* “It was never our intention to do away with the step plans.” — Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio on her plans to restore step-plan pay increases for eligible city workers next fiscal year.
* “We anticipate no changes to our current tenure policy.” — David Steele, chief of technology, Hillsborough County School District, noting that the county is uniquely protected by a separate tenure act, one passed decades ago.
* “I want an organization in place where everybody has the same values, everybody has the same vision, all oars going in the same direction.” — Tampa Bay Lightning owner Jeff Vinik on his firing of general manager Brian Lawton and head coach Rick Tocchet.
* If Good Friday can be recognized as a holiday — that can be great for the Christians. We would rather keep a calendar that recognizes significant religious holidays. We didn’t want to see anyone have to sacrifice their beliefs.” — Ramzy Kilic, civil rights director, Tampa chapter, Council on American-Islamic Relations
* “The Founding Fathers strongly supported postal subsidies and printing subsidies. If Rush Limbaugh wants to say this is a typical liberal running to government…I’m like those liberals who founded the American system and thought the government was so powerful it had to have journalism to keep it in check.” — John Nichols, Nation correspondent and co-author, The Death and Life of American Journalism, making the case for situational government subsidy of news.
* “A press beholden to the ruling class — a press that cannot stand on its own two feet and the strength of its product — is a press better off dead.” — Conservative columnist Michelle Malkin.
*”A few McNuggets shy of a Happy Meal.” — Ronald Reagan Jr. assessing Republican Rep. Michelle Bachman of Minnesota, who had just criticized President Obama’s “Nuclear Posture Review.”
* “Today, nearly half of Social Security recipients choose to begin getting benefits at 62. This is a grotesque perversion of a program that was never intended to subsidize retirees for a third to a half of their adult lives.” — George Will, Washington Post Writers Group.