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Rader
Burkert
Speaking of line-crossers, remember when Gov. Charlie Crist was a Republican and tapped Democrat Priscilla Taylor for a Palm Beach County commission vacancy? Now that Crist is an indie Senate candidate, find out if Taylor is willing to cross the line for him.
Read about it in this week’s Politics column.
Click here for a list of Gov. Crist’s vetoes
Gov. Charlie Crist slashed a record $360 million from the state’s $70.4 billion budget today, saying the projects were not properly vetted or benefited only select groups.
Crist’s vetoes include $160 million lawmakers had taken from the state transportation trust fund. Florida House leaders insisted on including the road project money to pay for per-pupil education spending.
Crist also vetoed a reduction in reimbursement rates for Medicaid nursing home providers and axed a portion of the budget that would have prohibited the use of any state funds to pay for human embryonic stem cell research.
Greene
The Crist campaign’s seven-word dig at the billionaire Democratic Senate aspirant drew a response of more than 300 words this morning from the Greene campaign.
Crist
Read the Greene response after the jump….
President Barack Obama halted all deep-water oil drilling operations in the Gulf for the next six months or until a presidential commission co-chaired by former Florida U.S. Sen. Bob Graham completes its work.
Obama ordered the 33 deep-water rigs to stop drilling this afternoon as federal officials estimate that between 12,000 and 15,000 barrels of oil per day – up to four times more than previously thought – is gushing from the Deepwater Horizon well into the Gulf of Mexico. The disaster has now surpassed the Exxon Valdez spill more than 20 years ago.
Obama refuted criticism that his administration has not responded quickly enough to the disaster but acknowledged more could have been done in at least two key areas, including the oil flow estimates.
“This is what I wake up to in the morning and this is what I go to bed at night thinking about. The spill,” Obama told reporters at a press conference this afternoon in Washington. “Those who think that we were either slow on our response or lacked urgency don’t know the facts. This has been our highest priority since this crisis occurred.”
But government officials should not have trusted BP’s estimates of how much oil was spewing from the well more than 5,000 feet below the sea level, Obama said.
Department of Corrections Secretary Walt McNeil suspended two prison guards involved in the collapse of 20-year-old inmate Samuel Dread who remains in critical condition after exercising on Monday.
McNeil placed correctional officers Sgt. Michael Devanie and James Barry on administrative leave with pay after learning of “conflicting witness statements,” according to a press release issued by McNeil’s office this morning.
Dread collapsed after exercising for several hours in the 86 degree heat as part of an extended day program at Lancaster Correctional Institution near Gainesville on Monday, his first day at the boot-camp style program for youthful offenders. Dread remains in critical condition after being placed into a medically-induced coma.
“Out of an abundance of caution, I have placed these officers on administrative leave until this issue is resolved. The mission of this department is public safety, and that includes the safety of our 102,000 inmates, a responsibility I take very seriously,” said McNeil. “If any wrongdoing has occurred, appropriate, swift action will be taken. In the meantime, these officers will have no further contact with inmates.”
Gov. Charlie Crist ordered the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate the incident, saying there are questions about whether prescription medications Dread was taking required him to avoid extreme heat.
“I have every assurance that the investigation will be thorough and complete and at the conclusion we’ll know all the facts in this case,” McNeil said in a statement.
Wexler
Wexler left his Palm Beach-Broward congressional seat in January to head the nonprofit S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace.
On a purely political note, a Wexler ambassadorship would presumably end chatter about Wexler endorsing his pal Charlie Crist‘s Senate bid and steering Democratic votes to the indie candidate.
Dr. William G. “Doc” Myers, longtime state legislator from Hobe Sound and a giant on health care issues, died Tuesday at Jupiter Medical Center. He was 79.
Palm Beach County Commission Chairman Burt Aaronson asked Gov. Charlie Crist to keep the lid on his veto pen regarding $175,000 in the state budget for the county’s juvenile assessment center.
Crist, who has until Friday to use his line-item veto on the $70 billion budget, is expected to axe tens of millions of dollars in local projects tucked into the state spending plan. His office is finishing up work on the budget today and is likely to release the final product tomorrow.
The $175,000 is part of a $25.3 million project to design and build a new complex that will house both the county juvenile assessment center and the juvenile detention center and was recommended by state Department of Juvenile Justice.
“We believe housing these two facilities together will enable the Department to provide wraparound services to at-risk families and will lead to increased efficiency in meeting the needs of these children,” Aaronson wrote in a letter to Crist sent yesterday.
The funding is a county priority, Aaronson wrote, to replace the current assessment center shared by the school district, DJJ, the county, the state attorney and others.
DJJ currently leases space from the airport and subleases it to the other agencies, but the lease is scheduled to expire soon.
Florida shoppers won’t have to pay taxes on clothes, shoes, books and some other stuff that costs less than $50 or school supplies like notebooks and pens less than $10 for three days in August.
Gov. Charlie Crist signed the Aug. 13-15 tax-free holiday (HB 483) into law today, reviving the popular shopping savings lawmakers nixed for the past two years because of the state’s anemic tax collections.
This year’s tax holiday – a slimmed-down version of 2007′s 10-day savings schedule – is expected to cost the state $21.3 million and local governments nearly $5 million, according to a legislative staff analysis.
Items in the tax-free shopping basket, initiated in 2009, include backpacks, diaper bags, wallets and purses but not briefcases or luggage.
The law bars them from kid-friendly activities such as giving out candy and dressing up as Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.
Gov. Charlie Crist signed into law today a bill toughening laws against child molesters that, among other things, bars them from kid-friendly activities such as giving out candy and dressing up as Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.
The new law prohibits convicted child molesters from hanging out within 300 feet of places where children congregate, like parks or schools, or go to a child care facility or school without prior notification or approval.
Sen. Dave Aronberg, a Greenacres Democrat running for attorney general, co-sponsored the senate version of the measure. Crist signed the bill (HB 119) into law today at Timber Lakes Elementary School in Orlando.
Billionaire Democratic Senate candidate Jeff Greene features his 83-year-old mother, Century Village of West Palm Beach resident Barbara Greene, in his newest TV spot.
“My Jeff, he’ll shake things up in Washington and he’ll get results. That’s what he does,” Barbara Greene says in the ad.
Barbara Greene was present Tuesday when her son visited the heavily Democratic retirement community to speak at a Democratic club meeting. She evaluated his performance as “terrific.”
UPDATE: Gov. Charlie Crist’s office asked the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate the collapse of the inmate, identified as 20-year-old Samuel Dread.
An inmate is in critical condition after collapsing on Monday during exercises at Lancaster Correctional Institution near Gainesville, Department of Corrections Secretary Walt McNeil told reporters at a hastily-scheduled press conference early this morning.
The unidentified inmate, a male between the ages of 18 and 24, collapsed on his first day at the youthful offender facility which uses a boot-camp style program in which inmates exercise outdoors from early in the morning until nightfall, DOC officials said.
McNeil said he asked the agency’s inspector general to investigate the incident and that the inmate is now in a private hospital in critical condition. He also said he is considering changing the department’s policy requiring strenuous exercise in extreme heat.
The department’s response to the incident is a departure from the 2006 death of Martin Lee Anderson, a 14-year-old who collapsed and died after being beaten by guards after collapsing during exercises on his first day at the now-defunct Bay County Boot Camp in the Panhandle.
GOP Senate leader Don Gaetz blasted Gov. Charlie Crist at this morning’s Cabinet meeting for failing to adequately respond to a possible economic crisis in the Panhandle caused by the thousands of barrels of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico each day.
“It’s in days like this that I miss Jeb Bush,” Gaetz, R-Destin, told reporters after criticizing the governor during an impromptu Cabinet appearance.
Gaetz demanded that Crist do something with the $25 million British Petroleum gave the state to advertise that the state’s beaches are clean and the fishing season is in full swing.
“I’ve been getting confusing answers out of the governor’s office for days. There’s been no response to President Atwater’s letters asking for specificity. Where’s this money? How’s it being deployed?
We’ve not seen a timely response. We’ve not seen an effective response. And jobs are being lost as a consequence,” a frustrated Gaetz said.
(more…)
Mobile Press-Register photo of Mobile County Commissioner and former Palm Beach County resident Stephen Nodine being taken into custody tonight.
Nodine, whose attorney says he’s innocent, is 46 and originally from Palm Beach County. He flirted with a run for office here nearly two decades ago.
In Palm Beach County, Nodine was a president of the Jaycees, a member of the board of The Children’s Place and Connor’s Nursery and ran the WJNO Children’s Fund. Published reports mentioned him as a potential 1992 candidate for the north-county seat on the Palm Beach County commission, but he ended up not running.
In 2002, The Palm Beach Post reported that Nodine — at the time a Mobile city commissioner — was running for Congress in Alabama and planned to return to Palm Beach for a fund-raiser.
It’s not clear if the Palm Beach event ever happened; Nodine ended up abandoning the congressional bid. According to a timeline put together by al.com, Nodine in 2004 challenged an incumbent county commissioner who ended up being removed from office after being convicted for mail and income tax fraud. Nodine, a Republican, was appointed to the seat by Alabama’s governor in June 2004 and won it outright in the November general election.
WRS Compass, the environmental consulting firm that potential Democratic governor candidate Bud Chiles blasted today, issued a “fact check” response this evening saying that its relationship with the state of Florida goes back to the adminstration of Bud Chiles’ father, the late Gov. Lawton Chiles.
The firm got a contract worth up to $250,000 from the state Department of Environmental Protection this month to help counties respond to the gulf oil spill.
Bud Chiles, who’s considering entering the Democratic primary for governor against Alex Sink,
Chiles accused the state of delegating basic responsibilities to a private firm and forcing local governments “to work through a firm whose principal was Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff.”
DEP Secretary Mike Sole said Chiles’ description of WRS’ role was “fundamentally flawed.”
Read the WRS Compass response after the jump….
Gov. Charlie Crist, now an independent U.S. Senate candidate, said he doesn’t think not getting the AFL-CIO’s endorsement will hurt him, but “it would have been nice.”
The AFL-CIO, the state’s largest labor union, endorsed U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, a Democrat, this weekend although Florida’s teachers’ union broke with tradition and co-endorsed Meek and Crist.
Big labor’s snub won’t hobble his campaign, Crist said this morning.
“I don’t think at all. It would have been nice, obviously, that’s why I went there. But I was awfully proud and pleased to get the teachers’ support. It’s all about getting the support of the people,” Crist said, repeating his ubiquitous “people” mantra.
Crist, who wooed the unions at their annual meeting this weekend, said he’d welcome the support of other groups, including environmentalists such as the Sierra Club, of which he said he is a member.
“You know my style. I’ll take help from anyone who’s willing to give it and cares about Florida like we do. That’s what it’s about,” Crist said.
Gov. Charlie Crist told President Barack Obama Floridians are more than a little impatient about the massive oil leak now in the 35th day pumping thousands of barrels of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico.
Crist said the president joined him and the four other Gulf Coast state governors this morning on a conference call concerning the BP disaster.
President Barack Obama on the phone with the five Gulf Coast state governors, including Gov. Charlie Crist, today
Crist said president’s participation on the near-daily White House telephone briefings assured him that Obama is “on it” and that “we’re going to see a stronger response going forward.”
Crist, now running as an independent for U.S. Senate, applauded Obama’s commitment to “doing everything possible” to keep Florida beaches clean but is clearly frustrated by the continuous plume of oil now headed toward the Florida Keys.
Bud Chiles
Bud Chiles sure sounds like a Democratic candidate for governor, invoking Halliburton and making not one but two references to reliable Democratic target Dick Cheney in a statement today blasting Florida’s hiring of an environmental consulting firm to review and assist county responses to the gulf oil spill.
A Chiles publicist says the son of former Gov. Lawton Chiles “expects to make a decision real soon” on whether to hop into the Democratic gubernatorial primary against CFO Alex Sink.
Chiles’ spill statement — which Florida Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Mike Sole called “fundamentally flawed” this afternoon — is filled with Democratic red meat.
“This is no time to tie the hands of local government by forcing them to work through a firm whose principal was Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff,” Chiles says.
State Sen. Paula Dockery is out of the GOP primary for governor, her campaign announced this morning.
Dockery was a long-shot against Attorney General Bill McCollum, now in a primary battle against Naples multimillionaire Rick Scott.
Dockery said she’s quitting the race because of money.
“It is with mixed feelings that I end my campaign to be your next governor. People who know me know I’m a tenacious fighter unafraid of long odds, especially when the stakes are so high. But I’m also a realist and understand the costs of effectively competing statewide. At this point in the election cycle, I see no financial path to victory. And so today, with both resignation that the resources are not there and appreciation for the journey we shared, I am ending my campaign to be governor of the great state of Florida,” the Lakeland Republican said in a statement.
Scott, a former health-care executive, is expected to spend up to $5 million of his own money on TV ads, and recently launched his second ad before McCollum aired his first.
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