Where was this editorial board before the election?

Amendment 4 would have given Florida residents that seat at the table.,

http://www.pnj.com/article/20110124/OPINION/101240301/Room-at-the-table-
Room at the table?


January 24, 2011

Gov. Rick Scott last week continued his campaign mantra about bringing jobs to Florida, and was echoed by legislative leaders. We're with them.

But not if they intend to give away the store.

Speaking to reporters and editors in Tallahassee last week, Scott said "my job is to sit down with business leaders every day and figure out how to make this the No. 1 state for jobs."

Meanwhile, House Speaker Dean Cannon said the Legislature needs to "streamline or eliminate" regulation.

That's all fine — depending on how you do it.

Today, the landscape of Escambia County is dotted with the results — many of them called Superfund sites — of a previous era when business was allowed a free hand so long as it brought jobs.

The result? Toxic chemicals in our groundwater; chemicals from "treated" industrial waste in bottom sediments of our rivers and bays, and in fish and other marine life; polluted stormwater that still kills seagrasses and make bays, bayous and creeks unfit for swimming or fishing; and pollutants like mercury and ozone-causing chemicals that filled our air from smokestack emissions.

No doubt Scott and Cannon would say they don't mean repealing environmental regulations that prohibit dumping toxic chemicals into our groundwater, letting industry pollute our bays or making our air dangerous to breathe.

And we believe they aren't talking about going back to the kind of development that led to the near-destruction of the Everglades, a mistake we are spending billions of dollars to fix today.

So what, exactly, do they mean?

Because how much "friendlier" can Florida get?

The Orlando Sentinel reported last week that according to a New Jersey analyst — BizCosts.com — Florida is already one of the most business-friendly states in the nation. Florida put five cities into the company's list of 20 cheapest places to do business; no other state had more than one.

"Florida is one of the most pro-business states in the nation," a company spokesman said, based on labor costs, taxes, utility costs and travel expense.

Meanwhile, the non-profit Tax Foundation puts Florida in its top 10 (fifth) for best business tax climates for 2011. "It is obvious that the absence of a major tax is a dominant factor in vaulting these ten states to the top of the rankings," its report states.

So when Gov. Scott and Speaker Cannon sit down to talk about how to improve Florida, we hope business interests aren't the only ones at the table. The rest of us deserve a place, too.