Commissioner Murman quoted in this Tampa Tribune article on mowing county roadways:

POLITICS

Hillsborough works to make roadways neater

By Mike Salinero | Tribune Staff
Published: March 30, 2014

TAMPA — Hillsborough County roadways, which were overgrown and strewn with trash last year, should look trimmer and neater this summer as county officials prioritize mowing and litter pickup.

Public Works Director John Lyons assured county commissioners recently that past problems with mowing contractors are over and new companies hired in December and March are doing a good job.

Last year, two contractors quit before their contracts were over, and county crews could not keep up with the backlog. There was also an embarrassing incident in which a county activist photographed a roadside covered with chopped litter soon after a county crew got through mowing.

Complaints started filtering into county commissioners’ offices, and they demanded action.

“These medians that we want mowed, especially on our major thoroughfares, these are the gateways to our neighborhoods,” Commissioner Sandy Murman said Thursday. “When people are coming into town looking at communities they may want to live in, if their companies are relocating here, I think we have to really think seriously about how our communities look.”

Lyons said he got the message and started making changes on several fronts. Under the latest contracts, companies are required to mow 12 cycles, double the number required when the two companies quit last summer because they couldn’t keep up. And, when the most recent contracts were awarded, county officials concentrated on a company’s ability to get the job done rather than which firm submitted the lowest bid.

Later this year, Lyons said he will ask county commissioners to appropriate around $900,000 to hire 13 more employees and equip them to work on mowing and litter.

Four private companies mow about 25 percent of the roadways, medians and county-owned land surrounding retention ponds. County employees mow the rest. Together, they mow about 75,000 acres, mostly during the rainy summer months. That’s the equivalent of mowing 53,000 football fields annually, Lyons said. Lyons compared one cycle completed by a company in its geographic zone to a trip from Tampa to Minneapolis.

In addition to the 12 mowing cycles, Lyons said the county will add a cycle of litter cleanup. The county has already been working employees overtime and using private contractors to attack the litter program. Also planned is a public education, anti-litter campaign done in conjunction with Keep Tampa Bay Beautiful.

“The board gave us some clear direction that they had higher expectations,” Lyons said. “Anybody who mows grass has the responsibility to pick up litter before they mow.”

msalinero@tampatrib.com

Commissioner Murman quoted in this Tampa Bay Times article on Port Manatee:

Tampa, Manatee ports eye each other warily

Jamal Thalji, Times Staff Writer

Friday, March 28, 2014 5:41pm

The ports harbor similar ambitions, chase the same cargoes, pine for the same markets. Both open into Tampa Bay, separated by just a few miles.

Yet Port Manatee and Port Tampa Bay could not be further apart.

Part of it is natural rivalry. Lately, it has been more personal.

Port Manatee officials charged that Port Tampa Bay tried to take over their port. Tampa officials denied that.

They talked. But Manatee County Port Authority Chairwoman Carol Whitmore did not like what she heard — especially what she called the “good ol’ boy” mentality of former Tampa Port Authority Chairman William “Hoe” Brown.

“This is a man’s world in the port,” Whitmore said. “I wasn’t going to put up with it.”

She demanded to speak to a woman: Hillsborough County Commissioner Sandra Murman, who serves on Tampa’s board. They met at a Denny’s last month. Both said it was a good meeting.

Murman thought they were ready to move on.

“We have, I think, buried the hatchet,” she said.

Then came the pineapple affair.

• • •

The Tampa Port Authority was formed in 1945. The Manatee County Port Authority was created in 1967. They’ve been jostling ever since.

Port Tampa Bay bills itself as the closest “full-service” port to the Panama Canal. Port Manatee says it is “the closest U.S. deepwater” port to the Panama Canal.

Port Manatee said it is 23 miles closer to the Panama Canal than the Port Tampa Bay berths at Hooker’s Point.

“To put in your marketing materials that you’re the closest port to the Panama Canal is wrong,” Whitmore said. “Don’t play those games.”

The “full-service” qualifier refers to Tampa’s ship-repair capabilities, cruise ship terminals and ability to handle different cargoes. Manatee doesn’t have dry docks or cruise ships.

“It’s been going on for a while now,” Doug Wheeler said of the rivalry. He’s the CEO of the Florida Ports Council, the association that represents and lobbies for the state’s ports.

That the two ports are so alike aggravates the conflict.

Both rely heavily on bulk cargoes like phosphates and fuel, chase lucrative cargoes of the future like cars and containers, want to be the first stop for Latin American imports and for cargo bound for the Orlando region.

There are important differences: Tampa is the state’s largest cargo port by tonnage. It moved 34.9 million tons in fiscal year 2013. Manatee handled 7.2 million tons.

Manatee is supported entirely by user fees. The Tampa Port Authority also gets ad valorem taxes.

Florida’s ports don’t report to one state authority. Instead, Tampa and Manatee are just two of 15 independent ports.

• • •

Last spring, leaders from both ports met to talk about greater cooperation. It started out well.

“They mentioned regionalism,” Whitmore said, “and we said, ‘Yeah, regionalism is good.’ ”

But then Tampa officials, according to Whitmore, mentioned that state officials had talked to them about consolidating port operations. No one had talked to Manatee about that.

“We got in the car and said, ‘Wait a minute,’ ” Whitmore said.

To Manatee, talk of consolidation was code for a hostile takeover. In November, the Manatee County Commission voted to oppose any merger. Port officials also rallied the Manatee legislative delegation to come to their defense.

Manatee officials heard there was a bill floating around the Legislature. But Richard Biter, the Florida Department of Transportation’s assistant secretary for intermodal systems, said the language called for studying a statewide port authority.

“I think in Manatee’s defense, they were caught off guard,” Wheeler said. “They weren’t approached about this.”

Officials in Tampa and Tallahassee insist no forced merger was ever in the works.

“I think some ports read much more into that than what it really was,” Biter said. “Our focus is on regional cooperation, not consolidation.”

Whitmore still didn’t get along with Brown. But in December he resigned as Tampa’s chairman after the Tampa Bay Times reported that he rented squalid units to the poor and disadvantaged.

Then in January, the Port of Tampa rebranded itself as Port Tampa Bay to better market itself using the entire bay area.

But if Tampa officials favor that approach, Whitmore wondered, then why won’t they jointly market their port alongside Port Manatee?

“They’re trying to sell a region,” Whitmore said, “but they forgot the port south of them. That could help to bring business to them and us.”

Whitmore, who also sits on the Manatee County Commission, finally met Murman in February.

Both sides said it went well. Until earlier this month.

• • •

Port Manatee imported 70,416 tons of pineapples from Latin America for Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc. last fiscal year.

Port Tampa Bay got out of the fruit business in 2009. Its old facilities had to be torn down. Now Tampa wants back in.

So it sponsored the International Pineapple Organization’s Global Pineapple Conference. Industry players met March 19-20 in Tampa.

But when Port Manatee and Port Canaveral registered to attend, both got an email from the pineapple group on March 14:

The conference suddenly instituted a “One Port Policy.” Only one port would be allowed to attend: Port Tampa Bay.

No official the Times spoke to had ever heard of such a policy.

“I too am very surprised to learn of this last minute condition placed upon the IPO by Port Tampa Bay,” wrote IPO executive director Will Cavan in an email.

Later, on March 17, Cavan wrote another email: “I truly wish that Port Manatee & Port Tampa Bay would put your differences behind yourselves.”

Port Manatee decided to go anyway.

“My thinking is if Port Tampa Bay wants me to cancel so bad,” a Manatee sales official emailed his colleagues on March 17, “there must be a motive.”

But when a Port Manatee official tried to enter a reception at the Columbia Restaurant on March 19, he said a Port Tampa Bay security guard blocked his way.

Ed Miyagishima, senior adviser to Port Tampa Bay’s CEO, defended their actions.

“This was not directed at Port Manatee,” he said. “We were hosting the conference at Port Tampa Bay, and we wanted to showcase the facilities at Port Tampa Bay.”

He said the Manatee official should not have tried to crash Tampa’s event. And he postulated this scenario: “If Port Manatee were hosting an event with Del Monte, they would not invite us.”

Murman said being competitive also means being aggressive.

“They could have gone after it and excluded us,” she said. “There’s many things we do participate together on. But we’re still our port and we’re going to be aggressive in marketing and working on economic development, jobs and keeping our competitive edge.

“That’s something we’re going to work on just like they’re going to work on. One conference does not show any change in attitude toward them. We still want to be partners.”

• • •

That’s exactly what Whitmore said she wants: the two ports to partner with each other, to market themselves and the bay area to potential cargo customers together.

The Manatee chairwoman’s fear is that two divided ports will miss out on opportunities that they could grab together.

“If one big company goes to another port like Savannah (Ga.) because we can’t work together,” she said, “then shame on us.”

But the kind of cooperation Whitmore wants — two ports marketing and selling their services together — seems not just far off, but doesn’t even appear to be on Tampa’s radar.

The tension is unavoidable. Port Tampa Bay and Port Manatee cannot just grow together. Both must generate business and revenue on their own. Yet both have very similar plans for doing so.

Both ports are angling to be the first U.S. stop for cars made in Mexico bound for the American market. Both signed deals with different auto processing companies. Port Tampa Bay agreed to a deal with Amports in July. Port Manatee signed with Pasha Automotive Services in September.

Both also want to expand their cargo container sectors, which is a more lucrative cargo than the bulk materials both rely on now.

Carlos Buqueras understands the drive to compete. Before becoming Port Manatee’s CEO in 2012, he spent 22 years engaged in Florida’s biggest port rivalry: PortMiami vs. Port Everglades.

Everglades was nearly empty when he arrived, he said. Yet decades later, despite their close proximity, both ports move millions of cargo containers and cruise ship passengers each year.

“I see the pie as a growing pie, and I think that’s the way everyone should look at it,” he said. “Not that you rob Peter to pay Paul.”

Tampa officials said that they do believe in cooperation, and that the two ports already do so in many areas: navigation, security, emergency management and lobbying for federal dredging money.

Miyagishima said that the pineapple conference was an outlier. He said Port Manatee took part in Tampa’s steel conference and safety summit in February and will be welcome at future events.

“There are going to be times when we compete for business,” he said, “but we’re constantly looking at the bigger picture for the state.”

Murman wishes Manatee would move past all this drama.

“I guess I’ve got to go back and talk to (Whitmore) some more,” she said, “and make sure that we’re still on the right track.”

Whitmore said she’s also still committed to collaboration.

But she didn’t seem emphatic about it.

“I’m determined to work with the Port of Tampa,” Whitmore said, “or whatever they call themselves.”

Times researcher John Martin contributed to this report. Jamal Thalji can be reached at (813) 226-3404, thalji@tampabay.com or @jthalji on Twitter.

Commissioner Murman quoted in this Tampa Tribune article on state redirecting indigent-care funds:

POLITICS

State redirects indigent-care tax collected in Hillsborough

BY JAMES L. ROSICA
Tribune/Scripps Capital Bureau
Published: March 28, 2014

TALLAHASSEE — Tampa General Hospital stands to lose $43 million under a new funding system lawmakers passed three years ago as part of a statewide medical assistance overhaul, according to a hospital advocacy group.

Overall, teaching hospitals, stand-alone children’s hospitals and a regional perinatal hospital in Pensacola could lose about $293 million, the Safety Net Hospital Alliance of Florida says.

Those kinds of deep cuts will likely result in reduced staffing, decreased training and the elimination of specialty treatments like burn units, advocates say.

The Legislature, when it went to a Medicaid managed-care system, instituted a new funding formula that becomes effective on July 1, placing hospitals in “tiers.”

Medicaid is the joint state-federal health care program for the poor.

Hillsborough County also collects money to go toward health care for the indigent through a local tax. Under tiering, the county has to put that money into a statewide pool, as part of the state’s match for federal Medicaid dollars.

That has Hillsborough County Commissioner Sandra Murman seeing red.

“Those are local dollars,” said Murman, a state representative from 1996-2004. “It’s an issue of fairness.”

Locally-raised money, she said, “shouldn’t be used to assist other communities that didn’t have the political foresight to provide for the care of their most needy residents.”

Because Hillsborough’s share is “diluted,” it won’t get as much federal money as it would have, said Tony Carvalho, the hospital alliance’s president and a former budget director under Gov. Jeb Bush. “It’s like forcing them to share their money with everybody in the state,” Carvalho said.

The eventual shares also will depend on what the state gets for its low income pool, or LIP, which pays for hospitals’ charity care. Gov. Rick Scott is asking the feds for an extra $4.5 billion.

The low income pool has been limited at $1 billion for eight years; the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services must rule on Scott’s request.

Tampa General spokesman John Dunn called the funding formula “arbitrary and not based on any underlying public policy rationale.”

“The goal of the formula is to take local public health funds provided by certain communities, and the federal match they earn, and share those benefits with communities that provide no local health funds to Medicaid, and to hospitals that provide little care to Medicaid patients,” Dunn said.

Safety net hospitals usually need all the help they can get.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has defined them as providing “a disproportionate amount of care to vulnerable populations,” including “a high proportion of low-income patients.”

People without health insurance often forgo treatment until they’re quite ill and then visit emergency rooms for care they can’t afford.

The Florida alliance counts Tampa General as a member, as well as Orlando Regional and Jackson Memorial in Miami.

A legislative fix likely won’t happen this session – mostly because leaders in Tallahassee think there’s nothing necessarily broken.

Senate President Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, suggested there will never be a funding system that satisfies everyone.

Particularly, he added, since big-city hospitals got used to benefiting from the sway of their elected officials.

“I’m aware that the action that the Legislature took in the past … is one that some hospitals find troublesome,” he said. “Because when the money follows the patient, instead of the money following the politics, it creates problems for people who have gotten extra money in the past.

“I think we’re far from settling that issue,” Gaetz said. “I’m not aware of any formula that settles the matter.”

In 2011, the Legislature passed a plan to enroll roughly 3 million Medicaid patients in managed-care programs. Here, managed care means private insurers will pay for services through set payments on a monthly per-patient basis.

The deal, backed by Gov, Rick Scott, was designed to contain the state’s Medicaid costs.

Almost a third of the overall state budget goes to Medicaid. More specifically, out of the 2013-14 budget, more than $23 billion was marked for Medicaid long-term care and “Medicaid services to individuals.”

House Speaker Will Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel, said that every year, “everybody thinks they don’t get their fair share … I would just tell people to be patient.”

In Florida, local communities can choose to put in money toward Medicaid thorough an agreement with state officials, according to Carvalho.

But, critics say, tiering provides a disincentive to do so because it comes across as a redistribution of wealth, penalizing areas that chose to pass a tax to pay for charity care.

“You can call it foresight, you can call it political will, but it’s always a tough decision when you decide whether to tax yourself to pay for something,” Carvalho said.

Lawmakers are working now on the state budget for 2014-15, the only bill they are required to pass every year.

jrosica@tampatrib.com

Commissioner Murman quoted in this Tampa Tribune article on County Attorney:

POLITICS

Hillsborough commissioners give attorney raise, extension

By Mike Salinero | Tribune Staff
Published: March 19, 2014

TAMPA — Hillsborough County commissioners showed their appreciation today for their county attorney, Chip Fletcher, extending his contract by three years and bumping his salary 3.5 percent.

Fletcher, a former Tampa city attorney and environmental lawyer, was hired by the county in October 2012 at a salary of $205,000. His new salary of $212,175 will be retroactive to last October. That’s when most other county employees got a 3.5 percent pay increase.

The occasion for the contract extension was Fletcher’s evaluation. Commissioners gave him rave reviews.

“I think he’s done yeoman’s work for us and with the administration. … He’s helped us solve a lot of problems,” said Commissioner Sandy Murman, who made the motion to extend Fletcher’s contract.

Commissioner Les Miller said his wife Gwen had worked with Fletcher when she was on the Tampa City Council and Fletcher was city attorney. When the opening came up in 2012, Gwen Miller strongly recommended Fletcher.

“She thought Chip walked on water and gave advice to God,” Miller said.

Commissioner Kevin Beckner asked who came up with the idea of making Fletcher’s new contract for three years. Murman said Fletcher had suggested that length in discussions with her.

Giving Fletcher three years is consistent with the contract extension for County Administrator Mike Merrill, which expires in December 2015, said Helene Marks, chief county communications administrator.

Beckner said he supported giving Fletcher an extension but worried about a long contract because of the trouble commissioners had when they wanted to fire former County Attorney Renee Lee and former County Administrator Pat Bean. The commission was forced to pay severance to Lee and Bean to get rid of them.

Commissioner Mark Sharpe waved off Beckner’s concerns.

“I’m never afraid of ending a contract,” Sharpe said. “My feeling has always been, I don’t care how much you have to pay, if you don’t have the right person, I’ll end it today.”

msalinero@tampatrib.com

###

Commissioner Murman quoted in this Tribune Blog about the Gas Pumping Assistance bill passing the legislature:

Fresh Squeezed

A Florida Politics Blog

Made fresh, never frozen, the juice on local and state politics from the staff of The Tampa Tribune.

State may adopt local law helping disabled pump gas

By Dennis Joyce | Tribune Staff
Published: March 20, 2014

Two Tampa Bay lawmakers want to make state law from a Hillsborough ordinance that requires placing phone numbers on gas pumps for people with disabilities to call if they need help filling their vehicle tanks.

State Rep. Mark Danish, D-Tampa, and state Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg are sponsoring bills directing the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services to confirm — during normal inspections — that a decal with the number is placed on each pump at self-service gas stations.

The decal must be blue, at least 15 square inches, contain the international symbol of accessibility, the words “Call for Assistance,” and a phone number for the station.

The bills are based on a Hillsborough County ordinance that inspired similar ordinances in several other counties.

“This is a cost effective option that will assist countless persons with disabilities across the state who struggle to refuel their gas,” Danish said.

The bills, HB 185 and SB 1184, have been supported by organizations including the Florida Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association, Paralyzed Veterans Association, Disabled American Veterans and AARP. Thursday, HB 185 passed its final committee stop in the House Regulatory Affairs Committee.

“The new ordinance fills in a big gap in the federal law,” Hillsborough County Commissioner Sandra Murman told the Tribune in 2012, after the local ordinance took effect.

Though federal law requires stations with two or more attendants to pump gas for handicapped motorists, the law does not specify how stations should comply. Some have call buttons. But those are often placed so high that someone in a wheelchair can’t reach them, Murman said.

Some stations do nothing at all, she said, and handicapped drivers are often forced to resort to “honking, waiving their handicapped cards trying to get attention.”

Commissioner Murman quoted in this Tampa Tribune article on HART:

BUSINESS NEWS

HART returning $1 million to Hillsborough coffers

By Ted Jackovics | Tribune Staff
Published: March 18, 2014   |   Updated: March 18, 2014 at 06:35 AM

TAMPA — HART will return an estimated $1 million in tax money because of cost savings on some transit projects and a delay building a covered walkway at the Marion Transit Center, the agency’s projects committee agreed Monday.

The money will be returned to the pool of Community Investment Tax funds, which is funded by a voter-authorized tax. The Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority last year returned nearly $9 million to Hillsborough County when various projects for the region’s first Bus Rapid Transit route cost less than anticipated.

“You’ve made my day,” HART board member and County Commissioner Sandy Murman said about the latest accounting. “I always like to find $1 million more in our budget.”

The North-South Bus Rapid Transit, or BRT, route that began operation in June has reached about 2,300 trips a day with limited stops and a faster schedule between downtown and the northeast suburbs.

CIT funding also was used for design work on the proposed MetroRapid east-west Bus Rapid Transit route.

The covered walkway serving MetroRapid passengers could not be completed before the March 31 deadline for using CIT funds and will be proposed later under a different potential funding source.

Also on Monday, HART staff said the agency will seek funds though a federal grant program to study a new concepts for the Marion Street Transitway, which runs nine blocks between Tyler Street to Whiting Street and is closed to all but bus traffic on weekdays.

The concept, launched in the 1980s, has never lived up to expectations for ridership and for business development along Marion Street.

One possibility is to return Marion Street to two-way traffic, along with improved pedestrian and bicycle flow.

Workshops on the Marion Street Transitway are scheduled Thursday and April 1 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the Tampa Downtown Partnership, 400 N. Ashley Drive.

tjackovics@tampatrib.com

Commissioner Murman quoted in this Tampa Tribune article on manufacturing apprenticeships:

Program aims to bridge gap in manufacturing jobs

By Mike Salinero | Tribune Staff
Published: March 16, 2014   |   Updated: March 16, 2014 at 01:26 PM

TAMPA — The massive migration of manufacturing jobs out of the United States is often blamed for stagnating wages and the U.S. economy’s slow recovery from the Great Recession.

That thinking, although not entirely false, has led to another problem for American manufacturers: the so-called “skills gap.”

Manufacturing industries here are rebounding, led by computerized, highly technical workplaces, but many employers say they can’t find enough skilled workers to fill their job openings.

“There is a tremendous skills gap,” said Roy Sweatman, president of Southern Manufacturing Technologies in Tampa. “Kids have been pointed toward college, and everybody thinks manufacturing doesn’t exist in the U.S. anymore.”

The county government is ready to spend $1 million over two years to help address the problem. The county, working with education agencies and local manufacturers, plans to create an apprenticeship program that officials hope will spur some parents and students to rethink their career plans.

The payoff will be skilled employees for existing high-paying industries and a highly skilled workforce that can attract even more manufacturing here.

Though details won’t emerge until next month, early plans call for some of the money to be spent on scholarships to defray the cost of on-the-job training in a partnership with local manufacturers.

County commissioners also want to create a media campaign to draw students or adults looking for new skills into the program.

“We want to send a message out that manufacturing jobs are viable career options,” said Commissioner Sandy Murman, who has been involved in planning for such a program with educators. “The second part of that would be public-private partnerships with manufacturing to sponsor internships.”

Hillsborough County has close to 1,000 manufacturers, with more than 22,000 employees earning an average salary of $935 a week. But a survey of 89 manufacturers employing 12,000 workers in Hillsborough and Pinellas counties showed 2,100 unfilled jobs as of April 2013.

❖ ❖ ❖

In establishing the apprenticeship program, county leaders face a number of challenges.

For one, they want to have multiple opportunities for young people and adults to learn the skills they need to get a manufacturing job. To do that they have to incorporate existing vocational-technical programs in county public schools, at Hills­borough Community College and the University of South Florida.

“There’s not been a good connectivity between private-sector manufacturers and the groups doing the job training,” said Ron Barton, who heads up the county government’s economic development efforts.

County Commissioner Al Higginbotham became aware of the skills gap years ago when he sat on the board of theTampa Hillsborough Economic Development Corp.

Higginbotham paid his own way to travel to Charlotte, N.C., to see that city’s mature apprenticeship program.

Like Charlotte, Higginbotham said, Hillsborough needs to form a consortium of manufacturers and training agencies.

“We’re going to pool our funds to train students,” Higginbotham said.

There’s no need to start a new agency whose start-up costs, Higginbotham fears, would consume most of the county’s $1  million contribution to the project.

Training programs already exist in public schools, the community college and the university.

Crafting a structure will be the job of Ed Peachey, president of CareerSource of Tampa Bay, the state workforce development organization for Hillsborough and Pinellas counties.

❖ ❖ ❖

That leads to the second challenge: Getting manufacturers to buy into the program. The value of apprenticeship is that students can learn in real workplace conditions. But the programs can be costly to a manufacturer because the student is not at full productivity during the learning process.

And skilled workers at the industry are not as productive if they have to spend time training the apprentices.

Peachey said he will work on recruiting manufacturers for the apprentice program during the next two months.

“None of this is going to work without the manufacturers being on board and lending us their expertise,” Peachey said

But perhaps the biggest hurdle, one identified by both industrialists and training agencies, is changing the image of manufacturing in the minds of students and parents.

Today’s manufacturing workers are not dressed in greasy overalls, performing mindless, repetitive tasks. More likely, they are operating computerized equipment that requires knowledge of math and science.

“People don’t really understand about high-tech manufacturing. They think it’s all assembly lines and ‘Laverne and Shirley,’” said Hillsborough Community College spokeswoman Ashley Carl, referring to the 1970s television comedy about two female factory hands.

❖ ❖ ❖

A good example of manufacturing’s new face is Roy Sweatman’s Southern Manufacturing Technologies in northwest Hillsborough County. Parts fashioned there regulate fuel in jets such as the Boeing 737 and 787.

When NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover settled down on the Red Planet, four jets with valves made by Southern Manufacturing cushioned the landing.

“Some of that money needs to be spent in a way to get people to know about manufacturing: the high-paying jobs we have that don’t require a college education and don’t require a lot of debt,” Sweatman said.

It will be up to Peachey’s workforce development group to not only mold the apprenticeship structure but to brand and sell it to parents, students, veterans and older people who need new job skills.

He and Barton, the county’s economic development chief, are to report back to county commissioners with a plan in April.

Commissioner Murman quoted extensively in this Tampa Bay Times article on Hillsborough Transit Plan:

Dozen agencies struggle to be heard on Hillsborough transit plan

Shelley Rossetter, Times Staff Writer

Saturday, March 8, 2014 8:19pm

TAMPA — In Hillsborough County, a dozen different agencies are responsible for some aspect of transportation.

There’s HART and TBARTA, the MPO and the PTC. The Tampa Hillsborough Expressway Authority plays a role. So do county government and the cities of Tampa, Temple Terrace and Plant City.

As discussions of the area’s transportation future heat up once again, some local officials say this fragmentation is making it hard to get anything done.

“No one entity has overriding authority,” says Hillsborough County Commissioner Mark Sharpe, a strong advocate of mass transit. “We need to be working more collaboratively.”

While having multiple transportation agencies is not unusual, it can cause problems if leadership is lacking, says Daniel Sperling, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis.

“A collection of government agencies have to work together,” Sperling says, “even when they all have different priorities, influence and different amounts of money.”

In Florida, Hillsborough County seems to take separation to the extreme.

This county has one of the most decentralized transportation decision-making processes in the state, Hillsborough County Attorney Chip Fletcher noted recently at a meeting of the Transportation for Economic Development Policy Leadership Group — yet another transportation entity.

Other counties in Florida combine related agencies, Fletcher said, such as the Planning Commission and the Public Transportation Commission or port and aviation authorities.

“There’s not another one I found that had everything separated,” he said.

The sheer number of players makes coming up with unified decisions on transportation issues difficult, said County Commissioner Sandra Murman, who serves on the boards of five of the 12 agencies.

“We lack one voice,” Murman said. “I think that’s a huge weakness.”

And each entity has its own funding source, ranging from an approximately $1.5 million state grant to the Tampa Bay Area Regional Transportation Authority in 2012 to the more than $26.4 million in property taxes collected last year by the Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority.

“When you have this sprinkling of funds around different projects and different groups,” Murman says, “you’re not going to get that big return on investment that I think our citizens want right now.”

While no one is trying to eliminate any of the groups, both Murman and Sharpe are in favor of making one of them stronger.

They, along with some other members of the Transportation for Economic Development group (which includes county commissioners and the mayors of Hillsborough’s three cities) suggested that HART may be the ideal agency to oversee the building and operation of new roads, expansion of bus service and planning for commuter rail.

The change would most likely require a restructuring of HART to include more elected officials and planning experts, though no details have been worked out.

“We just want HART to go beyond simply managing buses and take on a broader mission,” says Sharpe, who also serves on the boards of the Metropolitan Planning Organization, HART and TBARTA.

Tampa City Council member Mike Suarez, who serves as chairman of HART and as a member of the Transportation for Economic Development group, isn’t convinced that would solve anything.

“No transit agency anywhere in the country has the kind of power — implementation power — they are talking about,” Suarez says. “(HART) is doing very well in terms of our budget and in what we are able to provide. We don’t have dollars to expand service now, we don’t have the capability to do more technology. Those are problems we need to solve and having a new, different organization doesn’t solve that problem.”

Instead, he suggests, the Transportation for Economic Development group, which he joined two months ago, needs to focus more on what it hopes to accomplish.

“I wish I knew more about what we are trying to do because I don’t think it has been fleshed out yet,” Suarez says. “We haven’t talked about how we are going to make things work.”

That hasn’t stopped others in the group from moving as quickly as possible. The group hopes to present a plan for the future of transportation in Hillsborough sometime this summer, despite not knowing exactly what that means or who will see it through.

Regardless of who is responsible, early success will be key, Murman says, to bringing on board voters who rejected attempts to fund transportation projects in the past.

“They’ll need to be successful quickly,” Murman says, “to gain credibility in the community.”

Times news researcher John Martin contributed to this report. Shelley Rossetter can be reached at srossetter@tampabay.com or (813) 226-3401.

.Fast facts

A dozen voices

• Tampa Bay Area Regional Transportation Authority

• Tampa Port Authority

• Tampa Hillsborough Expressway Authority

• Hillsborough County Aviation Authority

• Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority

• Metropolitan Planning Organization

• Public Transportation Commission

• Planning Commission

• City of Tampa

• City of Temple Terrace

• City of Plant City

• Hillsborough County

Commissioner Murman quoted in this Tampa Bay Times article on hiring Plant City manager:

Hillsborough administrator hires Plant City manager as his No. 2

WILL HOBSONTampa Bay Times

Friday, March 7, 2014 2:15pm

TAMPA — Hillsborough County Administrator Mike Merrill has poached the city manager of Plant City to be his No. 2, he announced Friday as part of a broad reorganization of the county’s top leadership.

Greg Horwedel, who has overseen Plant City government since 2010, will become deputy county administrator. He’ll handle many day-to-day duties, Merrill said, freeing Merrill to focus on major policy issues facing the county like transportation, economic development and homelessness.

Merrill lauded Horwedel’s integrity in an interview Friday.

As evidence of that, he pointed to how Horwedel handled the recent allegation that Plant City’s police chief was having an affair with a woman on the city’s dime.

Horwedel suspended the chief, hired an outside investigator and then fired the chief when the investigation concluded he’d lied.

“He has just superb judgment and common sense, and the ability to grasp complex issues,” Merrill said. “He’s a problem-solver.”

Horwedel, 52, will earn $180,000 per year, an increase over the $135,000 he made in Plant City. His hire, and a restructuring of Merrill’s executive team, all are pending approval by the County Commission.

“This will allow Mike to really function as a CEO,” said Commissioner Sandy Murman. “It’s the mark of a really good administrator to always be thinking about evolving your organization.”

That evolving will mean substantial raises for several of Merrill’s top employees, and a demotion and pay cut for one.

The promotions:

• Carl Harness will be promoted from director of children’s services to chief human services administrator, and see his salary go from $150,587 to $165,000.

• Dexter Barge will be promoted from code enforcement director to assistant county administrator, and see his salary go from $135,532 to $150,000.

• Tom Fass will be promoted from director of real estate and facilities management services to assistant county administrator, and see his salary go from $135,511 to $150,000.

• Ron Barton will be promoted from director of economic development to assistant county administrator, and see his salary go from $135,511 to $150,000.

After years without raises, most county employees got a raise last year of 3.5 percent. These raises are all close to 10 percent. County commissioners gave Merrill a 3.5 percent raise in February, taking his salary from $210,000 to $217,350.

With Horwedel’s addition, Deputy County Administrator Sharon Subadan will be demoted to assistant county administrator, and take a pay cut from $165,641 to $160,000.

Before taking the job in Plant City, Horwedel had been county administrator in Dinwiddie County, Va., and had served as director of development services in Sarasota. Hillsborough will be, by far, the largest government organization for which he’s worked. Horwedel said Friday he’s not intimidated.

“If you treat people fairly, deal in facts, and make objective decisions, there’s really no mystery,” he said. “I’ve had a track record of success everywhere I’ve been.”

Horwedel expects his last day in Plant City to be in April, pending City Commission approval.

David Sollenberger, his predecessor, has expressed interest in serving as interim city manager until a new one is hired, Horwedel said.

Times researcher John Martin contributed to this report. Will Hobson can be reached at (813) 226-3400 or whobson@tampabay.com.