Don't let legislators' shell game fool you

The next time our state legislators brag about cutting taxes or balancing the state budget, go ahead and laugh. It's not true but they're hoping you didn't see how they've played a shell game during the last several sessions.

Our local representatives, as well as most of the others in Tallahassee, love to tell voters how many taxes they've cut, or how they have slashed the budget, or some other nonsense thing that they haven't solved at all. All they did was shift costs somewhere else and left someone else with the consequences.

You'll find some of these shifts in the increased fees you'll pay for registering your vehicles, for driver's licenses, just to name a few. You can also see it in how they have left cities and counties around the state hanging by shifting costs onto them.

We understand that they have a tough job - when they do it. And we understand that taking heat during difficult times isn't fun. Most of us have to deal with that and press on. If you're a leader, it just goes with the territory.

This isn't leadership we're seeing. It's actually cowardice, because they won't do what's necessary to make our state run properly and take the heat for their own decisions. That might mean, gasp, not cutting taxes because our basic needs as Floridians require funding. Or it might require cutting something that benefits the special interests that buy their elections for them. Instead, by shifting costs to local governments they actually shift blame to our local government officials.

We'd all love to live in a world where we could hand our problems to someone else to deal with and then brag about the great job we're doing. We don't have that luxury, though. Apparently our state legislators do and are shameless about doing it.

That's too bad, and it's time voters see through their rhetoric and send them packing. If they are too scared to make the tough decisions and catch the heat for doing it, we need better leaders.