The Orlando Sentinel from Orlando, Florida • B1

Orlando Sentinel: PRODUCT: OS DESK: LOC DATE: 04-25-2006 EDITION: FLA ZONE: VL DEADLINE: 20.5 OP: wjackson COMPOSETIME: 22.46 CMYK VOLUSIA STATE TUESDAY APRIL 25, 2006 Volusia SENATORS SUE STATE OVER FCAT PAGE B3 Orlando Sentinel TV TRYOUTS: FUN WITHOUT HAVING TO EAT BUGS Youths looking for reality-TV fame may have a shot today. NBC's 'Endurance' is looking for contestants ages 1 2 to 1 5 for a younger (and friendlier) version of Auditions are 1 to 6 p.m. at Mullen Casting, 4390 35th Orlando. Details: 407-226-1 644. MIDDAY UPDATE Subscribe to our e-mail newsletter and get breaking news at lunch.

0rlandoSentinel.com newsletters WALTER CAMPBELL LESLEY MILLER COMMENTARY i2 Winds change on term limits Mike THOMAS SENTINEL COLUMNIST 'Things' are taxing enough without bonds PHOTOS BY DENNIS WALLORLANDO SENTINEL Members of the Galaxy Middle School girls' basketball team celebrate a basket scored during the game against Heritage on Thursday. The return of middle-school hoops to Volusia has boosted excitement and school spirit. RETURN OF ATHLETICS SCORES BIG IN VOLUSIA Middle-school competitions have been a big hit so far. Lawmakers who last year aimed to ask voters to extend limits now think it's not such a good idea. By JASON GARCIA TALLAHASSEE BUREAU TALLAHASSEE Florida lawmakers might agree that "Eight is Enough" after all.

Momentum is building in the Legislature to scrap a proposed constitutional amendment overwhelmingly approved a year ago that would ask voters to extend term limits for legislators from eight to 12 years. After being stuck for weeks in the Senate's Ethics and Elections Committee, a bill that would yank the amendment off the November ballot suddenly breezed through the panel Monday by a 5-1 vote. And leaders in both chambers acknowledged that many more lawmakers are having second thoughts about the issue. "I am hearing from some members that perhaps we should reconsider that," said House Speaker Allan Bense, R-Panama City. "It's being talked about." The original plan to ask voters to extend legislators' terms sailed through the Legislature a year ago, passing the House by a 92-24 vote and the Senate by a 35-4 margin.

The extended limits would not apply to lawmakers now in office. Supporters argued that the cur- PLEASESEE LIMITS, B7 Anthony Wallace, 14, (from left) Katherine Cordero, 13, and KyleTrenary, 13 members of the Heritage band cheer during the game Thursday. By KEN MA SENTINEL STAFF WRITER Pay $3 to watch a Galaxy Middle School basketball game, and you'll get your money's worth. There have been 350 students and parents filling the plastic bleachers at each of the past three home games, cheering at the top of their lungs and pumping their arms when the home team scores. During breaks in the action, 15 students in the jazz band played fight songs, and 10 pep-squad dancers boogied to popular tunes during halftime.

Chips, pizzas, sodas and bottled water were consumed in abundance in the gym. In other words, it's March Madness in miniature. For the first time in 17 years, interscho-lastic basketball is back at Galaxy and 12 other middle schools in Volusia County and the school is taking full advantage. "It's the kind of thing that middle schools need," said Julian Jones, Galaxy's principal. "We are excited." Since the season began this month, middle-school hoops has been fun for everyone involved the players, their families, other students, teachers and district officials.

"It is an awesome opportunity for the students," said Tim Shea, a Deltona Middle School physical-education teacher who coaches the boys basketball team there. please see BASKETBALL, B7 Sports columnist Mike Bianchi called me Chicken Little in his Sunday column. Talk about a cheap shot, not to mention a cheap cliche. This concerns Bianchi's obsession with using tax dollars to build sports facilities, something that concerns fiscal moderates like myself. Now he says we might not only lose the Magic without a new arena, we also could lose the Orlando Predators, Ringling Bros, and Barnum Bailey Circus, Disney on Ice, Benny Hinn's Miracle Crusade and the Rolling Stones 2009 Keith Is Still Alive Tour.

I think he's losing it. Mike sits in a press seat while media handlers bring him food, drinks, quotes and stats. He writes about billionaires who get free arenas and players who get paid for choking coaches. There is no accountability in this Entitlement World. It is generational welfare.

This is why Mike has no problem getting us deep into debt buying Richie Rich a new basketball arena and gold-plated locker rooms for the mice at the otherwise empty Citrus Bowl. Amazingly, such things are possible in public works politics. Here is how it works: Let's say a special interest group wants to build Thing A. Another wants to build Thing and yet another Thing C. They all agree to support each other's Things, lest someone get left out.

The politicians get on board because it's not their money. This is why last year's federal highway bill included a mind-boggling $24 billion to fund a list of Things that included the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" in Alaska. No Thing left behind. That is the strategy at play here. So we see the fortunes of a needed performing arts center tied to a plan to spend 1 75 million on the Citrus Bowl our Bridge to Nowhere.

Mayor Rich Crotty even has thrown in another Thing. To bribe the hoteliers, he is promising them a big tourism marketing campaign. Naturally, we don't want to pay for any of this. We can't print money like Congress. So we gouge the tourists, who pay the resort tax on hotel rooms.

Our list would require hundreds of millions from the resort tax. Bonds would be sold and tax revenues pledged to pay them off. But the tax already is 1 billion in the hole paying off the convention center. In financing that, the county made what appeared to be conservative fiscal projections. Then came 9-11, collections plunged, and the county had to refinance, adding about 100 million in long-term debt.

So we throw a few hundred million more in obligations on the tax? Insanity. But I am a reasonable man, hence this compromise: The county and Orlando agree on projects and how much the city gets from the resort tax. But no bonds are sold. Instead, the city gets whatever is left over after payments and expenses are met at the convention center. When times are good, the money rolls in.

When terrorists blow up a Saudi oil refinery, it dries up. When that happens, the city covers mortgage payments at the arts center until the money flows again. Rich De-Vos covers payments at the new Magic arena. And the Citrus Bowl gets new bathrooms and a coat of paint. Given the faith we all seem to have in the deep pockets of tourism, only a Chicken Little could oppose this.

Mike Thomas can be reached at 407-420-5525 or mthomasorlandosentinel.com. Deltona, county hope outsider can mend rift Heritage Middle School mascot Dillon Paulk, 14, an Eagle, stirs up the crowd during a girls' basketball game against Galaxy on Thursday. Reward raised in missing-woman case ByETAN HOROWITZ SENTINEL STAFF WRITER DELTONA The brief honeymoon between the City Commission and Volusia County Council is over, and an outsider will be brought in to try to help the two governments work together. At a joint meeting Monday night to discuss growth in an area near Os-teen, city and county officials argued about everything from who the facilitator should be to who should develop survey questions for residents. The meeting was the latest attempt by the two governments to iron out a joint planning agreement that would guide growth.

But the session turned into a two-hour-plus demonstration that whatever trust had been established between the two sides has seemingly disappeared. In January, Deltona officials agreed not to approve annexations east of State Road 415 until a joint planning agreement was completed. In exchange for Deltona's pledge, the county agreed to drop battles against the city for two annexations it had claimed were illegal. Both annexations one about 15 acres, the other 389 acres were east of S.R.415. But at Monday night's meeting, Susan McCaskill, who owns 240 acres east of S.R.

415, asked the two governments to consider allowing PLEASE SEE RIFT, B7 An executive offers $250,000 for the return of Jennifer Kesse, who disappeared in January. By AMY C. RIPPEL SENTINEL STAFF WRITER Time-share mogul David Siegel raised the stakes Monday in the three-month search for a missing Orlando woman. Siegel put up $250,000 for the safe return of Jennifer Kesse, 24, who was last heard from in late dollars puts a lot of people in a different tax bracket," Drew Kesse said Monday. "All we are looking for is getting Jennifer back.

We're giving absolutely every person the opportunity to come forward." Kesse was last heard from at 10 p.m. Jan. 23, when she spoke to her boyfriend by phone from her condominium near the Mall at Mil-lenia in southwest Orlando. The next day, she didn't show up for her job as a financial analyst at one of Siegel's companies, Central Florida Investments. No one has used Kesse's credit PLEASE SEE KESSE, B7 Siegel previously put up $100,000 for Kesse's return and asked to remain anonymous, but the reward was retracted after a dispute with Crimeline administrators.

This time he's going public, raising the amount and setting a deadline May 24 with hopes it will bring Kesse home alive, he said. Siegel said the money comes with no strings. "We don't care about prosecution, whether someone is caught or not," he said. "All we want is Jennifer back." Kesse's father, Drew Kesse, said the family is grateful. "Obviously, a quarter-million 1 COLORSTRIP: I.