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Article Courtesy of The
Orlando Sentinel
By Adrienne Cutway
Published October 26, 2014
Officials
in the City of South Miami have passed a resolution in favor of
splitting the state in half so South Florida would become the 51st
state..
Vice Mayor Walter Harris proposed the resolution and it passed with a
3-2 vote at the city commission meeting on Oct. 7.
Harris told the commission that Tallahassee isn't providing South
Florida with proper representation or addressing its concerns when it
comes to sea-level rising.
Officials in the City of South Miami have passed a resolution in favor
of splitting the state in half so South Florida would become the 51st
state.
"We have to be able to deal directly with this environmental concern and
we can’t really get it done in Tallahassee," Harris said. "I don’t care
what people think -- it’s not a matter of electing the right people."
Mayor Philip Stoddard agreed with Harris' reasoning, saying during the
meeting that he's advocated for secession for the past 15 years but
never penned a resolution.
“It’s very apparent that the attitude of the northern part of the state
is that they would just love to saw the state in half and just let us
float off into the Caribbean," Stoddard said. "They’ve made that
abundantly clear every possible opportunity and I would love to give
them the opportunity to do that.”
But the vote wasn't unanimous. Commissioners Gabriel Edmond and Josh
Liebman voted against the resolution with Edmond, a history teacher,
being the most vocal about it.
"I just want you guys to be careful because if you vote for this you’re
setting a precedent that if other people in this city don’t like our
representation or feel we’re not responsive to them they might say ‘we
want to break away from the city of South Miami’.”
The resolution lists the northern border of what would be the state of
South Florida as being Brevard, Orange, Polk, Hillsborough and Pinellas
counties.
Orange County is particularly important because that's where the South
Florida Water Management District begins, Harris said. It was even
suggested that a Central Florida city could possibly be the state of
South Florida's capitol.
In total, the proposed 51st state would include 24 counties.
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