Recent editorials from Florida newspapers:
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July 28
The Orlando Sentinel on the eviction moratorium:
July is speeding to an end and tens of thousands of Floridians are again being held in suspense over how long they might have roofs over their heads.
They’re waiting to see if Gov. Ron DeSantis will extend the moratorium on evictions. It’s been in place since April, when the financial crunch of the coronavirus crisis really began to hit.
DeSantis extended the original 45-day moratorium three days before it was due to expire. Since then, he’s turned the process into a serial cliffhanger.
He waited until 8 p.m. on May 31st to send an email announcing the moratorium had been extended through June.
As the clock ticked down on June 30th, DeSantis was asked at a press conference whether he would extend the moratorium through July.
“Anyone else want to ask a new question?” he said.
At this point, a lot of stressed-out renters and homeowners would like to ask DeSantis why he keeps putting them through the emotional wringer.
July is winding down and they again find themselves waiting on the governor to make up his mind. The moratorium clock will figuratively strike midnight at 12:01 a.m. Saturday.
DeSantis should have announced his plans days ago, but as of Tuesday morning he was still mum on what he might do. He’s not even letting on when he will announce his decision.
That would be understandable if this were a fluid situation, if some new development were expected in the next few days. But little is going to change between now and Friday night.
More than a million Floridians will still be unemployed - some of them your neighbors, ex-coworkers and friends.
Of Florida’s 67 counties, Osceola, Orange and Lake rank 1-2-3 in the percentage of unemployed workers. Almost 200,000 people have spent the summer out of work in those counties.
Many have also spent countless hours mired with Florida’s chaotic unemployment system. They are hopelessly behind on paying their rent and mortgages. They know if a new month arrives, the eviction moratorium is the only thing standing between them and the street.
As scary as that prospect is, why drag out the drama?
DeSantis isn’t saying, as usual. His office did not respond to emails asking about his plans for August.
Like so many decisions in the pandemic, we realize there are no good options. But that’s no excuse for avoiding the topic and raising the stress level of Floridians already stressed about their futures.
Jeff Hayward, the president and CEO of the Heart of Florida United Way, said Central Florida could face a “tidal wave” of homelessness if the eviction moratorium is lifted.
DeSantis has to weigh that against the plight of lenders and landlords. They also have mortgages and taxes and bills to pay, and the government has essentially cut off their income since April. Many need help as badly as their renters.
The CARES Act provided $240 million in rental and mortgage assistance to Florida, but that is hardly enough to deal with the situation. The Senate rolled out its latest coronavirus relief bill Monday. The $1 trillion package is $2 trillion less than the bill passed the U.S. House.
That package includes almost $200 billion in housing assistance and an incremental 12-month moratorium on evictions. Congress has until its Aug. 7 recess to reconcile its differences and pass a bill.
Piling billions more to the runaway national debt is a daunting thought, but the eviction crisis calls for a long-term strategy. According to the Census Bureau’s latest Household Pulse Survey, almost 15 million Americans say they have little or no confidence they will be able to pay next month’s rent.
That struggle is going to continue for a long time. Meanwhile, landlords can’t go forever without any income.
Whatever plan lawmakers come up with, the monthly eviction suspense needs to end.
The pandemic has inflicted enough anxiety. The last thing people need is their governor needlessly adding to it.
Online: https://www.orlandosentinel.com/
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July 24
The Miami Herald on South Beach’s party image:
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought South Florida heartache and financial damage. The world, our world, has slowed to a crawl.
But within that pause, there is a unique opportunity to think anew, to reboot, to give a flashy, trashy tourist strip a makeover. That’s what Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber wants to do with South Beach during the pandemic. Basically, he’s saying, “Enough!”
Gelber announced Wednesday that he, other city leaders and many residents are tired of the debauchery between Fifth and 16th Streets on Ocean Drive and Collins Avenue. We’ve all seen the videos on YouTube of the street brawls and drunkenness, especially during Spring Break, Memorial Day the Fourth of July - or any given weekend, for that matter.
NEW VISION
“Over the last few decades, South Beach has grown to resemble a beachfront Bourbon Street, with all-night hard drinking and too much misbehavior,” Gelber said at a commission meeting, making an unfavorable comparison to New Orleans’ entertainment district.
It’s not exactly the future that Art Deco champion Barbara Capitman had in mind back in the 1980s when she fought to rescue the beautiful ’30s and ’40s hotels along Ocean Drive from the wrecking ball.
Now that the coronavirus has put a damper on the party, Gelber says its a good time time for South Beach to change, just as it has in the past.
The sale of alcohol until 5 a.m. on South Beach is at the root of much of the district’s evil. The late-night street partying has held residents hostage long enough.
On Wednesday, Gelber proposed a handful of significant policy changes, mainly moving up “last call” for alcohol sales to midnight at restaurants, bars and clubs - with some exceptions.
The proposal also calls for the enforcement of the city’s open-container law and a crackdown on loud music, mandating that, “No music can be audible outside the confines of each individual property along Ocean Drive.”
“We’ve lost control of our brand,” Gelber told the Miami Herald. He is absolutely right. Gelber added that the city has tried “to address this from the edges for too long. We have to address this from the inside.”
ARTS AND CULTURE
Gelber told the Editorial Board that after unveiling the plan, he’s received “very positive” feedback. Of course, club owners’ concerns must be part of the new equation. Liquor sales are big revenue producers.
“Our city has made a conscious commitment to develop a bona fide arts and culture profile. It only makes sense that South Beach seek to embrace that brand,” he said.
It’s been done before. Fort Lauderdale, for years known as the capital of Spring Break rolled up the welcome mat and put an end to the wild party a decade ago. The strategy succeeded. Even New York’s tawdry Time Square now is family friendly. South Beach can do the same.
Under Gelber’s proposal, which the City Commission will take up at its next meeting, the South Beach entertainment district would be renamed to reflect the area’s cultural roots. One name being considered is the Art Deco Cultural District. We think Capitman would like that.
The city would try to attract museums and galleries and high-class dining. A new marketing campaign would be launched for visitors seeking a cultural experience. Try: “Miami Beach: The boozing is over, come for the culture.”
Online: https://www.miamiherald.com/
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July 19
The Palm Beach Post on Gov. Ron DeSantis handling of the pandemic:
Once again, Florida is a national laughingstock. But this time, the joke is literally a sick one. And our governor is a special recipient of scorn and ridicule.
We want him to do better, for all our sake.
But embarrassing to say, all the swipes - from late-night host Stephen Colbert to headline writers everywhere - are completely deserved.
Last Sunday, July 12, Florida recorded a chilling national record: more than 15,300 new COVID-19 cases in a single day. If Florida were a country, it would rank fourth in the world in this appalling category. Our new peers: the United States, Brazil and India.
On Thursday, Florida chalked up its highest-ever daily death total: 156 COVID-19 fatalities. Which followed the previous high, set just two days before, of 132.
On Wednesday, the state’s total of cases since the start of the pandemic crashed past 300,000.
And Gov. Ron DeSantis arrogantly called the frightening surge “a blip.”
This denotes incompetence. And the whole country sees it.
CNN political analyst Chris Cillizza’s take was typical of the daily national commentary. “The situation in Florida appears to be on the verge of becoming totally out of control - if it’s not there already,” he wrote Tuesday. “DeSantis seems unwilling to acknowledge that reality - and how wrong he was about his state’s battle against the virus.”
All through this worsening crisis, DeSantis has tried to prematurely hang up a “Mission Accomplished” banner. As we’ve said before, he has taken some good steps - notably, severely cutting off access to nursing homes, early on, to protect the most vulnerable of Florida’s many elderly residents.
But the official who is supposed to be leading the charge against Florida’s greatest health emergency in generations has mainly told us that things aren’t as serious as they appear and that the most important thing is to hurry back to “normal” as soon as possible.
As recently as Monday, DeSantis was repeating his tired mantra - borrowed from his political mentor President Donald Trump - that a major reason for the soaring rise in cases was an increase in testing. Tell that to the staff in South Florida’s rapidly filling hospitals, which are starting to resemble New York City’s overwhelmed wards of April. Those are real people getting sick and dying in greater numbers, not some trick of statistics.
DeSantis utterly failed to foresee the current tidal wave of cases, which began as a modest rise soon after the state reopened from stay-at-home orders in May. Why? Because he was so busy claiming that those testing positive were mainly younger people who experienced only mild symptoms or none at all. He was blind to the altogether predictable result that they would spread the virus to many more people than before and inevitably hit the more susceptible - young as well as old.
While the state’s COVID-19 curve kept rising higher and higher, DeSantis stubbornly continued to resist issuing a statewide mask order. Worse, he appeared but rarely in a mask himself. His messaging, like Trump’s: I don’t care what every public health official says to do, I’m too cool to wear a mask.
DeSantis has taken such a cramped approach to this crisis that he publicly refused help from Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, where positive COVID tests are down to 1%. (Florida: 19%) even while a senior staffer at the Florida Department of Health was thanking Cuomo’s office for offering a shipment of the antiviral drug remdesivir. How does that kind of tough-guy posturing help the people of Florida?
DeSantis’ administration has allegedly manipulated or masked statistics to make the pandemic seem more benign. We learned on Wednesday that his surgeon general ordered Palm Beach County’s health director not to write a letter giving her view that schools not reopen until the contagion rate subsides.
School Board Chairman Frank Barbieri got it right in saying that Dr. Alina Alonso had been “politically silenced by Tallahassee.” It is outrageous to silence public health officials in a public health emergency.
This is a leadership failure of mammoth proportions, a failure that will contribute to long-term illness and death for many of the citizens that a governor is supposed to protect. No wonder that a hashtag is trending: #DeSantisResign. We’d prefer “DeSantisStepUp.
In some other states where the virus is raging at unprecedented rates - California, Arizona, even the GOP stronghold of Texas - governors are starting to roll back the reopenings that, it is clear now, placed too much faith in people’s common sense to wear the masks and keep the six-foot distances needed to contain the virus’ spread.
But DeSantis? As of this writing, on Thursday, not a hint of how he intends to curb the contagion.
On Wednesday, asked by the AP whether he felt he has handled everything right, DeSantis replied that he and others are “working every day” battling the pandemic. “Obviously, we wish this could just go away, that’s not just how these things work.”
No, the coronavirus cannot just be wished away, and it is frightening that the governor of Florida is still talking as though that were ever an option.
It is past time for DeSantis to ground himself in some hard realities and admit that the economy will not revive until we greatly slow the zooming spread of this too-often-deadly disease.
Does he even have a plan on how to do that?
Online: https://www.palmbeachpost.com/
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