The Veto Pen

We're happy to see the report that Governor Crist vetoed the $1.3 million for street beautification for tourism for Las Olas Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale; the $840,000 for Exponica International, a three-day Latin America cultural and trade festival in Miami; and the $900,000 for a gospel music museum planned in Broward County for which the pork bubbas in Tallahassee were going to spend our tax dollars. We had blogged recently about such excesses.

While we have some reservations on his vetoes of tuition hikes, we do agree with the governor that now is not the time to burden families and students with those hikes. We know also that there is a good deal of waste in higher education and therefore some ways for the institutions affected to ameliorate the effects of the loss of a tuition hike. Moreover, we don't think a 5% tuition hike can be called "modest" as the State University Chancellor would have us believe.

As for the Florida Board of Governors' threat to mount a legal challenge to the veto, our view is save your money. It will cost more than the rise in tuition, and, win or lose, you will lose in the end. Remember, politicians, like elephants, have a long memory. Politicians don't get mad, they just get even. And the governor is, above all else, still a politician.