People forget that 70 percent of everything is just being there. If you are not there, it is hard to tell what happened.

Governments count on that. The meetings are long, inconveniently timed, and sometimes held in Palatka or Tallahassee so as to prevent public attendance. The bureaucrats are there. The officials are there. However, neither you nor your neighbors are there.

I admit it: I have never driven to Palatka for a public meeting. Only once did I go to Tallahassee. I have been to Gainesville, but only because it was my job and someone up there paid me.

Generally, government counts on you staying home. Do you know anyone who has attended a tax hearing? Yet people work all year escrowing enough to pay their property taxes. So long as people stay away in droves, taxes will increase.

Like I said, the bureaucrats are there. So are the officials. In election years, it is nice when the candidates attend, watching and learning the jobs they hope to do.

Gov. DeSantis’ political hacks, not so much. Just look at the former [G]reedy Creek Improvement District. Disney wanted one entity for all their land in two counties. That was the result.

Not many people remember what Central Florida was like back in the 1960s. And we who remember often exaggerate.

At any rate, Disney agreed to tax themselves to pay for roads, inspectors, cops, ambulances, and every other kind of thing they could imagine. As the big taxpayer, they wanted low rates.

Even so, if you think those costs were not passed through in the ticket price, you were not paying attention. The $3.75 daily admission more than covered their costs.

There is a lot of planning and work involved in building and maintaining amusement parks. Disney has plans and contracts out for the next decade. So does the tax district. In a monthslong process, through endless public meetings, they negotiated and signed development agreements.

Now, DeSantis has replaced the elected board with his political hacks. The hacks knew this was coming. But were they there at the meetings?

No, of course not. That is why months of meetings to plan decades of development came as a surprise to the governor’s goobers.

Now they would like to undo everything. And I know the one thing they are not thinking — if we were going to take the job, maybe we should pay attention!

— Andrews is a DeLand-area attorney and a longtime government critic. For purposes of the column, he finds it convenient that there is so much government to criticize.