Make Sure Your Voice Is Heard
 |
Brad Ashwell, Public Interest Advocate |
As this newsletter arrives at
your door, the Florida Legislature
is preparing to address
a number of serious problems
facing our state in the 2007
legislative session.
Many issues directly affect
our quality of life. The sky-rocketing costs of property insurance, along
with the lack of affordable housing and escalating
property taxes, for example, are making it
difficult for many people to keep their homes
and stay in the state.
While other issues affect us less directly, they
are equally significant.
For instance, we simply
must ensure that every vote counts on Election
Day. In the November 2006 election, 18,000
under-votes were discovered in the election.
We will
never know what the actual vote count was
due to the fact that there was no paper record
of the votes.
The Florida Legislature will be led this year
by a new Senate President and a new House
Speaker. With this comes some hope that old
problems may be addressed in creative new
ways but we suspect that to some degree life
at the Capitol will be business as usual.
Phone companies like AT&T will be back to
push for statewide video franchise agreements
which allow them to sidestep negotiations with
local governments that currently specify the
public interest requirements that companies
must meet.
Lobbyists representing landlords will be back
to push for the legalization of unfair and excessive
and punitive liquidated damages fees and
industry will once again attempt to remove a
cap on usurious interest fees that legislators
put in place several years ago.
Our staff will work hard over the next few
months to protect consumer standards and
push for substantive election reforms, but we
need your help.
Your voice needs to be heard. In the upcoming
months, please be more vigilant than ever in
calling your legislators to tell them what you
think about the issues you read about in this
newsletter, or go to our Web site and sign up
as an e-mail activist.
Brad Ashwell is Florida PIRG’s Public Interest Advocate.
|
