Florida Today makes a rampant speculation, unsupported by anything, apparently, other than the fevered imaginations of its editors:

In case you missed it, NASA's former chief Sean O'Keefe killed the [Hubble] mission in 2004, citing post-Columbia safety concerns. More likely, that was just a cover story to start redirecting money for the agency's moon-Mars plans.

No, more likely it was exactly what O'Keefe said, and no evidence has ever been produced to indicate otherwise. It was a dumb decision, and O'Keefe should have stepped down much sooner, because it was quite clear that he no longer had the stomach for the job post-Columbia, but it had nothing to do with the VSE. As Keith Cowing says, if they don't have any actual basis for this statement, they shouldn't be making it.

The fact is that this is not the first time that someone has alleged that the Hubble decision was based in part or whole on money concerns. A simple search of this very website reveals this:

http://www.transterrestrial.com/archives/003433.html

That refers to a claim that Senator Miklulski said that when she talked to O'Keefe on the phone about the cancellation, O'Keefe mentioned that money was part of his decision. Now you could believe that Mikulski was lying, but it is a real stretch to believe that money was absolutely NOT taken into consideration. After all, if O'Keefe decided to shut down Voyager in the current budget over a measly $4 million, don't you think that he was also concerned about several hundred million for the Hubble servicing mission?

And a little further searching turns up this:

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/336/1

That mentions that NASA's own historian interviewed the people involved in the servicing mission cancellation and they told him that the decision was made during a budgeting meeting in fall 2003. NASA's comptroller claimed that "The only reason I would say it was tied to the budget was that the budget helped dictate the timing of when we were going to make a decision." But that's sort of disingenuous--if they made the decision during a budget meeting, then the Hubble repair mission obviously cost something and was in that budget. And by canceling it in the budget, they could obviously spend that money on something else. The one new thing that was entering the budget was the moon-Mars initiative.

So your own claim that this statement is "unsupported by anything" does not hold water. The budget allegations are at least supported by the comments of a U.S. senator and a couple of NASA officials.

Surely O'Keefe's primary motivation was probably risk aversion. But others have found that the Hubble mission would have been no riskier than an ISS mission. And it is impossible to believe that money was not in some way part of the equation.

Well.......... this from the same newspaper that endorced Nixon because they thought he would be good for space. (hysterical laughter)