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Roy Collins has helped give the boom dignity and balance—but not everyone thanks him. This year he was able to get through the legislature an appropriation for a turnpike down the middle of the state, but he lost a more important contest. Although he kept it in session all summer, the legislature refused to approve a plan to reapportion its seats. At present, sparsely populated counties, with 12% of the people, mostly in the north, elect 20 of the 38 ,state senators. Collins was criticized for not "forcing" the legislators to go along by using his patronage power and his right to veto bills for local improvements. Instead, he continues to preach reapportionment as a necessity of tomorrow's Florida. Says Collins: "It takes a gradual shaping of public opinion to win the really big fights." Although he has not publicly said so. he would like another term. The state Supreme Court will have to rule on his eligibility to succeed himself. (The issue: Will his two years count as a term?) If he clears that hurdle, he may face formidable opposition next year from ex-Governor Fuller Warren, a highly popular figure whose supporters stretch from the cracker counties of the north to the dog-track fraternity of Miami.
Collins has from now until the Democratic primary next May to get the voters used to his ideas about state government.
"Government services." he says, "should be performed at the lowest level of government having the capacity to do the job. But the important thing to remember is that the services must be performed.
If they are not. then the people will go elsewhere for them. If the city-hall door is slammed in their faces, they will go to the state capitol. If they get nothing there, they turn to Washington.
"Local governments—the cities, the school districts, the counties and the states—should face up to their own responsibilities. I hope I live long enough to see the day when they all find courage and honesty enough to tax their citizens as they should be taxed and then serve them as they should be served. When that happens, the Federal Government will be able to restrict its activities. Washington almost always comes into the picture only after local governments have failed to meet their respor, Abilities.
"If more people would be concerned with states' responsibilities instead of states' rights, there would be little loss of those rights." Unusual words for a Deep-South governor—but then both Roy Collins and his state are most unusual phenomena.
* A geographical judgment not to be confused with an observation by one of Sherman's fellow officers. Said General Phil Sheridan: "If I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent out Texas and live in Hell." — From the Yiddish noshyn, to eat a little (especially sweets) between meals.