Fine’s UCF comment asinine

The vendetta by Republican lawmakers, beginning with former Speaker of the House and now Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran and Brevard County Rep. Randy Fine, and others against UCF because of so-called misuse of state funds is not only hypocritical, but also asinine. This tirade reflects an ineptness of leadership of these lawmakers at an unnecessary cost to taxpayers.

As aptly indicated by Scott Maxwell in his column of Feb. 14 (“Fine was a man on a maniacal mission”), many lawmakers in Tallahassee are guilty of the very same crime of which they themselves are now accusing UCF officials. Fine, chair of the Florida House subcommittee overseeing university funding, says using funds earmarked for one thing on something else is inexcusable. Is that not hypocritical?

Even worse and beyond reproach, Rep. Fine floated the idea of UCF’s shutdown as some sort of spanking to the second largest university in the Nation. Consider the economic impact alone of shutting down UCF, currently with 65,000 students.

Having spent 35 years on UCF’s faculty beginning in 1969, I have had thousands of students from Brevard County, many with whom I have maintained conduct since retirement. UCF has served these and other students well, as well as many businesses in Brevard County.

For Fine to suggest shutting down UCF is certainly a slap in the face of his own constituents.

Now he says he was just kidding, perhaps only to prevent his own Waterloo he created for himself. Walter Taylor Winter Park