Tim Nickens, Editor of Editorials
Tim Nickens, editor of editorials at the Tampa Bay Times, grew up in Jeffersonville, Ind., and received a bachelor of arts degree from Indiana University in 1982. After a year at the Journal-Gazette in Fort Wayne, Ind., he joined the Times as a reporter in 1983. He worked for the Miami Herald from 1990-1995 before returning to the Times. He was an editorial writer, political editor and assistant managing editor/metro before rejoining the editorial board in December 2004. He became editor of editorials in September 2008. He and his wife, Bridget, live in St. Petersburg and have two daughters.
Phone: (727) 893-8268
Email: tnickens@tampabay.com
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Nickens: On budget, gridlock may be breaking
04/12/13EditorialsIf President Barack Obama and Congress finally reach a budget deal that significantly reduces the federal deficit and invests in the future, it will be because voters and business leaders like Paul Stebbins are tired of gridlock and are demanding compromise. • Stebbins is executive chairman of the board of World Fuel Services, a Fortune 500 company based in Miami with nearly $39 billion in revenue last year. The company is involved in the marketing, sale and distribution of fuel products, and Stebbins became interested in the federal budget mess after Obama and congressional Republicans narrowly avoided a government shutdown in 2011. He stopped by the office the other day with the nonpartisan Fix the Debt, whose Florida steering committee includes former U.S. Rep. Jim Davis of Tampa. Instead of pitching a specific budget plan, the group wants to mobilize business leaders and voters from both parties to push the president and Congress to agree on a balanced long-term approach....
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Legislative leaders draw up ambitious agenda
02/02/13EditorialsTwo Sundays ago, Will Weatherford was teaching his 4-year-old daughter how to ride a bicycle in their Wesley Chapel neighborhood when it started getting dark. The House speaker promised they would try again when he returned home from Tallahassee at the end of the week.
The next day, Weatherford's wife sent him a text message with a video of his daughter riding her bike without training wheels....
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Review: John Dos Passos Coggin's new biography focuses on 'Walkin Lawton' Chiles
01/19/13BooksGov. Lawton Chiles' death near the end of his second term in December 1998 marked the end of an era in Florida. He was the last Democrat to be elected governor, and he most certainly will be the last politician to win statewide election by emphasizing old Florida roots and limiting campaign contributions to $100. There also is a good argument to be made that Chiles was among the last governors to look beyond the next election and pursue public policies that would benefit Floridians for generations....
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Will Rick Scott do right by Florida this time?
01/12/13EditorialsWe are about to find out if Gov. Rick Scott has learned anything about vision and investing in Florida's future — or whether he remains driven by short-term political calculations, rigid ideology and disdain for President Barack Obama.
Shortly after taking office in 2011, Scott turned down billions of federal dollars and killed plans for a high-speed rail line from Tampa to Orlando that would have been an economic boost for the entire region....
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Charlie Crist's phone rings: It's Obama
11/10/12ColumnsCharlie Crist was waiting on a call and had to call me back.
No wonder.
The other caller turned out to be President Barack Obama. The president called the former Florida governor Thursday afternoon to offer his thanks for helping him win re-election. The two men talked briefly about how the voting mess here needs to be fixed.
And before he hung up, Obama told Crist he looked forward to getting together in person to talk about the future....
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Worst or best case: It's up to voters
08/11/12EditorialsLet's look into the crystal ball this morning.
It's January 2015, just about 28 months away. Let's assume the elections turn out a certain way between now and then, starting with Tuesday's primary and running through this year and next. Here's what Tampa Bay and Florida could look like, and it's not pretty.
In Pinellas County on New Year's Day 2015, there still is no fluoride in the drinking water and more public money is being spent on dental care for poor children. The county commissioners who voted to take fluoride out of the county's water starting in 2012 — Nancy Bostock, Neil Brickfield, John Morroni and Norm Roche — have all been re-elected and refuse to embrace established science or public health....
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Political stakes too high to tune out
07/28/12ColumnsIt's summertime, and the living is anything but easy.
While many Floridians with a little money and good sense are in the North Carolina mountains, the rest of us are slogging through an unusually early primary election season. It's hot, and we all should be on vacation instead of enduring the attack ads on cable television and in the mailbox. It's hard to get excited about many of these local races on the Aug. 14 ballot when the Republican National Convention is around the corner and the presidential election isn't until November. But absentee ballots are sitting on the dining room table, and early voting starts this week....
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Mass transit foes mobilizing
05/05/12EditorialsThe bumper stickers on the cars and pickups outside the Feather Sound Country Club offered the first clue about the group inside.
Ron Paul for president. Support state Rep. Larry Ahern and Pinellas County Commissioner Nancy Bostock, two of the county's most conservative Republican officeholders. "Fluoride: There is poison in the tap water." Pro oil drilling and anti-Obama.
Inside, Barbara Haselden from the South Pinellas 912 Patriots tea party group stood before an audience of about 60 last Sunday and opened the meeting about light rail. The St. Petersburg insurance company executive said elected officials from throughout Pinellas had been invited, but the only familiar faces I saw were county Commissioners Neil Brickfield and Norm Roche, who are also on the board of the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority. They are no fans of building light rail in Pinellas. They also are half of the Fluoride Four — the county commissioners who voted last year to ignore science and public health and remove fluoride from the county's drinking water....
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St. Petersburg's ham-fisted response to food trucks
04/21/12ColumnsDr. David McKalip's office in St. Petersburg is trimmed in red and blue. He designated the adjacent vacant lot on the southwest corner of Fourth Street and 62nd Avenue N in St. Petersburg as Founders Corner. Four 6-foot-tall granite and limestone monuments sit at the lot's edge with labels such as "individual liberty'' and "free markets.''
Now McKalip has added another marker to reflect those values: a bright yellow 1988 Chevy panel truck with red letters announcing, "The King's Bistro."...
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St. Petersburg's small town insecurities
03/02/12ColumnsThey organized quickly and challenged authority. They invoked civic pride and complained of broken promises. With lightning speed, they forced a big bureaucracy to reverse itself and declared victory.
St. Petersburg's postmark has been saved.
Who says City Hall can't get anything done?
Truth be told, a Postal Service spokeswoman probably misspoke when she said St. Petersburg would lose its postmark after the city's mail processing center closes and mail is routed through the Tampa distribution center. But never mind. Rallying to save it were Mayor Bill Foster, former Mayor Rick Baker, the St. Petersburg Area Chamber of Commerce and Leadership St. Petersburg. Of course, what probably really saved the day was a well-placed letter to the postmaster general by U.S. Rep. C.W. Bill Young. ...
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Alexander's power play is wake-up call for bay area
02/18/12ColumnsGive JD Alexander credit for doing something positive.
The bully of the Florida Senate has gotten everyone's attention with his attempt to starve the University of South Florida financially if its Lakeland campus does not immediately become independent. There is nothing subtle about extortion, and the Senate Budget Committee chairman's clarity of purpose has done some good.
First, Alexander has united the Tampa Bay community. It rushed to USF's defense with a swiftness and common voice rarely seen around here. From the Tampa Bay Partnership to the St. Petersburg Area Chamber of Commerce, from elected officials and former mayors to civic leaders on both sides of the bay, the outrage and determination to stop these unfair budget cuts has been remarkable....
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Redistricting: Redrawing better districts for Florida by law
01/05/12EditorialsThey said it couldn't be done.
Long before voters approved changes to the rules for drawing new congressional and legislative districts, Senate President Mike Haridopolos and I sat in front of a blank state map on a computer screen. We colored in a few districts by clicking the computer mouse, but Haridopolos insisted it would be impossible to draw maps by following the constitutional amendments that would be on the November 2010 ballot....
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Glimmers of hope amid the extremes
05/21/11ColumnsNewt Gingrich is always talkative, usually provocative — and occasionally right.
Last Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press, the former House speaker and current presidential candidate took a swipe at Wisconsin Republican Rep. Paul Ryan's plan to essentially privatize Medicare and turn the entitlement into a voucher system.
"I don't think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering... I think we need a national conversation to get to a better Medicare system with more choices for seniors,'' Gingrich said. "I am against Obamacare, which is imposing radical change, and I would be against a conservative imposing radical change.'' ...
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The prince of darkness
03/25/11Columns‘GIVE AN INCH…" • That was the sarcastic tweet last weekend by Brian Burgess, the communications director for Gov. Rick Scott. He complained about a Times/Herald Tallahassee bureau article describing how Scott's selective release of information about large public pensions advances his political agenda. • Burgess' point: The poor governor gets criticized for not being transparent, creates a website to provide more public information, and still gets criticized by whiny reporters. • My assessment of this snarky tweet: The Scott administration views Florida's Sunshine Laws as a nuisance and the release of public records as a personal favor. It treats public records as private corporate documents and grudgingly distributes what it wants, when it wants — and to whom it wants. • Nearly three months into the job, Scott acts as though he is still the CEO of a private hospital company who has no legal obligation to be transparent. He says he supports open government, and he signed an executive order his first day re-establishing the Office of Open Government created by Gov. Charlie Crist. But it's been downhill since then. • Scott is the Prince of Darkness, avoiding the sunshine of open meetings and public records whenever he can. The two most egregious examples: ...
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Scott will learn government is not a business
02/04/11ColumnsBarely a month has passed since Gov. Rick Scott took office, and it is clear he views his new job as Florida's chief executive no differently than his old job as chief executive assembling the nation's largest hospital chain.
It's just another hostile takeover.
Scott has acknowledged as much himself. He explained to a gathering of editors and reporters last month why he issued an executive order on his first day on the job that requires any expenditure of more than $1 million by state agencies he oversees to be approved by his office. ...
