Voters, follow the money. Then decide if our ‘paradise’ is at risk | Opinion
I heard a story recently about a powerful company exploiting a community’s resources, robbing them of their future – and then trying to deceive the public about it all. Sounds like it could be pulled from the headlines, but it’s the premise of my favorite old folk song, “Paradise” by John Prine.
He laments the destruction of his ancestral home by ruthless profit-seekers who “tortured the timber and stripped all the land.” Not content with their ill-gotten gains, the corporate vandals sought to glorify their desecration, and “wrote it all down as ‘the progress of man.’”
There is wisdom in folk music.
Here in Leon County, we risk losing our own paradise to developers and other powerful interests extracting wealth from our community. They invest the money generated by their clearcutting, polluting enterprises into local electeds who in turn divert public resources towards pet projects that enrich their donors.
It is not enough to merely dominate local government and exploit our resources, they seek to disabuse the public of any conceivable alternative to their dominance and exploitation. With the biggest platform money can buy, they brand neighborhood groups as unserious nuisances, journalists as libelous villains, and the few politicians who can’t be bought as evil frauds.
This is about more than wasteful spending – it is a crisis of democracy in a community at a crossroads. From gun violence to the climate crisis, our community faces significant challenges. Every sweetheart deal comes at a great opportunity cost, undermining our capacity to address them.
Consider the $80 million road-to-nowhere on the Northeast side, or the $27 million subsidy for luxury stadium improvements. Two projects with little public benefit, forced through despite widespread public outcry. Private citizens and elected officials alike who pushed back against such impropriety were lectured, belittled, and smeared by developer-backed political groups and their puppets.
Meanwhile in District 2, our kids still walk dirt paths along West Tharpe and Orange Avenue, an unmitigated housing crisis so dire that it has left us with a shortage of school bus drivers, all while Lake Munson grows more toxic by the day.
Despite these troubling developments, I am hopeful that we can get ourselves back on track. This year we have excellent candidates running in every race to restore community control over public resources. Of course, few would openly campaign on prioritizing developer profits. So how do you know who to trust?
The answer lies in the budget. Just as the Leon County budget reveals the backward priorities of our leaders, a campaign budget reveals the true allegiance of a given candidate. Some will say that this is an unfair generalization, but no wealthy businessman ever got that way by giving away money for nothing.
On August 23, we must answer this question: is our home for sale?
Will Crowley is a budget analyst with advanced degrees in Urban Planning and Public Administration. He serves as his district’s representative to the Leon County DEC, and is a candidate for Leon County Commission, District 2. Candidates seeking office get the opportunity to publish one Opinion column before the primary and one column before the general election.
JOIN THE CONVERSATION
Send letters to the editor (up to 200 words) or Your Turn columns (about 500 words) to letters@tallahassee.com. Please include your address for verification purposes only, and if you send a Your Turn, also include a photo and 1-2 line bio of yourself. You can also submit anonymous Zing!s at Tallahassee.com/Zing. Submissions are published on a space-available basis. All submissions may be edited for content, clarity and length, and may also be published by any part of the USA TODAY NETWORK.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Voters, follow the money. Then decide if our ‘paradise’ is at risk | Opinion
