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In 2023, St. Petersburg kicked off Pride celebrations with an event outside City Hall that included a Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority bus with a "Ride with Pride" wrap. After wrapping a bus for Pride each year since 2015, the tradition will be nixed for 2024 because of what the agency said were legal concerns around new yet-to-be-announced Department of Transportation guidelines — but not because of the urging of a state legislator, Rep. Linda Chaney, who has taken credit for the change. 

By Jack Evans

Times staff

For the first time in nearly a decade, Pinellas County will be missing a bus wrapped in bright colors in celebration of Pride month this summer — but not, officials said, because of the demands of a local legislator who has taken credit for the change.

The decision to pull the plan, which would have had one Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority bus bedecked in tie-dye swirls and rainbow hearts on the streets throughout June and July, came as the agency awaits new advertising guidelines from the Florida Department of Transportation, officials said Wednesday.

The transit authority’s board of directors had been set to vote Wednesday on whether to approve a slate of advertising wraps for buses including the Pride wrap. Such displays are typically timed to an event, such as St. Pete Pride or other parades, and involve a single bus that displays the wrap for some time afterward.

The item was removed from the board’s agenda last week. St. Pete Beach Republican Rep. Linda Chaney intimated in a Facebook post Saturday night that she had put a stop to the Pride plan.

“When I learned that this is how PSTA buses, a 93% tax payer-funded service, planned to wrap buses for TWO months in celebration of Pride month I immediately began discussions that ended with PSTA withdrawing the plan,” Chaney wrote. “There will be No Pride wraps on tax payer-funded PSTA buses.”

But transit authority spokesperson Stephanie Weaver said the decision had nothing to do with Chaney. Nor was it related to recent local moves against other LGBTQ pride visuals, such as the cancelation of rainbow lighting for the Sunshine Skyway Bridge and vandalism to the Progressive Pride street mural on Central Avenue in St. Petersburg.

Brad Miller, the transit authority’s CEO, has met with Chaney and several other lawmakers about new advertising regulations going into effect later this year, Weaver said. They include a measure passed earlier this year that requires the Department of Transportation to establish marketing and advertising guidelines for local transit authorities.

But the move to halt approval of the Pride bus wrap this week was based solely on word that the Department of Transportation will announce those rules this summer, Weaver said. The transit authority wanted to avoid a scenario in which the Pride bus is already on the street but turns out not to comply with the new regulations when they’re announced.

“This is not about a representative calling us and saying, ‘We don’t want this wrap,’” Weaver said. “It’s about trying to follow the law.”

A slide from a presentation originally set for Wednesday's Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority board meeting shows the planned — now scrapped — designs for bus wraps celebrating Pride month. [ Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority ]

The transit authority has wrapped buses for Pride since 2016, Weaver said. But it wasn’t the only advertising plan affected by the decision to postpone the board’s approval. Had the item not been pulled from Wednesday’s agenda, the board would have voted on the Pride wrap alongside three others: recurring two-month wraps celebrating Veterans Day and Martin Luther King Jr. Day and a wrap celebrating the agency’s 40th anniversary, which would have been put on buses later this year and stayed on for a year.l

Chaney said Wednesday she was traveling and unavailable for an interview and offered to answer questions for this story via text message. She then declined to answer several specific questions. Instead she referenced legislation she filed earlier this year in an unsuccessful effort to overhaul the transit authority, most notably by downsizing its board of directors.

“I remain focused on that and the key elements in that bill,” she said. “I will continue to work towards that end.”

Some measures of that bill made it into the same statewide transportation bill that includes the Department of Transportation’s guideline-creation orders, but that idea did not originate with her legislation.

Chaney’s Facebook post noted the taxpayer funding the transit authority relies on, and some — but not all — commenters thanked her for keeping taxpayer money away from Pride advertising.

“The gay community does not agree with the LGBTQ aggressive agenda,” Chaney told the news site Florida’s Voice on Tuesday, citing an unnamed gay Facebook friend as evidence. “This is not about anti-gay, this is about responsibility to the taxpayer.”

But taxes don’t go toward any of the transit authority’s celebratory wraps, according to the agency. Instead, revenue from paid advertising — such as the ads for law firms that often appear on buses — covers the expenses. Chaney’s post showed renderings of the bus wrap design from either side but omitted a rendering showing the rear of the bus, which includes a disclaimer that taxpayer money wasn’t used.

The legislation passed earlier this year also prohibits transit authorities from using state money to pay for bus wraps.

And though Chaney emphasized the planned duration of the Pride wraps, the two-month span wasn’t unique to this summer’s promotion — the wraps for Veterans Day and Martin Luther King Jr. Day would also last two months under the proposed schedule. All of that is part of planned changes in the duration of promotional bus wraps: The two-month span is a decrease from the transit authority’s practice of leaving them on buses for six months, and the agency has proposed having wraps timed with three holidays going forward, down from six occasions per year in the past.

Regardless of whether Chaney was responsible for the change in plans, she has become the focal point of criticism over the decision. On Facebook, Equality Florida CEO Nadine Smith decried what she called Republican politicians’ “obsession with LGBTQ people.”

“And like the Grinch Who Stole Christmas, Linda will learn it isn’t the wraps and the bridge lights, any more than it was the presents and the roast beast feast — it’s the joy and community,” Smith wrote.

Miller said Wednesday that transit authority staff will bring a new wrap proposal before the board when the Department of Transportation releases its guidelines. Though that won’t happen in time for this year’s Pride celebrations, the transit authority will still participate. As in years past, it’ll be the official transportation partner for St. Pete Pride — the largest Pride celebration in Florida — and will offer free park-and-ride service from Tropicana Field and St. Petersburg High School for the June 22 parade.