Tag: Aside

It’s time to re-establish a permanent home for the state appeals court that serves the Tampa Bay region. But with pork chop politics driving the decision on where to locate appeals courts, as they have since these courts were established in the 1950s, sense has taken a back seat in the debate so far. Created as relief for an overburdened Supreme Court, and a force for progress during the desegregation era that followed the seminal Brown vs. Board of Education ruling, Florida’s District Courts of Appeal review decisions from lower tribunals through multi-judge panels. RELATED COVERAGE: Tampa appellate judges long for a home (without bullets) State lawmakers from Polk County want Lakeland to remain the home of the 2nd District Court of Appeal. Even then, though, it was political wrangling at decision time that snatched the headquarters from Orlando. Today, the court operates almost entirely out of leased space at the Stetson Tampa Law Center, near downtown — a satellite campus of the university’s Gulfport-based College of Law. • The population of the 13 counties is centered in the Tampa Bay region, with 41 percent living here and 12 percent in Polk County. Still, state Sen. Kelli Stargel, a Republican whose legislative district includes Lakeland, told Dan Sullivan of the Tampa Bay Times recently: "I haven’t seen a compelling reason why having a courthouse in Tampa meets the needs of the public any more than having a courthouse in Lakeland." Stargel apparently needs to study the report. What a new home for the 2nd District Court of Appeal should look like remains to be seen.