Lively Talk with Harry Cohen

If you’ve ever heard Harry Cohen speak about a topic that interests him, you cannot deny that he is one of the most passionate speakers you’ll ever have the enjoyment of listening to!

Harry served two terms on the Tampa City Council, recently ran for Tampa Mayor, is serving on Mayor Castor’s Transition Team, and is currently running for the District 1 County Commission seat.

Harry was the guest speaker at the V.M. Ybor Neighborhood Association General Meeting on 2/5/20, after having been up in Tallahassee to be present for the Supreme Court case regarding the one-cent transportation tax. He was able to provide our residents with an update on how the arguments proceeded during the less than one hour hearing that morning.

This lawsuit was brought by one of the County Commissioners, as well as a Hillsborough County resident, who believe that the law, which passed by 57% of the voters, is unconstitutional and denies the powers of the Board of County Commissioners. This is because in order to make the tax more appealing, and hence get it passed, the ordinance outlined the specific projects that the tax would fund. Apparently tax payers are not supposed to make any decisions about how money gets spent, only the BOCC can. I suppose this is why we all should vote for people that represent our interests, right?!

Harry mentioned the very derogatory and inflammatory words being used by the Justices during their questioning, such as describing the law being “stillborn” upon arrival. Due to this, he was not encouraged that the justices will rule in favor of the defendants in this case, which include the citizen-led All for Transportation, Hillsborough County, HART, several cities in Hillsborough County including Tampa, and the Hillsborough Metropolitan Planning Organization.

There is also a question of what will happen to the taxes already starting to be collected during 2019, which total about $225M to date. Would this need to be returned to residents somehow, and how the heck would this be administrated?

This case won’t be decided until possibly this summer. Luckily as a back up plan, the County Commissioners recently passed a motion 6-1 to again put the one-cent transportation tax on the upcoming ballot in November as a new ordinance, which will have a slightly different proposed distribution between municipalities, and will not outline the specific projects it will fund. A public hearing scheduled for April 1st.

Stay tuned…..