by Glenn Tschimpke
Staff Writer
There’s an old saying along the lines of, “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.” The amount of grease is commensurate with the amount of squeak. The adage can be applied to the City when it sends representatives to Washington, D.C. and Tallahassee this winter to remind the hometown delegation about priorities in Jacksonville.
“We always make trips to Washington in terms of pursuing our agenda,” said Brad Thoburn, director of intergovernmental relations for the City.
Thoburn will go to the nation’s capital Jan. 9-11 to help reinforce Jacksonville’s priorities to Northeast Florida’s delegation. This year’s priorities include continued funding for the Timucuan Preserve and the City’s acquisition of the United States Courthouse at 311 W. Monroe St. Once construction of the new U.S. Courthouse adjacent Hemming Plaza is complete, the City wants to acquire the building from the U.S. government through the General Services Administration in exchange for 104 parking spaces in the Water Street Parking Garage.
“It’s not a difficult process,” he said. “It’s almost just a formality but we have to go through that.”
The City and the GSA have tentatively agreed, although City Council must approve the deal on the City side. On the federal side, GSA controls the building but does not have the authority to relinquish ownership of it. The transfer of ownership must be approved federally by the Senate Government Oversight Committee and the House Government Reform Committee. Thoburn will travel to Washington to grease the wheels in the two committees to prevent any snags.
“We’re going to try to get ahead and talk to some of the folks up there on the committee to let them know it’s coming because time is important on this,” he said. “We need to get it done as soon as possible. We don’t want that to sit in a committee.”
The courthouse deal may be a few formalities from fruition, but keeping the funding flowing for the Timucuan Preserve may prove more difficult for Thoburn even though one of the most difficult steps has already been achieved.
“One of the areas that we’ve been successful in the past is getting our funding request for the Timucuan Preserve for land acquisition and park development included in [President Bush’s] budget,” he said. “And if you get into the president’s budget, you’re really way ahead of the game, especially on Park Service stuff. It’s hard to add to the Park Service budget. For the smaller parks, it’s hard. If you’re one of the mother parks like the Everglades or Yellowstone, they get big appropriations. We have to fight for every little bit we get for the Timucuan. But we’ve been successful and we’ve gotten into the cycle where we’re getting funding every year for the development of the Timucuan.”
While the U.S. government may be willing to spend rather freely to stimulate the economy, Florida’s state budget atrophies when income wanes. The City uses Thoburn as well as former Jacksonville mayor Tommy Hazouri and Tidewater Consulting to lobby in Tallahassee. Hazouri covers the Democrat beat and Tidewater handles the Republicans. The City is also looking at contracting with Holland & Knight attorney Marty Fiorentino to work with Gov. Jeb Bush on behalf of Jacksonville. Jacksonville’s lobbyists will travel to Tallahassee at the end of January to catch the Duval delegation before their session begins.
“It’s a tight budget year, so you’re not going in there and asking for a whole lot of projects in terms of funding issues,” said Thoburn. “We’re almost playing defense most of the time. We really are.”
Thoburn pointed to a few bills that the City wants to see stricken. One involves the elimination of wrap-up insurance plans, which are used on large construction projects.
The other bill could increase the percentage of money Florida counties would have to pay for nursing home care.
“There have been discussions about increasing the county portion as much as threefold and the budget impacts have ranged from a couple million to 10 million a year, which is a big hit for the county,” he said.
The big challenge for Jacksonville is to stick its head above the others in terms of priorities and necessities. Often the political pull of South Florida sends a large portion of funding south. Thoburn said it is important for Jacksonville to make itself noticed among the State and U.S. delegations.
“Other cities and everybody is looking to fund projects and get their priorities ahead of everybody else,” he said. “I think on the Senate side it’s especially important because we’re always competing with South Florida. On the House side, our members are going to fight for us between [Ander] Crenshaw and [Corrine] Brown and [Clifford] Stearns. They know what our projects are. They’re familiar with them and they’re going to fight for them. The Senate has to deal with the whole state and they have to rank projects. So it helps us to get in with them.
“South Florida has more power, politically, and to say that somebody who holds a statewide office [like a senator] is going to pay more attention to North Florida than South Florida is just not going to happen. It is a challenge.”