Commissioner Murman quoted in this FOX 13 News report:

Former county attorney files for unemployment

Updated: Friday, 22 Jul 2011, 10:18 PM EDT
Published : Friday, 22 Jul 2011, 10:17 PM EDT

By Kristin Wright, FOX 13 News

TAMPA – Renee Lee’s contract as Hillsborough County Attorney was terminated in June. Lee walked away with a huge severance package adding up to $156,000.

Despite the big payout, Renee Lee has filed for unemployment benefits. County Human Resources Officials say they received notice from the state. Commissioner Sandy Murman questions Lee’s decision.

“My first reaction is, ‘gimme a break’,” Murman said.

We visited Lee’s beautiful home in Riverview twice, hoping to speak with her about her need for unemployment benefits, in light of her generous severance deal. The first time, no one came to the door. The next day, a woman said Lee wasn’t home. County residents and the unemployed are somewhat taken aback.

“I believe it’s a little bit irresponsible because $160,000 should go a long way. You should be able to divvy up your money and live off of that for several years,” said Mark Pastrana of Tampa.

“Many people out here are trying to get unemployment and can’t get unemployment, but she’s trying to get it?” Linda Limehouse told FOX 13. “She don’t need it, if she’s getting all that.”

Elvis Negron has no problem with Lee filing for unemployment.

“I think it’s the right thing to do. For everybody,” he said. “Every citizen should have that right.”

Negron is right: legally, Lee can file for unemployment compensation just like anyone else. In general, severance pay doesn’t affect eligibility or the total amount of benefits received.

Starting in August, if a severance payment during a particular week is equal to or greater than the unemployment benefit for that same week, the claimant is ineligible for unemployment that week.

Severance pay will still not affect the total amount of unemployment benefits received.

“We’re all on tough times right now, so when you’re asking for more government dollars it’s difficult to understand when somebody’s already gotten a very fair package,” Murman said.

Claimants can received up to $275 a week. There’s no word on whether Lee’s application has been approved.

Commissioner Murman’s jail diversion program mentioned in this Times article on the budget:

Parents implore Hillsborough County to spare after-school programs from cuts

By Bill Varian, Times Staff Writer
Posted: Jul 21, 2011 09:55 PM

TAMPA — Flanked by her three children, ages 6 to 16, Kim Herman had a straight-forward message for Hillsborough County commissioners Thursday night:

“Leave the kids alone.”

Herman and dozens of others appealed to commissioners, as parents have for the past four years, to spare county-sponsored after-school and summer parks programs.

She was joined by dozens of county employees, many of them parks workers facing a fourth year of layoffs, imploring commissioners to spare their jobs. With the economy still ailing, they asked commissioners to stop farming out county work to the private sector.

“We do a better job, said Tracy Thompson, a 15-year employee of the county’s water department. “We do it for less money.”

The at-times-emotional testimony capped a day of debate and sometime rancor as commissioners wrestled with budgetary matters throughout the day. Parks and recreation programs dominated discussions during an afternoon workshop as well as the evening public hearing.

Commissioners signaled during the daytime session that they want to make preserving the after-school parks programs in some fashion a priority. They asked their staff to come back next week with a proposal that would stem proposed cutbacks.

The county is finalizing a $3 billion spending plan for fiscal year 2012, which begins Oct. 1. What they are wrestling with is how to deal with a fourth consecutive year of declining property tax revenues that pay the operating costs of most of the county’s publicly visible programs.

Five years ago, the county collected $813 million in property taxes. Estimated property tax receipts for next year are just $561..5 million, down $22 million from last year.

So County Administrator Mike Merrill is recommending another round of job cuts, eliminating another 449 full- and part-time positions next year. One of the hardest hit areas is parks and recreation programs.

Once again, county officials are proposing dramatic cuts to after-school programs. In recent years, parents rallied to thwart proposed elimination of the program. This year, Parks, Recreation and Conservation Director Mark Thornton is recommending scaling back the program.

It would consolidate after-school programs at 41 parks to 12 regional parks, some of them needing to be built, and scaling back recreational offerings. Parents who can’t get to those parks would need to use programs based at schools or at the YMCA.

Thornton says the challenge is this: The cost to run the program comes out to more than $120 a child each week, while the county collects $23 on average per week.

The county initially offered the program for free. When property tax revenues started declining, commissioners approved a nominal fee. When that didn’t keep up, the fee was bumped up to $48 a week, with children from poorer families subsidized.

Enrollment for the program dropped from a high of 6,200 in 2007, with about 4,500 active participants and a waiting list. Today, about 1,800 children use after-school programs, while costs remain the same.

Commissioner Ken Hagan on Thursday asked Thornton and his staff to move forward with shrinking the number of after-school locations. But he suggested increasing the number of locations currently proposed – 12 – by another 10 to 15.

“The unfortunate reality is that our current program simply is not sustainable in the long-run,” Hagan said, explaining his support for shrinking the program somewhat.

Commissioner Les Miller said he will ask next week that the program be restored fully.

“I think your plan … reduces the issue to money,” Miller told Thornton. “I think that’s wrong.”

He said it’s about children having a place to go after school, and parks are what the public expects government to provide along with police and fire protection.

In other action, Merrill told commissioners how he plans to dole out $2 million the county will get for being home to a gambling casino, the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino. The money will be shared between the Museum of Science and Industry, Lowry Park Zoo, Tampa Bay History Center, the Glazer Children’s Museum, the David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts and the Florida Aquarium.

Merrill said it’s important to continue to invest in buildings taxpayers helped pay to build and that attract tourists. But his proposal enables the county to wean those entertainment and cultural centers off of property tax money.

Commissioner Sandy Murman said she will also ask the board to support earmarking $1.5 million annually from the county’s indigent health care tax to pay for mental health care for some accused of crimes. She is proposing creating a diversion program that would identify people with mental illness who commit minor crimes, keeping them out of jail and getting them treatment.

Those who showed up for the evening hearing had mainly parks after-school programs on their mind. Children waved signs that read “I (heart) parks” and “parks rock.”

They echoed Miller’s sentiment that commissioners need to focus less on dollars and more on figuring out a way to preserve programs that keep children active and out of harm’s way.

In the past, county officials have described the after-school program as a Cadillac offering from a government that can no longer afford it.

Parent Robert Herman, whose three children attend programs at Sadie Park in Brandon, asked commissioners to consider a more modest model.

Jacob Robinson, 19, an alumni of after-school programs at the Ruskin Recreation Center, saw it differently.

“These children deserve a Cadillac program,” he said. “Our children are more than a budget.”

Commissioner Murman Presents a Commendation to the Town ‘n Country Youth Council

http://youtu.be/w8WTCWyq6ko

Tampa port director gets support from bosses despite performance complaints

By Steve Huettel, Times Staff Writer
Posted: Jul 19, 2011 04:19 PM

If Tampa Port Director Richard Wainio’s job is in danger, his bosses didn’t act like it Tuesday.

Members of the Tampa Port Authority governing board voiced support for Wainio a week after a group that represents 47 companies doing business at the port called on them not to renew his employment contract.

“We all know how well he’s doing in the context of this economy,” said Carl Lindell, one of five gubernatorial appointees to the board. “We’re on pretty good footing with him.”

Hillsborough County Commissioner Sandy Murman suggested giving Wainio a new evaluation tied to specific financial and business goals for the port.

“Let’s not make it personal,” she said. “We all respect Mr. Wainio for the job he’s done here.”

Wainio, 61, has held the port’s top post since 2005.. He earns $251,118 a year. By Sept. 30, board members must evaluate his performance and decide if they want him to stay past March 5.

On Tuesday, Board Chairman Lawrence Shipp said he directed Wainio to respond in writing to criticisms raised by the Port of Tampa Maritime Industries Association (PTMIA).

In a July 15 letter, the association cited significant declines in cargo tonnage and ship arrivals at the port since 2006. The authority’s operating income declined from about $5 million in the black at the beginning of his tenure to $1.1 million in the red last year, the letter said.

The group also said Wainio “is viewed as being unwilling or reluctant to solicit or accept suggestions, feedback or input in the development of port strategy, growth and operations.”

Wainio dismisses the group as not representing views of the wider port community. He e-mailed the Times a list of about 100 businesses that lease land from the port authority, noting that most are not members of the PTMIA.

Wainio also sent the names of 133 firms that belong to the Executive Shippers’ Council, a group of exporters and importers who generate a third of the port’s container cargo business.

“These firms work with us and support our efforts to grow business,” he wrote. “Virtually all of them have close and cooperative relationships with the (port authority) staff.”

In other business, the port board granted licenses for a new business to handle cargo on private property despite objections by port authority staff and union members.

Tampa Marine Terminal can now move both bulk materials and general cargo, such as bundled steel and lumber, on the site of an old Tampa Electric power plant.

Port staff objected, basically saying there’s barely enough business to support the existing firms. “To add more and more operators might mean that not just the new guy might fail, but other people fail,” Wainio said.

Richard Tager, a principle of Tampa Terminals, has run cargo businesses in the area using non-union labor.

Robert Doster, a 34-year union longshoreman, said the new company would cut rates to shippers and put higher-paid union longshoremen out of work.

Contact Steve Huettel at huettel@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3384.

Port board to discuss director’s performance in Sept.

By TED JACKOVICS | The Tampa Tribune
Published: July 19, 2011

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TAMPA —

The Tampa Port Authority temporarily diffused a business association’s push to oust the port director today by postponing discussions about his performance until September.

The board said it wanted clear performance criteria in place before it could evaluate whether Richard Wainio was doing a good job.

However, board member Carl Lindell spoke out at the close of Monday’s monthly board meeting to praise Wainio’s performance, saying the board “knows how to identify leadership.”

“I could not think of who we could find to replace him,” Lindell added later. “”We have no reason for it.”

Port board member and Hillsborough County commissioner Sandra Murman said that out of fairness to Wanio, the port board should look to other governmental bodies, including the county, to ensure its performance evaluation tools are the best available.

“We should not get into personal matters, but (an) evaluation on specific goals and objectives.” Murman said.

The Port of Tampa Maritime Industries Association on Thursday listed several complaints about Wainio in a letter to the board chairman. The grievances ranged from Wainio being “reluctant to solicit or accept suggestions, feedback or input” to what they said were discrepancies between the director’s monthly reports to commissioners and audited financial statements.

The business association had not sent a copy of letter to Wainio. The board forwarded Wainio a copy and asked Wainio to respond to the issues point-by-point by early August.

Wainio made no comment today about the letter. Previously, he said the complaints reflected a power struggle by a portion of the businesses that work at or with the port.

Another source of tension emerged today with the board’s approval for the new firm of Tampa Marine Terminals to do business with non-union labor on the docks. The International Longshoremen’s Association Local 1402 said allowing TMT to operate would undercut their wages at a time when work is scarce.

The board overrode the staff’s recommendation to limit TMT to bulk cargo only and approved TMT to handle break-bulk cargo such as steel, lumber and pallets, for which the staff said there is plentiful competition for work at the port.

Following the votes, the several dozen union members in attendance left en masse. Local officials declined comment later in the day on the vote.

Commissioner Murman mentioned in this article in Creative Loafing regarding cable programming:

Hillsborough County Commission supports possibilities of working with public access channel on new programming – but sounds doubtful about committing funds

Posted by Mitch Perry on Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 2:23 PM

After barely maintaining their county funding for years, in 2007 the Hillsborough County board of County Commissioners stripped their share of financing the Tampa Bay Community Network (a/k/a Speak up, Tampa Bay!) the local cable access channel in Tampa/Hillsborough County. Such funding had been a contentious issue for years before the board stripped it away (who can forget the Ronda Storms/White Chocolate wars of the early aughts?).

Combined with the fact that Bright House Networks then moved the channel from the lower rungs of the cable universe into up in the 600’s, it would be an understatement to say times have been challenging for the public access channel. However, TBCN continues to survive, thanks to the funding it still receives from the city of Tampa.

Although the odds still seem stacked her, TBCN’s head, Louise Thompson, spoke before the BOCC on Wednesday to propose that the county chip in funds for programming that would appeal directly to two groups of constituents that the board is on record as having said they want to help: seniors, and the unemployed.

Thompson suggested to the BOCC that the TBNC would run a weekly show, perhaps live, that would provide information for the unemployed on how to look for jobs, that would offer career counseling, help people learn more about networking, and get more insights about job fairs and places to search for jobs. She said the channel would work with different agencies, where “we would put them on to assist viewers with knowing what to do to get a job.”

Thompson said recently she surveyed those working at the station (where there is a small paid staff but many volunteers) and learned that a third of them are without jobs at the moment.

And she stressed to the commissioners that her station was a great way to train people inexpensively to learn how to work video equipment. “Everything is video these days,” she said. “Newspapers, websites, you can’t do anything without video.” She also said this could help out efforts in Tallahassee to develop the film industry, such as it is, in Florida.

Thompson received a fairly good response from commissioners in terms of the interest in her staff and services coordinating with the county on such programming. But in terms of providing money?

It’s questionable whether there would be four votes to do that.

Commission Chair Al Higginbotham said flat out he would never vote to provide such funds, saying there wasn’t sufficient funds to maintain the budget inside the county’s own communications office.

Commissioners Sandy Murman and Victor Crist praised the idea, but Murman in particular said she wasn’t sure if she could support any monies going to the project. But she has been vocal in trying to find ways to alleviate the unemployment problem in the county, and suggested that Thompson meet up with the Workforce Alliance head about working together (That agency is the lead group in trying to help the unemployed find work).

Commissioner Mark Sharpe said he was ambivalent about the idea. Admitting that he tweets “non-stop” (including during meetings), Sharpe said that he was concerned that new technologies were leaving TBCN behind.

But more importantly, Sharpe said he has always been uneasy about the idea of the government running a television station (which they still do with HTV, which broadcasts BOCC meetings among other things). “I support you,” he told Thompson, but added that he would not “support any public dollars for additional services.”

Commissioner Ken Hagan brought up some history when he said it was his vote in 2006 that retained public funding for cable access, and his vote in 2007 that killed it. He said he believed there was “potential” to partner up with TBCN..

The BOCC then voted on two separate motions:

The first was to direct County Administrator Mike Merrill to work the TBCN staff to look at funding allocations, and then report back at a future budget workshop. The board voted 5-1 to approve that, with Commissioner Higginbotham voting no (Les Miller was absent).

The second motion was to for staff to study opportunities with the county to work with other local broadcasting systems (not just TBCN but others) on how to deliver “cost effective programming to our constituents.”