BY MARK SCHUMANN

Apple borrowed $17 billion this week, despite the fact that the company has more than $150 billion parked in offshore bank accounts.  The move may help to appease stock analysts and shareholders, but one has to wonder if Apple executives would have taken on such indebtedness if they owned the company.

A wise retired executive I was interviewing today, citing Warren Buffett, raised this question.  His point was that corporate executives should run businesses as if they owned every share of stock.

Assuming a broader sense of responsibility might cause corporate leaders to shift their focus from short-term gains.  Rather, they might concentrate on securing the long-term viability of their companies.  For example, if the leaders of the nation’s major investment banks had stood to loose everything, they would never have leveraged the banks 42 to 1.

Hearing this suggestion made me wonder how the members of the Vero Beach City Council might have negotiated for the sale of Vero Electric, if the utility was their own personal asset.

If Tracy Carroll, Craig Fletcher and Pilar Turner each owned one-third of Vero Electric, would they have been willing to accept a deal dubiously valued at $179 million, given that the system could reasonably be valued at $200 million or more?

If the Council troika were taking the hit personally, would they have been willing to spend $8 million to relocate the substation?

If Carroll, Fletcher and Turner owned the four-acre former postal annex site on the southwest corner of 17^th Street and Indian River Boulevard, would they have so freely tossed the property into the deal – for nothing?

Would they have needed someone else to suggest that they should at least insist on a reversion clause?  After all, if FPL ever gets to the point where it no longer needs the land for a substation, why shouldn’t the property be returned to the city?  Carroll, Fletcher and Turner seem to agree, but the reversion clause was certainly not their idea.

If the three Council members who signed the asset purchase and sale agreement with FPL actually owned Vero Electric, would they have been willing to accept FPL’s position that some $25 million in system upgrades should be considered a part of the purchase price?

Striking a deal on these terms is much like agreeing with the buyer of a home who calculates the cost of remodeling the kitchen, building a pool, and adding an additional room, and then insists the cost be considered in the value of their offer.

Let’s face it.  It is far less painful for politicians to waste the public’s money than it is to squander their own.  Not only should the members of the city council run the city like a business, they should run it as if it were their own business.