Since The Tampa Tribune was shut down a few years ago, 1.2 million Hillsborough County voters lost the only source for investigative journalism focusing on crime and corruption in local government. The remaining media serving Hillsborough is totally lockstep left-wing with no opposing viewpoint tolerated.
That is how a teachers union , a Florida appeals court, and a school board were able to ramrod through a county commission, without a squeak heard from it, an annual salary increase of over $6,000 for the next four years for each of 15,162 public school teachers, on the backs of already-strapped property tax-paying home owners and business owners. This tax will add at least $281.00 to the average homeowner's annual tax bill for local schools, which tax category alone already represents over 75% of the total annual tax bill paid by county property owners.
Then the teacher's union and the school board lie about the purpose of the tax increase to the voters, claiming in the actual wording on the ballot it is money "For The Children".
Now it is out for a vote bv the entire population of the county, the vast majority of whom do not own real property and do not pay those kinds of special taxes. This "feel good" debacle will cost these happy-to-help voters not one red cent.
As we see happening everywhere, whenever corrupt elected public officials and judges are paid off by special interests, and no longer have to worry about media watchdogs on their backs, it's very easy to get the unwashed masses to vote for every special interest boondoggle coming down the pike, because it's somebody else's money that they'll be spending to pay for it--not theirs.
