ST. PETERSBURG — For the past three years, the Sunshine Skyway bridge has had a vibrant rainbow light display for one week in June to honor Pride Month. But that won’t be the case this year due to a single Manatee County commissioner who has expressed disapproval of requests for light displays honoring Pride and Gun Violence Awareness Day.
The Florida Department of Transportation gets many requests for special light displays. The bridge lit up in blue and yellow to honor Ukraine, flashed blue and white lights to support Israel and has changed hues on special days to raise awareness for breast cancer, autism and mental health.
The FDOT made no public announcement about the Manatee County objection, which came from Commission Chairman Mike Rahn. Instead, the agency announced that for 2024 it will have a display of red, white and blue lights on bridges that will run all summer, from Memorial Day to Labor Day. And it’s not just the Skyway. All Florida bridges will be draped in patriotic colors for the summer, so no Pride bridge lighting elsewhere either in June.
That will not only wipe out the Pride rainbow lights, but other special days like Juneteenth and Mental Health Awareness Day will also go unrecognized because of the new lighting plan.
Because the Skyway touches Manatee, Hillsborough and Pinellas counties, the FDOT has made it policy that light displays have to be approved by all three county commissions. They want to be assured any display has broad community support.
In a Feb. 13 email from the office of Manatee County Administrator Charlie Bishop, administrators were informed that Rahn approved of displays for the Alzheimer’s Foundation, National Ovarian Cancer Month and others, but the chairman “will not be approving lighting of the Skyway for Pride Month or National Gun Violence Awareness Day.”
The email led to confusion: It’s been long-standing policy that it takes a vote of the county commission, not a single member, to give FDOT approval. Jim Nixon, the city of St. Petersburg’s LGBTQ+ liaison, outlined his concern in a series of emails to FDOT and Rahn. He received little to no reply or explanation in the following weeks.
Rahn responded on Feb. 22 and appeared to hand off the issue, saying in a one-sentence reply that it should be up to “FDOT approval solely” because “the bridge is controlled by FDOT.”
In an email to the Tampa Bay Times this week, Rahn said, “I do not have the authority to override the governor of the state Florida. However, in my opinion, the lighting of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge is a FDOT matter and should not be left with to the individual counties.”
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Explore all your optionsNixon kept up the calls and emails for further explanation about Pride lighting. He got no response other than Rahn’s assistant Derrick Evans writing on April 15: “My directive is not to have any correspondence with this request.”
Nixon then made a formal request to FDOT on April 30 to approve the Pride Month lighting, noting that Rahn had violated the agency’s policy. But he received no reply or explanation.
A week later, on May 8, FDOT Secretary Jared Perdue posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that all Florida bridges will be illuminated in red, white and blue from Memorial Day through Labor Day in celebration of “freedom summer,” the July sales tax holiday signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis that will make outdoor recreation equipment and admission to state parks and museums free from sales tax. DeSantis also announced that state parks will offer free admission over Memorial Day weekend (May 24-27).
St. Pete Pride and city officials were mystified, since the sales tax holiday only happens in the month of July.
“It’s more like they didn’t want to make a decision,” Nixon said. “We had proven Manatee was in violation and rather than upset either the county or the state, they made a change in lighting up the Skyway.”
By installing a patriotic light display that will run for months, all the different displays that had been planned for the summer were scrubbed, including ones honoring Mental Health Awareness (May 28-31), Juneteenth (June 19) and Ovarian Cancer Awareness (Sept. 1-7). Others that were close to getting approval were Sickle Cell Awareness Day (June 18), World Fragile X Day for autism (July 22) and Pride (June 20-28).
And since this is statewide, Jacksonville’s Acosta Bridge and Sarasota’s Ringling Causeway, which fought hard in 2021 to get FDOT to reverse its lighting policy, won’t get Pride lighting this year either.
Calls and emails to Manatee County commissioners and administrators by the Tampa Bay Times have been unanswered, except for one, from County Commissioner George W. Kruse, who said: “This is literally the first I’m hearing of this.” He said he was going to do some investigating of his own to find out what happened, but added, “I find this disturbing and incredibly unfortunate if true.”
Byron Green-Calisch, president of St. Pete Pride, said he was “disheartened” not only by the denial of a Pride week but Gun Violence Awareness Day.
“The queer community has been plagued with gun violence and so has the rest of Florida, from Pulse (nightclub shooting in Orlando) to Parkland (school shooting in South Florida). We need to remember those victims, so that hurts my heart to hear.”
The Skyway is a staple symbol of Tampa Bay, Green-Calisch said, and he was thrilled that Pride had a dynamic rainbow display on one of the area’s largest stages. He said it also bugs him that the FDOT secretary cast the summerlong display as a show of patriotism.
“Pride is the prime example of what patriotism is, the release of government tyranny,” Green-Calisch said. “To have a place to live free, where every man and woman is created equal and imbued with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. When I say I’m patriotic, that’s what I mean.”
The Skyway bridge’s $15 million light system flickered on at the end of 2019 with over 1,800 LED lights. It has allowed special themed light displays that run for a day or a week but it has never put up a light display that ran for months like the “freedom summer” display will.
In 2020, FDOT denied St. Pete Pride’s request for a rainbow light display, along with other Pride requests for bridges across the state. It said at the time its light system was unable to display more than three colors at a time, and state policy limited the causes and holidays it could celebrate.
Statewide outrage caused the agency to reverse course and, in 2021, it began allowing rainbow displays on lighted bridges for Pride Month if the local county commissions approve them. St. Pete Pride has a month of activities and holds one of the country’s largest LGBTQ+ parades. Visit St. Pete/Clearwater, the local tourism promotion bureau and a major sponsor of St. Pete Pride, said the city’s largest event in 2023 had a total economic impact of more than $60.7 million, bringing in $3.5 million in tax revenue.
St. Pete Pride has twice paid the $700 needed to improve the Skyway computer program that controls the light show over the last three years. The theme runs over four minutes and is dynamic, switching from vibrant rainbow colors to the subdued light blue and pink colors of the transgender flag. The colors move and, at times, race across the bridge.
Despite the disappointment, there will be many other local displays honoring Pride Month, said Eric Vaughan, St. Petersburg’s newly appointed LGBTQ+ liaison. There will be the annual Light Up With Pride day on June 1, when museums and buildings across the area will have rainbow lights. There are also numerous murals and signs in windows and banners hanging from buildings.
He said his focus going forward will be to build up public support for all three county commissions to again approve a Pride display on the Skyway bridge.
“Now we know the hands we are dealt and we will get started early this year,” Vaughan said. “I’m optimistic we can have some wins next year.”