Editor, The Beacon:
After reading The Beacon’s coverage of the Volusia County Council’s planning meeting, I was overwhelmed by one fact: Six Republicans on the council, all suggesting the standard policy line to reduce the size of government.
A question arose: How can the council represent Volusia County? We know that this county is not made up of 100% Republican voters. Something is not working correctly. Nearly 50% of the population is unrepresented.
The same can be said in Tallahassee. The House is split, with 84 Republicans and 35 Democrats. The Senate is also split, with 28 Republicans and 12 Democrats. And there’s a Republican trifecta of control, with a Republican governor, secretary of state, and attorney general.
Take a look back to the 2018 Florida election when the two major positions (governor and U.S. senator) were won by less than 1% of the votes cast. In the race for governor Republican Ron DeSantis received 4,076,186 votes, and Democrat Andrew Gillum received 4,043,723 votes; so DeSantis won by a little less than 33,000 votes out of more than 8 million votes cast.
And Rick Scott won the Senate seat by a mere 10,033 votes.
Adding up the numbers, we find that a huge portion of the population has no power in state or local offices. What has happened to the idea that people would be ruled by a representative government? Maybe it’s a change of party affiliation, gerrymandering, voter suppression, people not voting, dark money or perhaps mystical power that can disappear about half of Florida voters.
One thing is clear. The current government in Florida does not reflect the will of the people on one big issue. Polls show 70%-85% of citizens favor stricter gun control, yet they are overridden. Now those opposed to gun control have gone even further, with concealed carry without a permit requirement whatsoever. Not my idea of democracy or effective government!
Sheldon Skolfield, DeLeon Springs
Some good points made here, however, I wouldn’t fear the Volusia County Council as a body being to conservative and they certainly are far from being fiscally conservative at all. Look at their record as a body and you will find there is little difference between them and their democratic counterparts of the past. In Volusia County we still have a horribly unfair and unbalanced property tax system that impacts the younger working class the hardest and we have a County Council that has chosen make our charitable giving decisions for us whereas they take our money by force, with the threat of the loss of our homes and property, and give it away to the charities they choose. Most of the time these charitable giving decisions are influenced by people who are older and who benefit greatly from property tax breaks our younger working class are not eligible to receive. In some cases people who own homes who are not paying any property taxes at all are the ones going before our County Council and lobbying them to take even more from others for what they want but will not be required to help fund.
As for social welfare programs, Volusia County continues to use our tax dollars to fund just about every cradle to grave program imaginable and not to worry, those Volusia County elected leaders are also in line with the Democrats on most of those corporate giveaways as well. And there is also very little difference at the State level that is also dominated by Republicans.
Our two party system has gotten so bad politicians have stopped promising to cut Waste, Fraud, and Abuse. Both of the main two parties are horrible and they are destroying our Country and we are allowing it to occur as we bite on to the rhetoric the politicians dish out pertaining to the next big manufactured non-issue designed as an attention getter and a way to deflect from the real issues of the day. Politicians are the same in both of the main two political parties and are just a reflection of us and what we allow. Why is it too much to simply ask to have less government, good governance, fair taxes, and a government of, by, and for the people? And why is it too much to ask that our local and County governments focus on their core responsibilities and that those core responsibilities are done well? Keep supporting your political cults, keep being a good Democrat or Republican, and keep being fleeced.