A review by the Tampa Bay Guardian of PSTA CEO Brad Miller’s public communications shows that after multiple mentions of “Pride”, “PSTA Pride,” and “Pride Parade” over the last 10 years in his weekly newsletter, Miller has not used the word “pride” in an LGBT sense for over a year (since July 12, 2024).
PSTA is an acronym for the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority. It is the Pinellas County transit agency whose proposed $230 million FY 2026 budget shows passenger fares covering less than 6% of its costs.
Other than passenger fares, PSTA has minimal other income streams that aren’t public funds, meaning that taxpayers are subsidizing approximately 94% of the cost to run PSTA. That percentage has been increasing sharply over the past decade.
Our review surveyed Miller’s weekly mass email communications during the last 10 years. The mass emails are sent out every Friday, currently to over 5,500 subscribers. The emails are sent at taxpayer expense and currently billed as “Brad Miller’s Transit Update.”
Miller became PSTA CEO in July of 2011. On June 26, 2014, a PSTA press release encouraged people to “leave your car at home or in an outlying parking spot while PSTA chauffeurs you to and from the celebrations” (i.e. the St. Pete Pride Parade). The subject line of the press release was “PSTA is Your Ride to Pride” and it also said:
“Making history” is the theme for the 13th annual St. Pete Pride festival, and PSTA will be making a little history of its own. As part of the celebrations, PSTA staff will ride a full-sized bus covered in lights down Central Avenue as part of the only LGBT nighttime parade.
Thus PSTA wasn’t just transporting people to the St. Pete Pride event, it was an active participant in it. This participation was at taxpayer expense and not paid by the “PSTA staff” who chose to participate.
However, “St. Pete Pride” apparently wasn’t enough for Miller. In 2016, he introduced the concept of “PSTA Pride” to the readers of his newsletter.
Miller expressed PSTA was “honored to participate in St. Pete Pride Parade.” Once again, PSTA was an active participant in St. Pete Pride and remained so for many years.
In his July 5, 2019 newsletter, Miller said that “PSTA was the official transportation provider for the St. Pete Pride Parade” that had taken place on June 22nd of that year. Miller linked to this PSTA-produced video that showed himself and other top PSTA brass participating in the Pride Parade in their official capacities as PSTA employees. A bus with a destination sign showing “RIDE WITH PRIDE” is seen in the video.
In 2019, Miller referred to a “Pride Park & Ride” [underlining added] free parking shuttle. It was only in 2025 that he would drop “Pride” from his description of that service.
Miller’s July 1, 2022 newsletter “highlighted” a gay employee and his status as the head of PSTA’s “Pride Employee Resource Group (ERG).” In this PSTA-produced video, the employee says the group exists for the “LGBTQ+ community and allies.”
However, PSTA sponsorship of specifically “LGBT+” (and variations of that acronym) has led to a backlash, in part because supporters of the “LGBT movement” overwhelmingly identify as Democrats or lean Democratic. Not all gay people feel represented by, or aligned with, the activist and institutional “LGBT+ movement.”
“PSTA Celebrates Pride” was the subject line of Miller’s June 1, 2023 email newsletter. That email was sent on Thursday, not a Friday, and began with:
“It’s June, which means it’s Pride Month! As PSTA continues to be at the forefront for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion [DEI], we are proud to support the LGBTQIA+ Community this month and all year round. Join us as we ride with pride!”
This was the culmination of PSTA’s Pride Mania, and its additional focus on DEI may have now landed it in a funding backwater.
At the August 6th PSTA Legislative Committee meeting, PSTA board member and County Commissioner Kathleen Peters said that her intuition told her that the Florida State Legislature “would go after transit for policy and money” (video, starting at 8:31). Ron Pierce, a lobbyist employed by PSTA, argued that PSTA has been reducing taxes and therefore would likely not be a target for funding cuts.
“But we’ve only been doing it [reducing taxes] for two years,” Peters responded. “During the pandemic, we made our reserves extremely high. I think we would be a target, I really do think we’d be a target.”
“And because State Rep. Linda Chaney made such an issue out of DEI kind of stuff, I think we’d be a target,” Peters continued. “That said, I think we’d be wise to start scrubbing policies.”
“We already did that,” PSTA’s Darden Rice responded curtly. Rice is an openly lesbian former PSTA chair and termed out St. Pete Council member. Rice, who is the niece of former sheriff Everett Rice, was hired as PSTA’s “Chief Planning and Community Affairs Officer” less than two years after leaving the PSTA Board.
“Yeah, I know,” Peters responded. “I’m just saying that we gotta make sure we did it really well.”
However, no amount of “scrubbing policies” can clean away Miller’s long record of using PSTA as a tool to advance Democrat Party causes. And the heavily Republican Florida Legislature may not be making PSTA pay a price that such actions.
We asked Brad Miller via email what the reason is for his recent and very obvious “Don’t Say Pride” communications policy . We also asked whether he had become homophobic since his last use of the word “pride” in the LGBT sense.
Miller did not respond to our questions regarding this matter. Shown below is his last such use of the word “pride” and it comes from his July 12, 2024 “Transit Update.”
Is Miller recent “Don’t Say Pride” policy a sign of homophobia, transphobia or any other kind of phobia? Or is it sign of ergophobia? The fear of losing one’s job.
As always…the Guardian reports and the readers decide. Please like our Facebook page to find out when we publish new stories.
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