Andy Mele

Q. What are the top 3 issues facing Florida as a whole, but, in particular, our region?
A. COVID 19, Water quality, Economic stresses

Q. Anticipating a decline in revenue during upcoming fiscal years for Florida, how would you address budget shortfalls? What are your priorities within a decreased budget?
A. As a nonprofit manager, I only used downsizing as an absolute last option. I focus on the revenue side. Hence, in my campaign, I am exploring revenue enhancement at the state level. Such enhancements might include increasing sin taxes, such as tobacco and alcohol, increasing gasoline and diesel taxes, upping real estate taxes, eliminating some blatantly political budget items, such as the three M-CORES “roads to nowhere,” review the corporate tax rates, raise the phosphate severance tax from $1.80 per ton to $200, and consider a small state income tax on people earning over $500,000 per year. With access to the state budget, there may be many more opportunities to eliminate unnecessary pork projects, and add revenue.

Q. Transportation continues to be an issue, both in terms of existing options as well as long-term planning and projects. What are your top 2 transportation priorities in our region and how would you fund them?
A. I would eliminate the M-CORES “roads to nowhere,” thereby saving the state billions of dollars. I would bring back the requirement to demonstrate need in new development, with cumulative traffic impact study as a requirement for any new permit applications. Neither of these priorities requires funding, and in fact they will release billions for plugging holes in the budget.

Q. In Florida, and especially in our area, water quality is an essential part of our economy and quality of life. What can the Legislature do to address water quality?
A. The legislature can and must implement a comprehensive water quality bill, including stringent limits on nutrient pollution and chlorophyll-a in our waterways. This will involve a train wreck with the agricultural sector, but the current system simply isn’t working, and is actually encouraging nutrient pollution. 73% of the nutrient pollution entering Lake Okeechobee is emitted by agriculture. The rest comes from the constant drumbeat of leaks and spills from municipal and county wastewater treatment plants. Coastal waters and springs, both very important economic factors in our region, are also similarly impacted. As a Waterkeeper, my group successfully sued St. Pete, Gulfport, and negotiated a high-quality settlement with Sarasota County over a 200 million gallon per year ongoing spill, which fed and intensified the 2017-2018 red tide. I believe it is possible to reduce the duration, intensity and geographic extent of harmful algae blooms, and bring them down to pre-development levels by controlling nutrient pollution.

Q. As businesses move to recover and build the economy, what are some strategies that you would support that positively impact these businesses both now and in the future?
Rebuilding the regional economy is all about proving that we, too, can manage the pandemic and get new positives down to 2-4%, amid massively increased testing, with contact tracing.

It is also about maintaining our environmental quality, as I describe at length above. In coastal Florida, the environment is the economy, and the economy is the environment.

The Conservative administrations in Washington and Tallahassee grossly mismanaged the COVID-19 response, to the extent that they made a bad problem much, much worse. We need to listen to doctors, scientists and epidemiologists in formulating the next few years of pandemic response, economic recovery, and readiness.

New York State’s example provides a playbook for sane, measured pandemic control, and the phased re-opening of the state’s economy. It feels as if the DeSantis administration and the Legislature have been taking a pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey approach, remaining willfully blindfolded by ideology and trying this and trying that, to see if anything works.

New York’s economy is recovering rapidly as its COVID cases remain in single and double digits. New York was taken by surprise, as were some other densely-populated cities, but they had their curve not just flattened, but crushed, by late April, where it has remained.

Love Andrew Cuomo or hate him, the DeSantis administration should have paid attention, because Florida’s surge came months after New York had the virus under control, with thousands of unnecessary deaths. New York never politicized the virus, unlike Washington and Florida. The Legislature must learn from New York and follow its example. Otherwise our business community will be knocked around for years by irrational, unscientific, ideologically-driven policy.