After covering politics for more than three decades, I’ve seen a lot of lies.

But I’m not sure I’ve seen any uglier and more provable than the ones Gov. Ron DeSantis and his transportation stooges are telling about rainbow-colored crosswalks.

They claim that they blacked out Orlando’s tribute to 49 murder victims for “safety and consistency.”

Yet, for years — until they decided to take their war on all things LGBTQ to local pavement projects — DeSantis’ Department of Transportation actually encouraged local communities to color up their crosswalks in unique ways.

Why? Because they knew bright, colored crosswalks were more eye-catching for drivers and could consequently save lives.

In fact, this idea of decorating crosswalks with eye-popping colors was such an obviously good idea for safety that DeSantis’ DOT didn’t just encourage local communities to do so, it actually handed out awards to communities that did.

In one example, Florida’s DOT honored Tampa for its Crosswalks to Classrooms Painted Crosswalk program with DeSantis’ director of policy planning at the DOT, saying: “The innovative and collaborative efforts to combine public art and engineering treatments to improve school safety was truly inspiring.”

Yes, “to improve school safety.” Think about that. These people know colorful crosswalks help protect pedestrians. Study after study has shown drivers are more likely to see them.

Yet DeSantis, Attorney General James Uthmeier and Republican lawmakers are so hellbent on trying to stick it to LGBTQ people, they’re willing to endanger pedestrians, including those at school crossings, to do so. That’s just sick.

They’re also lying when they claim they believe it’s wrong to infuse politics with transportation as DeSantis claimed when he tweeted: “We will not allow our state roads to be commandeered for political purposes.”

This from the man who helped rename a highway in Hernando County “Rush Limbaugh Way.”

What DeSantis means is that he won’t allow anyone to use publicly funded roadways for any political purposes other than his.

Really, though, it’s pretty heartless to even refer to the rainbow-colored crosswalk near the Pulse nightclub as “political.” It’s a tribute to 49 slaughtered souls — a local community’s expression of grief and remembrance that top-down state officials are trying to erase.

Imagine the reaction if the governor of New York sent a crew in the middle of the night to pave over a Manhattan street mural that paid tribute to the victims of September 11.

This is depraved stuff — snowflakes so triggered by rainbows that they’re willing to make roads more dangerous.

Just last year, a DOT report explained that the $4.7 million spending plan for South Orange Avenue — which included a “decorative sidewalk and crosswalk features in conjunction with the Pulse Memorial” — was meant “to improve safety.”

It appears as though Florida officials, acting on the heels of Donald Trump’s transportation secretary complaining about “distractions” and “rainbow crosswalks,” didn’t even really consider the costly consequences of their rush to demand black-and-white consistency.

In Tampa, city officials say they must now remove more than 40 decorative designs, including a “Back the Blue” street mural painted near the Tampa Police Department. In Seminole County, officials are now undoing what they described as “high visibility trail crossings” that they said were “safer … for cyclists, joggers, and walkers.”

You have to wonder if the first person struck or killed in a blacked-out crosswalk will even weigh on the consciences of the politicians pushing this colorless conformity.

Numerous studies have shown that brightly colored crosswalks not only catch drivers’ attention, but slow them down and make them more likely to come to complete stops. One from the Knight Creative Communities Institute found that colorful crosswalks in Tallahassee slowed driver speeds by 22-24% and resulted in fewer people running stop signs. A Bloomberg Philanthropies study also found fewer safety-violations at colorful crosswalks.

But come on, do you really need a study to tell you that bright colors like red or green are more likely to catch drivers’ eyes? More importantly, are you so gullible — or so eager to have a bogus fig-leaf justification for ugly motives — that you’d believe that’s not the case?

Again, Florida officials have promoted these safety benefits in the past … though they may now be trying to erase the evidence.

The Orlando website Bungalower noted that one Facebook post from FDOT that had previously touted “decorative elements” just last month “appears to have been deleted.” And after I ran a Google search for FDOT posts touting colorful crosswalks, I found two that now lead to dead links.

When public agencies make public posts, they are public records. And it’s illegal to permanently destroy public records. I requested copies of any social media posts FDOT has removed from public view recently and have not yet heard back.

The state has also yet to respond to requests for information about whether these hastily arranged black-out painting projects were competitively bid and how many taxpayer dollars have been spent — even as the state sends DOGE teams to threaten any local government that doesn’t disclose such information immediately.

Any honest observer who actually looks at the facts and public records knows none of this is about efficiency or transparency. And it damn sure isn’t about safety. If anything, the blackouts will make street crossings more dangerous — according to the very same DOT that’s now trying to gaslight you into ignoring everything it said earlier.

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2025/08/26/orlando-pulse-rainbow-crosswalk-lies-bigotry-danger/