The Pensacola Beach Blog has been tracking the local reaction to the budget problems caused by the mortgage meltdown, cratering house prices, and Amendment 1.

As the Republicans have a lock on political offices in Santa Rosa county, you knew that whatever they did, it wouldn’t be called a tax increase, and they came through with the old Reagan dodge of “user fees”.

Both the city of Milton and the city of Gulf Breeze are in the process of enacting emergency services “fees”, which essentially mean that if you call 911, expect a bill.

If you are planning to travel in this area, you might want to avoid those two cities, although I expect other areas will get in the act shortly. While the Milton ordinance isn’t as blatant as the Gulf Breeze version, years of living here tells me that local voters won’t be stuck with the costs, they’ll push them on to tourists or people from outside their voting districts.

I’ve been occupied with a couple of things, well, a couple of family things, and the normal “end of the annual major project” that unfortunately involves a major corporation that doesn’t think a price measured in thousands of dollars requires that the service be prompt and error free.

There are things that make “media consolidation” and “‘Net neutrality” extremely important to me, but that involve some of my clients, which means I can’t use the excellent, hard-fact reasons why they are important to everyone, because of non-disclosure agreements. I will say this, if we had real media competition and true neutrality regarding Internet traffic, a lot of you would have more available cash on a monthly basis.