{"id":306,"date":"2017-07-03T10:46:09","date_gmt":"2017-07-03T14:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/conservation\/?p=306"},"modified":"2017-07-03T10:46:09","modified_gmt":"2017-07-03T14:46:09","slug":"should-water-management-district-boards-be-elected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/?p=306","title":{"rendered":"Should Water Management District Boards Be Elected?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The idea that any government body with taxing authority should elected comes up from time to time.\n<\/p>\n<p>The latest salvo came in a guest commentary written by Sanibel City Councilman Chauncy Goss that was published in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eco-voice.org\/\">Eco-Voice Daily,<\/a> an online compilation of articles and commentary from south Florida.\n<\/p>\n<p>He specifically mentioned the unelected members of Florida&#8217;s five water management districts. All are appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Florida Senate.\n<\/p>\n<p>The makeup and method of selection of the water management district boards is now governed by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.leg.state.fl.us\/Statutes\/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&amp;Search_String=&amp;URL=0300-0399\/0373\/Sections\/0373.073.html\">state law<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n<p>The water management districts&#8217; ability to levy property taxes was authorized by a constitutional amendment approved by voters in 1976.\n<\/p>\n<p>The districts have the authority to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.leg.state.fl.us\/Statutes\/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&amp;URL=0300-0399\/0373\/0373.html\">levy varying amounts of property taxes<\/a> ranging from between 5 cents per $1,000 of taxable value in the Panhandle to  $1 per $1,000 of taxable value in the Tampa Bay area.\n<\/p>\n<p>The idea of whether the boards should be elected instead of appointed has been discussed in the past.\n<\/p>\n<p>The idea of having elected boards was rejected because it could lead to decisions based on short-term political considerations rather than long-term sustainability, the winning argument went.\n<\/p>\n<p>This does not mean that there is no politics in water policy decisions.\n<\/p>\n<p>Board appointments often reflect the politics of whoever sits in the governor&#8217;s mansion and that affects board policies.\n<\/p>\n<p>That includes tax rates, staffing levels and environmental permitting.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n<p> \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The idea that any government body with taxing authority should elected comes up from time to time. The latest salvo came in a guest commentary written by Sanibel City Councilman Chauncy Goss that was published in Eco-Voice Daily, an online compilation of articles and commentary from south Florida. He specifically mentioned the unelected members 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-306","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\/306","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=306"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":307,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions\/307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}