Aaron Deslatte, Josh Hafenbrack, The Sun Sentinel

December 25, 2008

Aaron Deslatte
Josh Hafenbrack
The Sun Sentinel
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301

RE: Florida’s budget woes – as reported by you in today’s Sun Sentinel

Gentlemen,

All I want for Christmas is an article about government finances that has some relationship with the real world. I suppose it would be a bit much to expect some working knowledge of the laws concerning gravity but Christmas is based on hope, isn’t it?

The headline says

MORE BUDGET CUTS NEAR AS FLORIDA BATTLES DEBT

Your first paragraph says that one of the ways that Florida will “battle debt” is by “going into more debt”. It is as if you are saying that going from 12 feet of water to 15 feet of water will make it simpler for me, a non-swimmer, to stay afloat.

I think Aristotle, one of the original dead White European males, spoke to that. “Something cannot be that which it is not.” On second thought the only exception is government. So much for lockboxes.

The next egregious line should be a flogging offense.

You say that Senator Atwater and Speaker Sansom “generally agree with the Governor on how to dig out of this hole”.

“Dig out of a hole”?

As someone who has dug holes in 3 countries I ask you to accept that I say with 100% absolute metaphysical certitude that you cannot “dig out of a hole”.

My international hole digging experience was good training for when I became a Chief Financial Officer of a public company. When you find your self in a hole too deep or a hole on the wrong side of the river you do not ask for a bigger shovel. The temporary solution is obvious.

STOP DIGGING

Good businesses build reserves in good times to help them get through bad times. Governor Bush left office with cash reserves of some $6,500,000,000, an amount exceeding more than 10% of his last budget. No one could have foreseen the devastation of the last year. Think how much worse it would have been had the good husbandry of the previous administration had not bee so pronounced?

Why, the head shaking taxpayer, an occupant of the real world, a world where “stones are hard and water is wet”, a world where billions of dollars have gone walkabout, a world where financial institutions once thought to be 10 feet tall and bulletproof have vanished over a long weekend, asks should governments be exempt from the chaos around us?

A quick example of water running uphill would be the Broward County School System.

For 4 years the number of students has gone down.

Has the budget, either expense or capital, reflected that?

Before you answer it may be time to get off Santa’s lap.