{"id":1019,"date":"2020-09-12T12:49:22","date_gmt":"2020-09-12T16:49:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/conservation\/?p=1019"},"modified":"2020-09-12T12:50:15","modified_gmt":"2020-09-12T16:50:15","slug":"gov-desantis-why-are-wmd-seats-vacant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/?p=1019","title":{"rendered":"Gov . DeSantis, Why Are WMD Board Seats Still Vacant?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size:1pt\">Wa<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Water policy is one of the most-discussed issue in Florida and has been for decades, but you wouldn&#8217;t know it from the dilatory attitude from Gov. Ron DeSantis&#8217; office when it comes to filling vacancies on water management district boards.\n<\/p>\n<p>Southwest Florida Water Management District&#8217;s Governing Board is functioning with a bare quorum of seven members out a normal 13-member panel.\n<\/p>\n<p>St. Johns River Water Management District has only  five of its nine governing board seats filled and  that&#8217;s only after two recent appointments that had left the board without a quorum.\n<\/p>\n<p>The South Florida Water Management District Governing Board has a full nine-member board, though there are vacancies in the Big Cypress Basin Board.\n<\/p>\n<p>This is unprecedented and as far as we&#8217;re concerned unnecessary.\n<\/p>\n<p>Part of the problem is that these appointments are more or less political patronage picks, which means you have to be a Republican who has not  done anything to anger the governor or his friends.\n<\/p>\n<p>That leaves many otherwise qualified people off the list, especially people from Florida&#8217;s  environmental community. Many of Florida&#8217;s environmental leaders are Democrats, a logical choice since the recent Republican political leadership in Tallahassee have done little to excite the environmental community and done much to anger it.\n<\/p>\n<p>Nevertheless, if DeSantis wants to be seen as an &#8220;environmental&#8221; governor,  he would do well to think outside the political silos. Or failing that, maybe he could just do his job and fill the vacancies.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n<p> \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wa Water policy is one of the most-discussed issue in Florida and has been for decades, but you wouldn&#8217;t know it from the dilatory attitude from Gov. Ron DeSantis&#8217; office when it comes to filling vacancies on water management district boards. Southwest Florida Water Management District&#8217;s Governing Board is functioning with a bare quorum of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gci"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1019"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1021,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019\/revisions\/1021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}