big wins.

The latest, of course, is his state's proposed $1.75 billion purchase of 187,000 acres of land from U.S. Sugar to help maintain the Everglades. The Washington Post illustrates this pretty clearly:

U.S. Sugar Senior Vice President Robert Coker said the plan originated with Crist last fall in a meeting with company representatives in Tallahassee when the governor made a statement seemingly out of the blue: "I just think we ought to buy you out."

Said Coker: "I was very surprised. I've been dealing with Everglades issues for 27 years with this company, and nobody's ever taken that kind of bold stroke, to say we're going to solve this thing once and for all."

Florida had already been taking advantage of depressed land prices to buy up land for conservation. Crist probably had that fact somewhere in his mind and, confronted with this environmental problem, just blurted out, what the heck, we'll buy that land, too. Now the environmentalists who were mad at him for caving to the McCain campaign on offshore oil drilling are once again singing his praises.

Update: Crist's move earns him a rave from the Herald-Tribune:

"It's monumental," Crist said in an interview. "It is breathtaking in its scope. I am overwhelmed with joy about the possible benefits."

History will tell if Crist can succeed where generations have failed in restoring the Everglades. But his move cements his legacy as one of the state's most ambitious governors, willing to leverage his personal popularity to scale mountainous issues.

Vermont's Looking For A Boring Cow Name

posted by Zach Patton

So the Vermont Agency of Agriculture wants you to help name the state's new dairy mascot: a Holstein cow wearing overalls.

Which is fine, of course. Cute.

But here are the three choices you can vote on: Buttercup, Clover and Daisy.

Come on, Vermont! Seriously? My grandma could come up with less-stale cow-name ideas. You need to jazz it up! Throw something crazy into the mix!

I mean, you're the home of creatively named dairy products!

WTF?? More License Plate Drama in North Carolina

posted by Zach Patton

OMG! What if your license plate had a swear word on it (or at least the slang-y approximation of one)? 

It's an issue in South North Carolina, where about 10,000 residents have a randomly generated plate ID that begins with "WTF." Until a few years ago, of course, those were no more than three random letters.

Today, though, WTF is pretty common Webspeak for, well, an expression of surprise:  "What the f...?"

The state's letting people with WTF tags switch to new plates for free, if they want to.

I guess it'd be doubly awful if "WTF" ended up on one of the state's forthcoming Christian license plates.

UPDATE: Uh, hi.  I guess I need to get my Carolinas straight.  As 13th Floor reader Chip points out, this occurred in NORTH Carolina.  Oops. 

VA Legislators Save Brew Pops, Summer

posted by Zach Patton

Thanks to a couple of Virginia state legislators, residents of the Old Dominion state can once again enjoy a fanstatical summer treat -- frozen beer on a stick.

See, this restaurant in Arlington had an amazing idea last summer: Brew Pops -- frozen beersicles.

But then it turned out that it's illegal to serve frozen beer in Virginia for some reason, because freezing beer turns it into a food. And it becomes illegal. Or something.

Anyway, now the state has changed its liquor laws to make room for Brew Pops.

Viva Summer!

(image via Wonkette)

CA Nuptials Break Record

posted by Zach Patton

The LA Times has an interesting interactive map about the record-breaking number of marriages that have happened since same-sex unions were legalized on Monday night.

Topping the list is Los Angeles County, the state's largest with a population of about 9.9 million, which issued one license on Monday evening in Beverly Hills and 648 Tuesday. San Diego County, population about 3 million, was second with 230. San Francisco County, population 765,000 was third with 212. Officials in Sacramento County, which usually issues about 25 licenses a day, issued 134 by closing time at 8 p.m. Tuesday. The county has 1.4 million residents.

You Get What You Pay For

posted by Alan Greenblatt

Seeing the pictures of same-sex marriages taking place throughout California puts me in mind of another "only in San Francisco" phenomenon I experienced the last time I was out there, a couple of months ago.

San Francisco, as you may know, is engaged in a unique and controversial experiment to become the first municipality to mandate universal health coverage. Restaurateurs have been among the unhappy business owners opposing the policy, but in the meantime they are learning to live with it -- by passing the cost directly onto their customers.

One fancy-pants restaurant I ate at announced on the menu: "In order to provide the very best health benefits for all of our employees, a 4 % surcharge will be added to all food and beverage sales."

Traffic Congestion Scorecard: A Reason to Hit the Snooze?

posted by Will Wilson

Inrix just released a national traffic scorecard, including a list of the 100 most congested metro areas. The great thing about the report is that it gets into the hour-by-hour, day-by-day details of congestion. (Caveat Driver: Avoid the road at 5:30 PM on Fridays.)

The press release for the report professes surprise about Honolulu's traffic (#38, with some even more congested peak times). I've had the good fortune of working a bit on Hawaii, so I knew about some of the traffic issues there. I was surprised about Portland (#21). I haven't been there in years, though, so maybe things have changed (or perhaps my memory is failing me).

On first impression, the report seems to provide strong evidence in favor of a staggered shift workday. The graph of daily traffic patterns shows predictable spikes around 7:30 AM and 5 PM. Those spikes mean a lot more time and petrol are being frittered away in slow (or standstill) traffic. While some offices must stick to a rigid 9-5, many businesses and government jobs could certainly have a rolling start time, pacing staff arrivals in the morning and departures in the afternoon.

Greater dispersement of working hours would make for shorter commutes and less money spent on gas...and that might make for happier, more productive employees.

Finance Officers Trade Fireworks for Fretting

posted by Penelope Lemov

from the Government Finance Officers Association meeting in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.

Last year there were fireworks: At its annual conference, GFOA leaders threw down the gauntlet over GASB's entry into setting standards for performance measures.

This year, the Government Finance Officers Association's 102nd annual conference is off to a more tempered and tense start. Rather than fireworks, there is a sense of unease over falling state and local revenues, troubles in the municipal bond market and political change in Washington that could upend current tax and health policies.

In his opening remarks at the kick-off general session, outgoing GFOA President Charles S. Cox, director of finance for the city of Farmers Branch, Texas, took note of GFOA's success at beating back Securities and Exchange Commission proposals to oversee activities in the municipal bond market. In a minor slap at the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, Cox noted GFOA's "continued efforts for accounting standards" that would be "for accounting, not accountability."

But those remarks were followed by a firm backing for compliance with GASB's OPEB accounting rules. Referring to Texas's ("my state") and other local attempts to set separate standards for reporting retiree health and other benefits, Cox said that such steps are a major setback for implementing national systems, and jurisdictions that persist in such efforts would "not be eligible for GFOA certification awards."

But the unease that ran like a current through the sessions and among conference goers keyed in on fallng revenues and budget problems. The talk in the hallways was about Vallejo, California, and its decision to declare bankruptcy. Finance officers talked about how their revenues, spending and budgetary pressures compared to Vallejo. The beleagured California city seemed to become a benchmark for how worried conference goers should be about their locality's future.

South Carolina Will Be First State to Get "I Believe" Plates

posted by Zach Patton

South Carolinians will soon have the option to express their Christian faith via that most sacred of religious media: a vanity license plate:

South Carolina's lieutenant governor announced Thursday that he is willing to put up $4,000 of his own money so his state can become the first in the nation to issue "I Believe" license plates with the image of a cross and a stained glass window.

Gov. Mark Sanford allowed the bill creating the plates to become law without his signature, noting that the state already allows plates for any cause, so long as enough people get together and put up the money to buy them.

(Although something tells me the state wouldn't stand for an "I Believe" plate with the face of Satan on it...)

(image via Pam's House Blend)

At Least They Were Smart Enough to Change the Name of the State

posted by Zach Patton

State mental health care can be bad enough as it is. You don't need your state's mental health commission filing a report that, well, belongs to another state.

But that's just what's happened in Georgia:

A "new vision" outlined for mental health care in Georgia last week isn't so new after all.

Large sections of a report by Gov. Sonny Perdue's mental health commission were lifted, often verbatim, from a Michigan study published in 2004 and from two other sources, a review by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found. The commission's report, released last week by the governor's office, credits none of the cloned material.

The report presents as its own work entire sentences, paragraphs and longer passages from other sources, with no more than superficial editing. It duplicates, with only two minor changes in wording, the "values" listed in the Michigan study. Seven of Georgia's eight "key findings" mirror Michigan's. Even Georgia's vision statement is appropriated from the Michigan report.

The report -- which is almost completely plagiarized -- gets even sloppier at one point:

The Georgia document repeats language from Michigan saying the commission had provided "a detailed overview" of the mental health system "in Appendix E of this report." But unlike Michigan's, Georgia's report contains no Appendix E.

Wow.  That's some freshman-year cheating right there.