This morning on WCOA 1370AM, Escambia County Commissioner Robert Bender shared what happened at the meeting with State Sen. Doug Broxson on predatory contractors last Thursday. He also discussed the county setting up a hotline for consumers having issues with contractors.
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If Senator Broxson were really serious about serving his constituents in this matter, he’d be drafting legislation to undo the worst effects of DeSantis’s DERAGATHON he and the rest of our delegation voted for. I won’t hold my breath. Nor will I expect Bender to stop lying about what he knew and when he knew it any time soon. In the meantime, neither of them, nor any other state-level elected official, is doing *anything* to advocate successfully for the burning problems the average citizen here faces in their day-to-day.
Because, ya know, DeSantis gets what he wants when it comes to his special interests, whether it’s allowing our insurance industry to explode, letting developers rape and pillage our environment while neutering State DEP, letting the power company’s out-of-town millionaire management run amok while the local people try to do their best, or getting rid of crucial checks and balances on contractors while spoon feeding it to his base as FREEDOM!
I’ve spoken with people in that meeting who were frustrated at how little material results actually came of it, other than photo ops for people running for office. Fantastic that the County has set up a hotline, which will then become one more excuse for DBPR not to do its job. It wasn’t a surprise to me that Senator Broxson landed the focus on the local agencies of Buildings and the Sheriff’s department, which once again allows him to duck responsibility for runaway problems in his district.
And if the decision makers and money people in this area are having trouble comprehending why they should care that the middle and lower classes here are getting *pummeled* due to the negligent gaslighting of their lawmakers on this and other issues, then perhaps they should think about the economic development everybody pretends to treasure for our area.
Why on God’s green earth would any company want to relocate its work force to a place that has crooked contractors bilking hundreds of people for millions of dollars; an affordable housing crisis that has led to an explosion of area homeless (no, it’s not true “most” of the homeless aren’t from here); the worst drug and overdose problem in the state of Florida; our schools folding up and privatized; board members of the Trust that is supposed to be fixing that hell bent on funneling money right back to the power brokers who got it on the ballot; rampant gun violence; insufficient (and that’s stating it kindly) mental health services; and our hospitals dumping sick homeless people back onto the streets with no care?
The *only* silver lining I can see to this contracting issue is that it has woken up a whole bunch of people to the fact that our state-level agencies and lawmakers aren’t doing a thing to fix these burning issues, and are actively turning their heads from tackling rampant negligence and corruption. And the only thing really material that I can see that came out of Broxson’s dog and pony show was Ginger Madden’s public statement that there would be charges; that at least is something that these victims can latch onto. Because they all know they aren’t getting their money back. And now they know the names and faces of the people who are supposed to be serving them, and how little they actually care about the pressing problems that have been coming to a boil here for a loooong time.
These problems can be *fixed*. These problems will *not* be fixed if our state legislators and state agencies don’t do something material–something real–to fix them. But they’re all so cowed by DeSantis’s regime that the only thing they can think to do is continue with the smoke and mirrors. Nobody is fooled.