As We See It

Newly elected Republican State Representative Mike Horner has received a lot of local media attention in the past few weeks so the WayneWho staff decided we should make sure to pay some attention to him as well. Much to the surprise of many of our readers we would have to give Representative Horner a B+ for his first session in Tallahassee. While many of our readers will say he either did better or worse than the arbitrary grade we have given, we think that his record in this session needs to be looked at on bills he participated in individually. It is hard to grade a freshmen Representative on the successes and failures of State Government as a whole. While we feel that state governments let the residents of Florida down this year, Representative Horner stood up for his community. While we do not agree with all of his positions, we feel that on the big issues he took stands that benefit our residents, and that is what representative government is all about.

One of the issues that Representative Horner has made his top priority is covered in an Osceola News-Gazette "As I See It" article this week titled "Insurance Gamble Threatens Us." In the article he states that "The greatest threat to Florida’s economic recovery and future prosperity is the financially unsound state-run insurance program, Citizens Insurance." We would have to disagree. While we do agree that the state run Citizens Insurance program has become a complete mess and needs reform, we have to look at why it exists. Many private insurers, both small and large, failed to protect residents of our state who had been paying their premiums without issue. While it is very 'Republican' to beat the drum for private entities as opposed to government run entities, the truth of which is better is often hidden in rhetoric. The simple fact that Representative Horner does not bring up in his column is that many Central Florida families were left to their own devices by private insurance companies. The same 'Private' companies used trickery and deceit to get out of paying rightful claims. Better capitalized companies could afford the lawyers to drag out processing claims for months while the state remained covered in blue tarps. It was a time of state wide disgrace.

Reform is the key. The ray of hope that we see in Representative Horner is that he understands the processes and knows that reform is needed. We just hope that he understands that reform is needed at all levels and not just on the Citizens Insurance program. We also hope that typical political buzzword scare tactics like throwing the word 'bureaucrats' into an article do not turn Representative Horner into what Representative Frank Attkisson had become, a right wing ideologue that had forgotten what good government was really about. It is hard to take a politician seriously that tries to scare us about 'state bureaucrats' when those same politicians champion quasi-governmental agencies that operate at the whim of the same 'state bureaucrats.' Our roads, tolls, growth and economic development futures are all in the hands of these same bureaucrats and quasi-governmental agencies that operate outside of the control of the public. If Representative Horner believes that these people are bad, then maybe he needs to start working on dissolving some of these other agencies that have hurt our local area and our residents.

To close we would only bring up one other point. Does Representative Horner believe that insurance is "greatest threat to Florida's economic recovery and future prosperity" because of problems it is creating in the home building community? As with most politicians, he did not clarify what he sees as 'economic recovery.' His close ties with the development community and years of championing the oversupply of our housing market makes us very suspicious of his motives. Almost every sane economist says that Florida's number one threat to economic recovery is the oversupply in housing and the failure to create any sustainable industries. Are the economists wrong and the bureaucrats right? We believe that these issues need more explanation because recreating the housing bubble is the wrong move. We would also like to see Representative Horner's 'As I See It' article on HB 360 which just gave developers the upper hand in continuing to promote sprawl and enabled unneeded, and unwanted, developments like Destiny . If he is going to promote sensible reforms and regulations on a state run program, then maybe it is time to admit that the the citizens need to be protected by sensible growth management regulations.

The WayneWho staff hopes that this article does NOT create a tone of attack on Representative Horner. We had honestly thought he was going to turn into a puppet for the Dark Side, but it seems that he still has some fight for the people left in him. We look forward to reading your philosophical articles on other issues and we will enjoy the debate on these topics as we know the Osceola News-Gazette will keep printing anything sent to them without properly vetting the pieces first.

As wee see it, it was a good first session.