Gov. Rick Scott is getting “less than stellar advice” on how to fix the state’s budget crisis, Republican Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan has warned the governor in a letter that also pleads that governing “cannot be approached as a hostile corporate takeover.”
Morgan, who was on Scott’s law enforcement transition team, sent a long letter to Scott with several pieces of advice. The letter was reported Wednesday by the Pensacola News Journal.
Transferring problems from state government to local is not an acceptable way to deal with a budget shortfall, Morgan said.
“For generations, the public has trusted its elected and appointed officials to manage the public sector,” Morgan wrote. “…It’s incumbent upon us to address the issues and fix them. We created them. We should be held responsible for their remedy.”
Noting that many business models cannot be so easily adopted by government, Morgan also pointed out that the public sector is not about making a profit.
“It is about providing for the public safety and education while incentivizing a health business climate,” Morgan wrote.
Morgan also said the Scott administration seems intent on “arbitrary cuts,” and urged the governor not to follow through on proposed changes to public employee retirement rules.
“Reneging on these assurances to generations of working people is unacceptable,” the sheriff said in his Feb. 22 letter. Scott hasn’t responded to Morgan.
The News Service of Florida
