Legislators hear from Franklin County

Two of Franklin County’s three legislators were in Franklin County on Monday evening to hear the concerns of residents and local political leaders. State representative Leonard Bembry and Jimmy Patronis held their annual legislative delegation meeting at the courthouse annex. State Senator Al Lawson did not make the hearing because he was busy preparing for a special legislative session scheduled to begin this week. Normally the legislative delegation hearings are a way for local groups to request state money for important projects – but this year did not work out like that mainly because the state doesn’t have any money to spend on local projects. Representative Patronis said he expects next year’s state budget to be “tragically worse than last year”. But even through there weren’t a lot of requests for money, there were a number of issues that Franklin County would like its legislators to keep in mind when the legislative session begins next March. The county commission had a list of five requests that included protecting state money earmarked for a new work camp at the Franklin Correctional Institution, protecting water from the Apalachicola River system from interests in central and south Florida and continuing to fight the FDA to protect the Gulf Coast Oyster industry. The county also asked that the legislative delegation work to provide more local control over its cable franchise and to try to find some money to help fund local volunteer fire departments which are suffering under a slew of unfunded state and federal mandates. Local Supervisor of Elections Ida Elliot asked that the legislature approve an extension for the requirement of implementing upgrades to touch screen voting from 2010 to 2016. Clerk of the court Marcia Johnson asked that cuts in Clerks budgets approved during the last session be rescinded next year and school Superintendent Nina Marks asked for continued support for two local projects including a Junior ROTC program and The Take Stock in Children Program. She also asked that the legislative delegation support a plan to build a science lab on the bay across from the consolidated school. There were also requests made to protect funding for public libraries, to try to bring more federal stimulus money to Franklin County and to make sure that a plan to re-route Highway 98 in Franklin County does not come to fruition.

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