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State Senator's Stagecraft Sets Off Colleague

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By TOM JACKSON

Published: December 5, 2007

In the ongoing saga of whether Pasco County should approve at least the first phase of a proposed composting landfill in its eastern frontier, the time has come to add another anagram to the alphabet soup that so far has dominated the opposition. Thus, without delay, do we add MYOB - mind your own beeswax - to the thrum of NIMBY percussionists.

Our instruction is aimed at Nature Coast state Sen. Mike Fasano, the New Port Richey-based, big-hearted longtime lawmaker whose commitment to constituent service has, finally, led him to attempt a grievous overreach, one with the gift of simultaneously committing two - two! - two political felonies in one.

The first: Announcing his plan to denounce a proposed recycling-composting-clean energy-producing landfill on property owned by Angelo's Recycled Materials southeast of Dade City amounts to pure political theater. We'll address the particulars in a moment.
The second: By mounting the public stage to take on an issue not in his district, Fasano embarrassed - needlessly at best - Victor Crist, a neighbor senator of the same party (Republican) with superior seniority.

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Having been quoted elsewhere that he hadn't realized the landfill remained a state issue - a statement he describes, persuasively, as having been stripped of context - the New Tampa-based Crist finds himself fending off claims that he is inattentive to the largest geographic portion of his district.

Not true, he says, noting that his local staff is split equally, two and two, between Pasco and Hillsborough County, and that he remains constantly alert to the concerns of Pasco officials, when they make those concerns known.

OK, maybe that's not especially reassuring for constituents who like their state representatives to be proactive. And Crist certainly didn't help himself when he complained that he's not able to keep up with Pasco news because the morning papers delivered to his Tampa Palms home don't include Pasco sections.

Somebody get the senator a calendar. We're seven years past the Millennium Bug, and the Internet survived.

That said, Crist had good reason to believe he'd done what he could on the state level, having gotten assurances from the Department of Environmental Protection that the Angelo's landfill application would be subjected to the agency's most rigorous scrutiny. That is as it should be.

Regulation By Law Or Lawmaker?

Which brings us to Fasano's egregious grandstanding. Until and unless the Legislature imposes new regulations for the approval of landfills - which it is Fasano's prerogative to propose - DEP must follow, precisely, what is on the books now. Jumping on the table and declaring opposition to a project that in every legal way deserves state approval suggests that not just DEP, but every branch of the government's executive branch is susceptible to political pressure.

Is this what the Nature Coast senator wants us to believe - that presumably legal enterprises can be undermined by the influence of elected officials? If so, could we count on Fasano sitting quietly if House Speaker Marco Rubio, of West Miami, suddenly sicced the Department of Children and Families on nursing homes in Holiday? Or suppose state Sen. Ronda Storms instructed DEP to have another look at the Hudson Channel dredging project. Would Fasano remain silent?

As it is, Fasano's wrongheaded meddling has caused an overreaction in Crist, who on Tuesday filed a bill that would prohibit Class 1 landfills from encroaching within a mile of "water bodies containing significant sources of consumable water and aquatic wildlife."
Crist says he wanted an "aggressive bill" that would "cultivate dialogue at the state level," corralling every possible stakeholder and expert in hopes of establishing reasonable new rules. Says Crist, rightly, "This [Angelo's] incident is not going to be unique as we go forward."

We would hope to hear Fasano's voice on this matter then, and would count on it coming from someone no longer being the megaphone for the not-in-my-backyard crowd, but from one who had become far more educated on the benefits of allowing Angelo's bioreactor landfill and recycling center to move forward.

After that, if those discussions merely reaffirm the appropriateness of existing regulations, that could represent the best possible outcome.

Tom Jackson can be reached at (813) 948-4219.

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