Although a registered Democrat, I support Sandy Murman against Ronda Storms this coming primary for the State Senate, 10th District.
I don't know Sandy, but I have encountered Ronda Storms as a Hillsborough County Commissioner on a couple of issues: the location of the Bloomingdale Library and Truck Routes along Lithia-Pinecrest.
In the case of the Bloomingdale Library, she promised the new library would be built near the Bloomingdale Association and delivered - despite the fact that the her preferred location for the new library was only two miles as the crow flies from the existing Brandon Library. I'll not bore you with the details about how the make-up of the Library Board (political appointees) was changed overnight to vote the way Ronda wanted them to vote, or how the agenda for the final meeting was set up so that the study was not presented until the end so residents would not have a chance to rebut some of the errors. But I vividly remember, before one of the County Commission meetings, when Ms. Storms took me to hallway and personally dressed me down for some of the questions that my purported client had made to the Commission's staff, discreetly by phone, trying to investigate whether Ms. Storms might have had a personal financial stake in the location of the to-be-built library. She really lit into me, yet I had no way to respond in kind, since I was trying to garner Commission votes for my side's preferred location. Her underhanded handling of the issue and the personal invective directed at me left me with a very negative impression of Hillsborough County politics and her character in particular.
Then it was the Truck Route issue. Short story:
July 2001: Commissioner Storms requests the County Engineer to investigate the engineering need for weight limit signs on Lithia-Pinecrest Road.
June 2002: The Director of the Public Works Department indicated that the County Staff removed the weight limit signs after being asked by Commissioner Storm's office to investigate.
August 2001: The County removes the Weight Limit signs.
Sometime in 2002: Cargill - the primary benefactor of the weight limit signs being removed -- holds a fund raiser for Commissioner Storms.
2003: We finally were able to get Weight Limits restored to Lithia-Pinecrest Road.
Ms. Storms has also spent a huge part of her public life trying to eliminate about 10 seconds of nudity on a public channel once a week (I never could find the show -- believe me, I tried) and vociferously opposing strip clubs. She should have been focused on county infrastructure issues instead of worrying about what others do. This county needs infrastructure planning as much any I've ever been exposed to, yet it has never seemed to be a priority of hers.
Ms. Storms is the worst sort of politician: an hysterical firebrand with religious overtones, inventing non-issues to rail against while ignoring what needs to be done. Surely Hillsborough County can do better.
