CITRUS CRUSADER

By John Labriola - In a rematch of their 2022 contest, Citrus County Commissioner Diana Finegan sparred with her opponent Stacey Worthington at a candidate forum in Lecanto on Monday hosted by the Citrus County Republican Party. The two candidates in the District 2 race, which will be decided in a countywide primary election on Aug. 18, clashed repeatedly as Worthington criticized Finegan for her failure to convince the county commission to cut spending. "I've been serving on boards, and I don't only fight, but I get people to go the way I want them to go by making a very convincing, persuasive argument, and if I fight and fight and fight for three and a half years and I'm not able to still win any of these arguments, I might look at changing my approach and trying a different tack," said Worthington, who previously served as chairwoman of the county's Planning and Development Commission. Finegan, who has tried to cut taxes every year only to be outvoted, and...

By John Labriola - A week after Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia held a press conference to announce that Citrus County is overtaxing residents by $39 million a year , County Commissioner Rebecca Bays dismissed his findings at a town hall meeting in Lecanto.  Bays said she disagreed with Ingoglia's methodology, which involves taking the county's 2019-2020 general fund budget, indexing it for inflation and population growth, and then subtracting that from the current budget to determine the amount of excessive spending.  "It's a formula, and that's not how government works," she said. Citrus County collects $112 million a year in ad valorem taxes, Bays said, of which $40 million goes to the sheriff's office. Along with other constitutional offices and state mandates commissioners have to fund, that doesn't leave the county much room to spare, she claimed.  According to Ingoglia, over the last six years, Citrus County hired 278 employees, ...

By John Labriola - Citrus County is one of the biggest spenders in the state and is overtaxing its citizens to the tune of over $39 million a year. That's according to Florida's Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia, who held a press conference in Lecanto on Tuesday to share the bad news about the county's finances. Ingoglia, who previously served as this area's state senator, has been presenting his findings on overspending by cities and counties across the state as the Florida Legislature gets ready to hold a special session next month to place a constitutional amendment on the November ballot to reduce or eliminate property taxes for homesteaded properties. He has identified $2.02 billion in overspending by over 15 governments. Ingoglia's methodology involves taking a local government's 2019-2020 general fund budget and indexing it for inflation and population growth to determine how much it should be spending. Anything above that, he says, is just wasteful...

By John Labriola - The Citrus County Library Advisory Board (LAB) will redo its vote for chair when it meets next month. The LAB met in February to seat two new members and vote to elect new officers. Justin Strickland, who was named LAB chair in 2024 and 2025, presided over the officer elections although his previous chairmanship term had expired. When he was nominated, he immediately called for a vote instead of asking if there were any other nominations. "I believe this did violate Roberts Rules and we did not have a chance to vote on closing nominations, and I did not have the chance to voice my opinion on a nomination," LAB member Rhys Campbell said at a recent county commission meeting, adding that he shared his concern with Library Director Adam Chang and Community Services Director Eric Head.  Following Campbell's complaint, Chang agreed that "out of an abundance of caution," the LAB will redo the vote when it meets again on April 28. Strickland won his ...

By John Labriola - The Citrus County Library Advisory Board (LAB) shut down a discussion about viewpoint discrimination in the libraries last week, but not before a board member's public meltdown over the Citrus Crusader's coverage of his mishandling of a proposed Charlie Kirk book display. Chairman Justin Strickland, still upset about the flak he's received for opposing a motion by LAB member Rhys Campbell in October to have a temporary display of the late conservative icon's books because it would supposedly be "political," lashed out at this blogger, who was out of town, in an angry tirade. Strickland, the executive pastor at Crystal River Church of God, claimed I told one of his parishioners that he "preaches liberalism from the pulpit," which is completely false. I've never heard Strickland preach (or even start a LAB meeting with a prayer). When I heard what was said a few days later, I reached out to the parishioner, an acquaintance, who ...

By John Labriola - The Citrus County Library Advisory Board (LAB), with two newly appointed members, will be revisiting the issue of book displays when it meets on Tuesday, Feb. 24, at 9 a.m. at the Lecanto Government Building. LAB member Rhys Campbell, the author of an unsuccessful motion in October to have a temporary display of books by the late Charlie Kirk, has placed the discussion item on the agenda. "There is viewpoint discrimination taking place when it comes to displays within the library,” Campbell wrote in his agenda item. "The LAB needs to discuss and advise the correct course of action that should be taken to provide all angles and points of views to be freely expressed and displayed for the local community.”  The item was prompted by this month's Black History Month book displays in Citrus libraries.  Campbell's motion for a Charlie Kirk book display, which was viciously attacked by hateful leftists who mobbed the LAB meeting, was ultimately rejected ...

By John Labriola - The Inverness City Council this past week shamelessly backed off its plan to prohibit future marijuana treatment centers within city limits, leaving the city vulnerable to becoming a magnet for the pot industry, which is now banned from expanding in the rest of Citrus County. In December, residents had urged the council to act shortly after the Citrus County Commission's vote to ban dispensaries in the unincorporated areas, which followed the Crystal River City Council's decision a year earlier to stop allowing them within that city's boundaries.  The county has eight marijuana dispensaries, with a ninth on the way, and that number doesn't even include clinics that just provide marijuana cards. Two of the dispensaries are located within the Inverness city limits, one just outside the city, four in Crystal River and one in Homosassa. The ninth, which submitted its plans just before the county banned additional dispensaries in unincorporated Citrus Cou...