The Legislature opens this week with the governor’s State of the State speech before a joint session of the House and Senate at 11 a.m. Tuesday.
This being an election year, much of whatever happens – including proposed tax cuts and education spending increases – will be aimed at helping those in the majority party staying in power and those in the minority party trying to prevent that.
That this is happening in our backyard is merely incidental. The Capitol building and Governor’s Mansion are merely stages, backdrops if you will, for the theater that is modern politics.
The truth is many – if not most – lawmakers and state leaders, regardless of party or philosophy, rarely take the time to learn much about the place they inhabit for the session, the place we call home.
Further, they make it their business to politic against Tallahassee while seeking election in their home district, as if it were a house of evil doers whose inhabitants look to get rich on the hard work and taxes of the rest of the state.
Except for what can be seen and gleaned from our bars and restaurants, lawmakers know little about us. And probably care even less.
And that’s a darn shame.
Tallahassee and the Big Bend is a beautiful and wonderful place, and its majesty is never more on display than this time of the year.
Some 130 or so of us took a 3-mile-plus tour of our downtown public art on Saturday and rediscovered just how wondrous this place really is. The walk was sponsored by Move.Tallahassee.com and the Council on Culture and Arts. Here is a link to our route if any of you want to try it on your own.
Some of the scenes from the Move.Tallahassee.com and COCA Downtown Art Walk on Saturday,
We started and ended at Kleman Plaza and passed murals, monuments and statues and sculpture that cross many eras of local and state history, things that sit right outside the windows of the Capitol that I would bet many lawmakers never take the time to see.
I doubt it, but I do wonder if it might make a difference in their next campaign speeches if once a week they collectively took an hour – that’s one hour per week – and got out into our community and spent some time getting to know the people and the city that serve as the capital of our great state.
I wonder if they did – just once – what the local Move.Tallahassee.com group does regularly and got out into the community to walk and talk and get to know our neighbors, whether it might make some difference in how they perceive our community. For a video and text story about the Move.Tallahassee.com and COCA walk go to this link.
If nothing else, I wonder if doing so might cause them to stop saying so many bad things about this place we call home when they are back in their districts.
Sure I know they don’t really mean the people or the city of Tallahassee when they campaign against Tallahassee, but with another election coming up, it is sure to seem that way once again. You would think that, if they would spend even a little time outside the cocoon of the Legislature, it might do us all some good.
They might even discover this is a real place with real people working real hard, just like the people back in their own hometowns.
You can send comments by clicking on my blogs on Tallahassee.com and Move.Tallahassee.com, e-mailing me at bgabordi@tallahassee.com or sending a private message on Facebook, Tallahassee.com or Twitter @bgabordi. My mailing address is Bob Gabordi, Executive Editor, Tallahassee Democrat, P.O. Box 990, Tallahassee, FL 32302. Call me at 850-599-2177.
