Tiger Bay Club meeting tackles legislative issues listen

Tags: Tiger Bay, 2011 Legislative session, Janet Long, Adam Smith, St. Petersburg

Former state Rep. Janet Long.

photo by Seán Kinane/WMNF (Dec. 2008)

Some of the controversy over the recently-completed Florida Legislative session spilled over at a Suncoast Tiger Bay Club meeting today.

Former Democratic state Representative Janet Long was defeated in her re-election bid last November. She says during the recent session, the Republican-controlled Legislature went too far in deregulating corporations.

"Deregulation of the banking industry almost brought our country and the entire financial world market to their knees. I don't see the deregulation of any particular business as necessarily all that great in terms of generating jobs. A lot of those regulations were put in place for public safety. To just wave your hands and do away with 30 years of thoughtful, deliberate regulation, I think, is fool hardy and we're going to pay a price and if we don't our kids will."

St. Petersburg Times political editor Adam Smith said the Legislature passed many business-friendly measures.

"They passed a lot of sweeping bills. Medicaid reform, education overhaul, they passed a lot of things that a number of normal sessions would have been the single most biggest vote getter. I think the thing to watch was, maybe it's not the most conservative session but it was the most Republican, big business, pro-business session Florida has seen in a long time."

The Tiger Bay club meeting was filmed for WEDU’s “Florida this Week.” It will air tomorrow night.

Previous WMNF news coverage of the 2011 Legislative session