HART Is Golden!

Recently HART recieved a very prestigious award from the Transportation Security Administration highlighting HARTs dedication to safety and security system wide. From a personal perspective I think this award was well deserved, even though there is one piece of security that I think HART is lacking. That one piece is a Transit security team.

Forced Merger!

Recently there has been legislation passed in Florida that would require HART and PSTA to merge into one regional transit service and also to pay $100k each to TBARTA to fund a study for said merger. 

Unconstitutional!

July last year the state of Florida passed a law requiring state employees to contribute 3% of their paychecks towards the state pension system.  This amounted to a 3% cut in pay.  Most people say that we should contribute directly to the system since its OUR retirement.  Bare in mind that an employee must “survive” 6 years of public service before a dime of that money becomes ours again and then we have to wait until we turn 60.  With a high turn over rate the majority of those employees will never see that money again.  Some state agencies gave their employees a 3% pay increase to offset that pay-cut.  Earlier this week a Florida judge ruled that the law is unconstitutional!  This doesn’t necessarily mean that all that money will come flooding back to the employees just yet but it is a start in the right direction.