Seems like conservation has become the new refuge of scoundrels. Green is now the color of theft. Yep, by a 4-3 vote, a board of unelected officials approved the Everglades deal.

Elementary schools are closing around the state. Florida’s universities are aggressively cutting budgets. Public defenders and state attorneys can afford little more for our justice system than a plea-bargain assembly line. The state can’t even afford to hire someone to answer the phone for its public-assistance hotline.

But apparently we can afford to pay $1.34 billion for worthless cropland. 

Fortunately:

The board made one change that could potentially put the deal in doubt, adding an “out” clause intended to protect the agency from bankrupting its budget if state revenues plummet.

Of course state revenues are plummeting…

And don’t even get me started on the fallacy that this will somehow “reinvigorate” the Everglades restoration. The South Florida Water Management district is diverting $1.34 billion that could be spent on actual restoration to buy land that will require a $4 billion investment in marshes, lagoons and other earth-moving before it does any good. How does that reinvigorate anything?