Fort Lauderdale starts layoffs, cuts to ease $12 million budget shortfall

[UpInArms]

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-ccommish01feb01,0,5246684.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines

FORT LAUDERDALE -- As the city's finances crumbled last year, exposing mismanagement of taxpayers' money, city commissioners cast out their city manager, showering him with blame and taking little of it themselves.

But public records and videotapes over the past three years show the five-member City Commission was also at fault, and most of them now concede they failed the public. The once wealthy, tax- rich city laid off its first employees in years today, and is reducing police, fire and other city services to return the city to solvency.

Jim Naugle and his political rival, then- Commissioner Tim Smith, commissioners each year approved more and more spending -- for sewers, sidewalks, landscaped medians, parks and full staffing of the police department. But when it came time to approve budgets, they refused to raise taxes as much as former City Manager Floyd Johnson said was needed to pay for it all.

...more...

and I became curious about Naugle and this is what I found:

http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/6228/states/fl/fl_news.html

2000-01-04 - Florida Democrat Mayor Endorses Bush
Mayor Jim Naugle of Fort Lauderdale, FL, a lifelong Democrat, said Tuesday he is going to endorse Republican George W Bush for President. Fort Lauderdale is in a heavily Democratic area of Florida that the Clinton-Gore ticket carried in both the 1992 and 1996 presidential elections. One reason for endorsing Bush is that Naugle said he doesn't like Gore's proposed policies for taxation. "I see Vice President Gore making so many promises for so many new entitlements that I fear that working people in this country in the future are going to be saddled with tax rates that are just unbelievable. Sixty or 70 percent to pay for all this stuff. Every time you turn around, it's a new program or a new entitlement," Naugle said. Naugle also expressed skepticism over proposals to increase federal spending based on projected budget surpluses, saying that Gore is "making these promises when economic times are good and we have these tax surpluses. But we know there are economic cycles that come and go, and if the economy turns down, we're not going to have the money to pay for these huge and costly entitlements, and, once enacted, entitlements never go away." Although he realizes there may be political risks for him endorsing a Republican rather than his own party's nominee, Naugle doesn't fear criticism from his constituents over his Bush endorsement. "It's a risk that I am willing to take," said Naugle. "I've been mayor here since 1991, I am in my fourth term and it's important enough to me and to the nation to take that risk." Naugle also expects Tampa, Florida Dick Greco, another lifelong Democrat to endorse Bush for President as well. Greco's office did not return telephone calls seeking comment. Bush received another Democratic endorsement on Monday from Massachusetts Democrat Brian Golden, a state representative from Brookline, the hometown of John F. Kennedy and Michael Dukakis.