County commissioners reject Tobia's resolution opposing Puerto Rico statehood [Video]

First, there was silence, as none of the other three Brevard County commissioners in attendance would second a resolution by Commissioner John Tobia, calling for Congress to reject statehood for Puerto Rico.
Then, there was a loud cheer from members of the audience who opposed Tobia's resolution, as they realized his proposal had died for a lack of a second.
Tobia introduced his proposal shortly after the start of Tuesday night's County Commission meeting. He contended that Puerto Rico's debt issues would affect all taxpayers if Puerto Rico became a state.
But opponents of the measure who addressed the commission after the measure died questioned Tobia's views, and said the County Commission should stick to county business. 
"This is the County Commission, not the U.S. House of Representatives," said Randy Foster, a Democrat who ran and lost against Republican Tobia in the 2016 County Commission election.
"We have to get this county moving forward," and focus on county issues like roads, transportation and emergency management, Foster said.
In his comments, Samuel Lopez of Melbourne, president of the civil-rights organization United Third Bridge, told Tobia that he would organize picket lines at Valencia College, where Tobia is a professor. 
Lopez said he wanted let people there "know what kind of person you are."
Lopez, who helped organize the group of people who came to Tuesday's meeting to oppose Tobia's resolution, said Tobia's proposal was discriminatory.
Peter Vivaldi of Orlando, questioned Tobia's implication that Puerto Rico is leaning toward socialism. 
In reference to Tobia's proposal getting support from none the other commissioners at the meeting, Vivaldi told them: "I appreciate the vote, and where it didn't go."
Other speakers termed Tobia's proposal inflammatory, misleading and disrespectful.
In his resolution, Tobia wrote: "The burdens placed on federal taxpayers to remedy the decades of mismanagement and socialization by the government of Puerto Rico would be untenable" if Puerto Rico became a state. 
Tobia cited Puerto Rico's massive debt and its bankruptcy filing.
"Puerto Rico's debt crisis is, in large part, a result of socializing private industry," Tobia said in his resolution.
Although 97 percent of voters in a referendum last month in Puerto Rico supported statehood, Tobia pointed out in his resolution that the referendum had a participation rate of only 23 percent.
The other three county commissioners in attendance Tuesday — Chairman Curt Smith, Vice Chair Rita Pritchett and Commissioner Jim Barfield — did not comment during the discussion of Tobia's resolution, which included comments by 11 members of the public.
"Clearly, my fellow commissioners are not concerned about our national debt," Tobia said in an interview after the vote. 
Tobia said he felt it was an appropriate issue to address, as he wants to look out for taxpayers on the federal, state, county and municipal levels.
The fifth county commissioner, Kristine Isnardi — who often votes with Tobia when there are split votes — was not at Tuesday's meeting.
All five county commissioners are Republican.
Contact Berman at 321-242-3649 or dberman@floridatoday.com. Follow him on Twitter at @bydaveberman and on Facebook at facebook.com/dave.berman.54.

County commissioners reject Tobia's resolution opposing Puerto Rico statehood

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What did Trump’s 2nd impeachment accomplish?

  That’s happening Former President Donald Trump was  acquitted  by the Senate on Saturday of the charge that he incited the insurrection on Jan. 6. The impeachment trial ended with 57 senators, including  seven Republicans , finding Trump guilty — well short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict. Over the course of a  week of testimony , House impeachment managers laid out the case that Trump was directly responsible for the deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol carried out by a mob of his supporters. Trump’s attorneys countered by arguing that his baseless claims of election fraud were protected by the First Amendment and that the Senate lacked the constitutional authority to convict a president who was no longer in office. Several GOP senators cited the latter argument in explaining their decision to acquit. Senate Minority Leader  Mitch McConnell  said Trump was “practically and morally responsible” for the violence at the Capitol in a scathing speech following the final vote,
Read more

Mildred Loving, Who Battled Ban on Mixed-Race Marriage, Dies at 68

Mildred Loving, a black woman whose anger over being banished from Virginia for marrying a white man led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling overturning state miscegenation laws, died on May 2 at her home in Central Point, Va. She was 68. Peggy Fortune, her daughter, said the cause was pneumonia. The Supreme Court ruling, in 1967, struck down the last group of segregation laws to remain on the books — those requiring separation of the races in marriage. The ruling was unanimous, its opinion written by Chief Justice Earl Warren, who in 1954 wrote the court’s opinion in Brown v. Board of Education, declaring segregated public schools unconstitutional. In Loving v. Virginia, Warren wrote that miscegenation laws violated the Constitution’s equal protection clause. “We have consistently denied the constitutionality of measures which restrict the rights of citizens on account of race,” he said. By their own widely reported accounts, Mrs. Loving and her husband, Richard, were in bed in their m
Read more

31 states have heightened religious freedom protections

Image
The recent flurry of state bills giving religious exemptions from certain laws -- including the Arizona law that Gov. Jan Brewer (R) just vetoed -- raises a question: How many states already provide heightened protection for the exercise of religion? The answer? Thirty-one, 18 of which passed state laws based on the 1993 federal  Religious Freedom Restoration Act . The protections in an additional 13 states came through court rulings. Here's a map of which states have added protections and which do not: "These state RFRAs were enacted in response to Supreme Court decisions that had nothing to do with gay rights or same-sex marriage," explained University of Virginia law professor Douglas Laycock in an e-mail. "And the state court decisions interpreting their state constitutions arose in all sorts of contexts, mostly far removed from  gay rights or same-sex marriage. There were cases about Amish buggies, hunting moose for native Alaskan funeral rituals, an atte
Read more