Konish: Why I do not read the Gainesville Sun

Letter to the editor

On Friday, October 27, 2023, the Gainesville Sun ran a huge headline that read, “Lawmaker Calls for Resignations.” Mark Goldstein told me about this headline on Friday morning when I was shopping at Ward’s. I bought a leftover Sun paper Saturday night. I had read Jennifer’s post on this matter. 

In the 4th column on the front page, the Sun further proclaims that our Mayor was “blindsided” at yet another meeting of the Joint Legislative Auditing Committee on 10/16/23 in Tallahassee regarding the ongoing operational audit of both the City and GRU. 

The Mayor was accompanied by the GRU General Manager, CFO, City Attorney, City Manager, and even Craig Carter, the current GRU Authority Chair. Clearly, they were not blindsided by this matter. 

Instead of being a “near-two-year-old audit about city finances” as the Sun claimed (see image below), the expanding audit was requested by me at the same local Legislative Delegation Fall Meeting on September 23, 2019, and commenced November 14, 2019 – nearly four years ago. 

Excerpt from Gainesville Sun article

This audit has many facets the Sun cannot comprehend. It goes to the ultimate question of whether the GRU debt can actually be repaid, much less reduced. A companion overarching consideration is what level, if any, of a transfer, either directly or indirectly, of monies from GRU to the City is sustainable given the state of GRU finances. GRU debt service will not peak until 2028 and will not return to last year’s level until 2041 – without new debt. 

As noted by the Alachua Chronicle, a Republican senator was absent from the 10/16/23 Joint Legislative Audit Committee meeting, thus resulting in an insufficient 2-2 vote among senators, along party lines. I was at this 10/16/23 meeting in person. All committee members will be there next time and, according to Clemons, this matter will come back stronger than before – as usual. 

The Sun has not bothered to mention this, as far as I’ve seen. 

Costly and obvious political stunts of note recently include, but are not limited to, $2.9 million for bond delay, half a million dollars for Akerman Law Firm, and $1.1 million for free Alachua County Streetlighting ($4.5 million total). The GRU budget is packed with no-longer-authorized items catering to political, social, and ideological interests. 

Nothing could possibly concern bond rating agencies more than a Mayor ignoring his City’s Charter and trying to destroy the utility in order to make the Governor look bad. 

To simultaneously file a politicized lawsuit at fantastic expense that is found to be devoid of merit is not constructive either. This is done while the Mayor openly and publicly suggests our lights could go out if he and his cronies are not governing our utility.

If the Alachua Chronicle is merely a “conservative blog,” as the Sun suggests (instead of local news you can trust), what has the Gainesville Sun become?

Jim Konish, Gainesville

The opinions expressed by letter or opinion writers are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AlachuaChronicle.com. Letters may be submitted to info@alachuachronicle.com and are published at the discretion of the editor.

  • I have found the Alachua Chronicle posts FACTS and well before the Gainesville Sun. I appreciate them listing mug shots and then taking it a step further to explain details of certain arrests and the bond the judges impose. I was unaware of certain judges being so lenient on criminals until the Alachua Chronicle. The Gainesville Sun posts articles from other areas, ignoring the local news. This is just my observation.

  • And once again I have to love the facts of Mr. Konish! He is just as blunt as I feel I should be with these people. Though I am pretty blunt, I admire his bluntness.

  • Most journalists and politicians aren’t educated on business and finance comprehension, unless they minored in that in college. That’s a major reason why America is “off track” according to opinion polls.
    If a businessman dares run for office, the entrenched interests will deem him an “outsider, amateur” despite mountains of data showing the professionals are clueless… hence the polls.

  • Konish wrote:
    “The GRU budget is packed with no-longer-authorized items catering to political, social, and ideological interests.”

    That is correct. It caters to liberal democratic interests, NOT fascist republican interests, because the majority of Gainesville voters are democrats. If you don’t like it, too bad.

    • Enjoy your massive city tax hike! You earned it, If you don’t like it ,Too Bad. It’s just the beginning of the financial disaster Democrat’s {you} voted for. Corruption abounds.

  • Unpaid street lights in Alachua County? In 1968 the street lights in my subdivision went out. Either the end of September or early October. The lights came on again when the county agreed to add the electric surcharge as a means to pay for the lights. They have added to water, sewer, gas and also an enormous charge just because you are a customer. Guess to read the meters which they do a miserable job of. So there are not unpaid street lights. Go back and read the archives.

  • As an undergraduate student of McLuhanism in an era when the trivium was regularly employed as an obstacle to sophomoric opinion passing as the coherent, journaled literature of our times, I can say again, “I told you so.”

    The Sun’s history isn’t remarkable outside its local service to community and businesses which was a symbiotic arrangement until the great media power grabs dancing around the FCC ownership restrictions of the 1970’s which were ended in 2017, around the time of the latest Sun parentage.

    Today, the Sun is a souless caricature printed by the corporate trinity of New Media Investment Group, Gannet Media Corporation, and USA Today, while posing as a local newspaper where no one answers the phone.

    So, Jimi, aside from your objections to one or two of, perhaps, three local news stories the Sun included between the ads on any given day (except Saturday’s), your quality journalism expectations are far too high in a vision-impaired village where one-eyed men are kings, and the emperors always wear new clothes.

    As for the Sun’s bias to Ward, well, both are ‘small-time’ artifacts having no real potential to be anything larger than what they are unless incessant complaining gives them more space above the fold than they deserve.

    “Freedom of press is limited to those who own one.”

    – H. L. Mencken

  • Pigeen Hanrahan ruined our utility going biomass implementing UN agenda, Kyoto protocol, agenda 21, agenda 30, etc.. Where is she now?
    Don’t worry about C02 regulation, carbon footprints, & climate change. It’s all BS. The planet is fine. It’s all about “great reset” and making the Earth the prison planet with one world totalitarian government. Resist Vax passport. The United Nations, the World Health Organization, and the world economic forum is the devil and wants to destroy our country and take away our inalienable rights.—- End world hunger, end homelessness, CO2 regulation, vax passports, end private property rights, digital cash, universal basic income, social justice score, equity, diversity, inclusion…redistribute the wealth. Population control, loss of liberty & freedom, and “you will own nothing and be happy” is the end goal…you will not be able to engage in commerce if you don’t get the jab.

  • why is anybody suprised by the so called journalist at the “gainesville pravda” they have been incubated at the anti-west
    pro-communist universities for the last 50 years

  • Democrat run cities have left wing liberal ‘rags’ they call newspapers.
    All that overpriced trash is good for is lining the bird cage.
    They’ll never change.

  • Journalism is above all the reporting of uncolored facts. When, what, where and how. That should wrap it up. The Gainesville Sun, along with dozens of other local papers, is influenced/owned by foreign entities. If you go looking, it is alarming. If I were a foreign entity looking to damage the USA, I would most certainly take control of as many ‘news sources’ as possible.

  • Believe it or not I was recently shocked that The Independent Florida Alligator had more local & campus news than the Sun.

    • Lou, you hit the jugular there.

      The Independent Florida Alligator is one of those student-controlled 501 (c) (3)’s which means, depending on which side of the UF-City border you stand, corporate greed or the latest student ‘awareness’ stories are the choices.

      Yes, at least the ‘Alligator is locally centered. The Sun is unnaturally obsessed with two-day old news about anything.

  • Bless the Chronicle for allowing comments from any POV that are more or less civil. The Sun (typical leftists) stopped allowing comments when they realized that they were way too intellectually shallow to tolerate any counter arguments, no matter how civil the commentators.

  • Like most of those commenting here, Konish’s views do not represent anything like those that most citizens of Gainesville hold, which is why he lost an election there. The vote against him was 4,517 to 1,071, or more than 4 to 1. His opinion holds similar weight to Mr Peabody’s, Captain Shad’s, Guest’s, and mine, which is to say ….. very little.

    • He goes to meetings and speaks in person. Where is your letter to Alachua Chronicle? Some of us speak with the hope of changing others’ messed-up, ignorant views.

      After Hayes-Santos won the election, he had the all-too-frequent Democrat candidate question and court battle over whether he even lived in the district he ran for.

      And what a big doofus of a loser he turned out to be. Constantly obsessed like a mental patient with city-owned broadband service, and he just had to take that trip to Israel with Mayor Poo-poo for some reason. I guess we should be impressed that the overgrown child was able to be out from under his mother’s wing for the entirety of the trip (unless she went with them, which is certainly possible).

      https://www.wuft.org/news/2017/02/14/judge-to-rule-next-week-on-hayes-santos-residency-question/

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