What do you think of the recent editorial about SB 584 from Senator Alan Hays (R-Umatilla)? How important are our public parks and conservation lands to you?
Anyone who has lived in Florida for any amount of time knows the state's environment and economy go hand in hand, and it's as clear as a sunsplashed freshwater spring.
Yet over the years, our policymakers have tried time and again to make the two mutually exclusive, invariably putting economics ahead of a clean, healthy environment.A bill introduced into the Florida Legislature by Sen. Alan Hays, R-Umatilla, Senate Bill 584, with an identical House version sponsored by freshman Rep. Charlie Stone, R-Ocala, is the latest such attempt. Hays, who said he introduced the bill because he was "astounded" to learn that more than one-fourth of Florida's land is owned by the federal, state or local governments, wants any future purchases of conservation lands to be offset with "an equal amount of public property not being held in conservation returned or sold at fair market value to the private sector."
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