Thankfully, Tampa's Mayor Was Dead Wrong But...

...at what cost to public confidence?

On Tuesday, ahead of the massive hurricane Milton hitting Florida’s west coast, Tampa Mayor Jane Castor issued a dire warning.

“I can say this without any dramatization whatsoever,” Castor told a CNN television audience. “If you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas, you are going to die.”

Of course this was hyperbole even if it wasn’t delivered or intended that way. She had no way to tell the future. And based on pretty much everything history has taught us, her predictions were likely to be wildly wrong.

Some could argue it’s misinformation.

Thursday morning when Florida awoke from the aftermath of hurricane Milton, many lives had been devastated, and at least several lost.

But thankfully, nothing even close to Mayor Castor’s predictions came true.

If she’d been right, then many thousands of Floridians who stayed in place, even though they were located in zones told to evacuate, would be dead today.

As I said ahead of the storm, Castor’s heart may have been in the right place. She wanted people to take warnings seriously. And they should.

But political figures sometimes may fail to understand how a well-intentioned strategy that involves inaccuracy or even dishonesty ultimately can serve to undermine public confidence.

Engaging in exaggeration to make a point risks having the opposite impact.

Either Castor was intentionally putting out misinformation in order to urge the public to behave a certain way, or she simply has little grasp on the reality of Florida hurricanes and evacuations.

The next time a storm is on the way, if Castor is still Mayor and she provides dire warnings, it would be understandable if residents view that with skepticism in light of the language she used ahead of Milton.

Sadly, it could mean that some will not take the next storm as seriously as they ought to.