In a case Palm Beach County has been watching closely, the Fourth District Court of Appeals today reversed a Broward County judge’s ruling and upheld that county’s voter-approved term limits law for county commissioners.

Palm Beach County’s term limits law has not been challenged. But the 4th DCA has jurisdiction over Palm Beach County, so a ruling overturning Broward term limits would have also overturned Palm Beach County’s limits.

It’s likely today’s ruling will be appealed to the Florida Supreme Court by foes of term limits.

Palm Beach County Commissioners Karen Marcus (elected in 1984) and Burt Aaronson (elected in 1992) both face term limits in 2012. Marcus has said she’d consider running for an eighth term and Aaronson said he’d definitely run for a sixth term if term limits were overturned.

Supporters of the so-called Fair Districts amendments guiding redistricting want the Legislature to meet a strict, early deadline next year for redrawing congressional and legislative boundaries.

The Legislature convenes early next year — Jan. 10 — to begin redistricting work. And Fair Districts wants lawmakers to move fast — with a demand that a vote on final plans for the new district maps to be set for Jan. 13.

“While the redistricting committees are traveling the state to get input on what maps should look like, the Florida League of Women Voters, Democracia U.S.A., and other backers of the Fair Districts standards wrote lawmakers Wednesday seeking faster action on the final plans — to give them time for more “public input,” presumably in court.

“We need to…ensure there will be no chaos and confusion for candidates and voters,” said Deidre Macnab, president of the Florida League of Women Voters. “We call upon (legislators) to adotp a timeline that makes sense for the people of Florida.”

The Fair Districts’ Amendments 5 and 6 require that district lines be contiguous and compact, shaped largely by city, county and geographic boundaries. The amendments, pushed by Democratic­-allied organizations, were aimed at blunting ruling Republicans’ ability to draw wide-ranging districts to help incumbents or the party’s candidates.

The legislature’s redistricting public hearings will renew Aug. 15, from 6 to 9 p.m., at Stuart’s Blake Library. The next day, lawmakers are scheduled to hear from voters at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. It’s the lone meeting planned for Palm Beach County.

In the wake of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant disaster, utility regulators will again start looking into an expansion of nuclear power in Florida and decide how much of the bill will be shouldered by rate payers.

Florida Power & Light and Progress Energy are asking the Public Service Commission to sign on off their proposals to pass off about $355 million in nuclear energy-related costs to residents and businesses. The money would go to upgrade existing power plants, including one in St. Lucie County, and two cover the costs of new nuclear reactors that may not begin operating for at least another decade.

Hearings on the nuclear cost recovery plans are scheduled to begin this morning at 9:30 a.m in Tallahassee and can be viewed live on the internet at www.floridapsc.com or The Florida Channel’s website at www.thefloridachannel.org. The meeting will begin with a discussion of which documents will remain secret.

Juno Beach-based FPL is asking for about $196 million next year to help upgrade nuclear plants in St. Lucie and Miami-Dade counties and to move forward on a plan to build two new reactors at the Miami-Dade site known as “Turkey Point.”

The energy companies and many state lawmakers the expansion of nuclear power is necessary to wean the state off fossil fuels and to save money for customers.

But attorneys for large businesses, consumers and environmental groups question the methodology the energy companies are using and whether customers will actually benefit in the long run.

The state Office of Public Counsel, which represents consumers, argues that FPL’s decisions to “fast track” the new reactors led to inflated costs – an argument FPL disputes.

If approved, FPL’s request would result in a $2.09 increase next year for residential customers, based on 1,000 kilowatt hours of electricity usage.

- The News Service of Florida contributed to this story.

Gov. Rick Scott said Tuesday he’s not worried that the downgrade of the federal government’s credit rating is going to put the brakes on Florida’s already slow-moving economy.

Instead, Scott said Standard & Poor’s action Friday night was understandable, given what he condemned as the federal government’s inability to get spending under control. But the governor doesn’t think the move could spike mortgage rates and further pile-up inventory in Florida’s backlogged housing market.

“It’s no surprise that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are continuing to lose money. The rating is a confirmation of what we already understand, what’s going on in the country,” Scott said, when asked about the downgrade’s potential effect on the big government-backed engines of the mortgage industry.

“The credit rating agencies, S&P, are doing what we all know,” he added. “We have to live in reality…The thing that’s going to change our housing market is jobs, jobs, jobs.”

After slashing government jobs by more than 1,000, Gov. Rick Scott is spending nearly $400,000 a year on “special assistants” around the state to do advance work before the governor comes to town.

The community liaison jobs aren’t new – governors at least as far back as the late Lawton Chiles relied on them to keep apprised of goings-on around the state.

But Scott’s latest appointment is Robin Stublen, a former tea party activist who supported Scott in his campaign for governor. Stublen, whose annual salary is $70,000, came on board as a “deputy director of public liaison” on Aug. 1, Scott’s spokesman Lane Wright said. Stublen is one of two “public liaison” deputy directors who oversee five other workers located around the state and whose salaries range from $45,000 to $70,000. In all, the seven workers earn $395,000 a year.

Like Stublen, several of the special assistants served on Scott’s campaign team doing advance work similar to what they are doing now on the state payroll. Scott’s staff insists that no extra money is being spent on the special assistants but that the jobs are part of a reorganization of the executive office.

The aides’ job is to ensure “we hear from individuals around the state, about what their issues are,” Scott told reporters at the mansion today.

Scott acknowledged that Stublen helped him during last year’s Republican primary for governor.

“Robin, I’ve known for a while,” Scott said. “He’s from Charlotte County. And I know he was very active in the tea party down there.”

When told Stublen was earning $70,000, Scott added, laughing, “He better do a very good job.”

Federal officials have signed off on the bulk of Florida’s elections overhaul but the most controversial portions remain in limbo.

The U.S. Department of Justice approved 76 measures included in the new law passed by the GOP-dominated legislature this spring and signed into law by Gov. Rick Scott.

But last month, Secretary of State Kurt Browning sidestepped President Obama’s administration and instead asked a federal court to approve the most controversial components of the new law.

“I am appreciative of the work the DOJ has done to approve Florida’s new election laws,” Browning said in statement today. “Their decision confirms what we already know, that Florida’s new election laws are fair and not discriminatory. I expect the federal district court will also agree that the new laws are fair when it reviews the remaining provisions.”

Five counties in Florida – Collier, Glades, Hardee, Hendry, Hillsborough and Monroe – require federal “preclearance” before new election laws can go into effect to make sure the changes do are not discriminatory.

The ACLU and other groups are currently challenging the new law in federal court in Miami, saying it is designed to make registering to vote and casting ballots more difficult for minorities and low-income voters who typically vote Democratic. Scott, who re-appointed Browning, asked the judge in that case to remove him from the lawsuit. Jesse Jackson held rallies in Florida late last month protesting the new law.

The portions of the new law still awaiting approval from the federal three judge panel deal with third party voter registrations, changes of address, early voting hours and petition signature verification. Browning said he expects a court ruling before next year’s presidential primary.

Read more about the four provisions still hanging after the jump.
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Part-time Palm Beacher Donald Trump ruled out a Republican presidential bid earlier this year, but he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer today he’d “seriously consider” running as an independent candidate if Republicans nominate “the wrong candidate” to challenge President Obama.

Trump said he’s generally against raising taxes, but, “When the oil companies are making billions and billions and billions of dollars – and believe me,they’re in cahoots with OPEC….When the oil companies are getting subsidies, and when the oil companies are playing very little tax, I would say I would tax them and I would tax them very happily.”

Trump also accused China of manipulating its currency to put U.S. businesses at a disadvantage and said the U.S. should respond with a punitive tax.

“If you threw a 25 percent tax on all products made in China, because of the manipulation — and it should be 41 percent tax based on the numbers, but forget that — you throw a 25 percent tax on all products made in China, number one your coffers would be brimming with money; number two China will do everything possible for you not to do that and they’ll make concessions that you never dreamed of,” Trump said.

Freshman U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Fla., on Fox And Friends this morning, says Treasury Sec. Timothy Geithner should “move on” because “when you open that refrigerator door, the lights don’t come on….I don’t think that Timothy Geithner really has a handle on the fiscal situation here in the United States of America.”

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is backing George LeMieux in a heated GOP primary for U.S. Senate.

Barbour, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee who briefly considered running in the 2012 presidential race, called LeMieux a “solid conservative” in a statement released this morning by LeMieux’s campaign.

“I am honored to earn the support of a principled conservative like Haley Barbour. When Governor Barbour was RNC Chairman, he helped orchestrate the Republican Revolution in 1994 that built the type of conservative majorities we need to turn our country around,” LeMieux said in the release. “More importantly, from his leadership during hurricane Katrina to his work passing key pro-life legislation, Governor Barbour is a case study in effective conservative governance.”

LeMieux is struggling to shake off his ties to Gov. Charlie Crist, who appointed LeMieux to replace former U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez when he resigned mid-term. LeMieux, a one-time close ally to Crist whom the former governor called “The Maestro,” did not seek reelection to the seat, which now-U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio won after Crist quit the GOP and ran against him as an independent.

LeMieux will face off in the primary against Delray Beach’s Adam Hasner, a former state House member who also served as the chamber’s majority leader.

Wealthy Delray Beacher Nick Loeb is toying with entrée into the race but is waiting until gal pal Sofia Vergara, star of Modern Family, gets past the Emmy Awards next month. Chris Ruddy, another Palm Beacher and CEO of the influential West Palm Beach-based conservative publication NewsMax, has ruled out getting into the candidate fray.

A Quinnipiac University poll last week showed that 53 percent of Republican voters remain undecided in the Senate primary but found Plant City tree farmer and retired Army Reserve Col. Mike McCalister leading the current four-candidate field with a meager 15 percent.

Behind McCalister in the poll were both LeMieux, with 12 percent, and Hasner, with 6 percent. Former Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse CEO Craig Miller weighed in with 8 percent support.

Is Rick Scott the most hated nice guy in Florida?

The Republican governor has been caricatured as Voldemort, Skeletor and worse. A bumper sticker seen recently in Tallahassee read “Rick Scott: The Anti-Christ.”

Only 35 percent of Florida voters approve of how he’s doing his job and slightly less like him as a person, according to poll results released last week. Not even a majority of Republicans said they liked him as a person, although 60 percent of them said they liked his policies.

Yet, those who meet him say that, one-on-one, he’s unfailingly polite and soft-spoken. He cracks jokes and asks about their families and their health.

His staff is convinced that if Floridians got to know their boss better, they would like him, even if they don’t agree with his policies.

Read the full story here.

The Florida Commission on Ethics recently found probable cause to believe that former Democratic state Rep. Kevin Rader of Delray Beach violated disclosure laws by failing to list his interest in Advanced Insurance Underwriters, LLC, on his 2009 disclosure form.

The complaint was filed against Rader during the waning days of his unsuccessful 2010 campaign for state Senate against Republican Lizbeth Benacquisto.

Rader is contesting the Ethics Commission finding. Among his arguments is the contention that a limited liability company or LLC is not a “business entity” as described in Florida statutes.

Read about it in this week’s Politics column (last item), where you’ll also read about NewsMax CEO Chris Ruddy‘s take on the GOP Senate primary and Clerk ‘n’ Comptroller Sharon Bock‘s take on county commissioners.

Running for a third term next fall, Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson can take some solace in this week’s Quinnipiac University poll that shows none of his potential Republican rivals so far emerging as a clear frontrunner.

A whopping 53 percent of registered Republicans told Quinnipiac they were undecided between former Rep. Adam Hasner of Delray Beach, former short-time U.S. Senate appointee George LeMieux, ex-steakhouse boss Craig Miller, and tea party courter Mike McAlister, who topped the field with support from 15 percent of voters.

Forty-six percent of respondents also told Quinnipiac they would support Nelson over any Republican, with the rival drawing 35 percent.

But before the Democratic incumbent gets too comfortable, he might look at his own disapproval rating among voters. Nelson plunged to 42 percent when Congress and President Obama forged their debt ceiling deal last week — the Florida senator’s lowest mark since his scraped 42 percent in August 2004.

But then, Nelson was still two years away from re-election. And that year, he faced off against politically damaged Republican Katherine Harris, in a non-presidential election year.

Post-debt deal, a plurality of those polled were willing to say Nelson deserved to be re-elected. But the 44-38 percent margin may be a little too close, especially since a frontrunning alternative is certain to emerge in coming months out of the pack of Republicans nipping at Nelson’s heels.

Sports Illustrated has its famous cover curse — where sports figures featured on the front seem to tank the next season.

But Florida Trend? The public policy and feature mag never seemed to be a place to fear, until current “Floridian of the Year” Rod Petrey ran afoul of the board of trustees at the esteemed Collins Center for Public Policy.

The board is scheduled to meet next Thursday, with Petrey, the president who was hand-selected for the job by late Gov. Leroy Collins, expected to be shown the door.

The center’s finances are at the heart of Petrey’s problems. Petrey has run the center since 1992, but its venture into administering a foreclosure mediation program seems to have undermined Collins’ finances, with those close to the situation saying upfront costs have sparked a serious cashflow problem that became evident to the board last month at a retreat.

In Palm Beach County, the Bar Association runs the mediation program, ordered to be conducted in all 20 court districts by the Florida Supreme Court in 2009. The Miami-Dade circuit recently dropped its association with Collins, heightening the money woes facing the think tank.

Merrett Stierheim, a former Miami-Dade County manager, is being positioned to replace Petrey on a temporary basis. But Petrey so far has indicated he is not willing to go, perhaps forcing an ugly ouster at Thursday’s meeting.

Petrey was named ‘Floridian of the Year’ in January by Florida Trend, earning a place on the cover and a generally laudatory story about his long relationship with the late governor, and the groundbreaking work done at the Collins Center, which includes working to develop low-income communities around Lake Okeechobee, a study on the potential effects of offshore oil-drilling in Florida, the costs of prison construction and elections reform in Florida.

Under Petrey, the Collins Center called itself the ‘think tank with muddy boots.”

“He has done a fabulous job in the past for the Collins Center,” said Parker Thompson, a Miami lawyer and Collins’ board of trustee chairman. “But I don’t predict the future.”

UPDATE: Petrey agreed Friday to step down from the Collins Center immediately; Stierheim to succeed him for now.

Gov. Rick Scott’s popularity is on the rise but the first-term governor has a long way to go to convince voters he’s doing what they want, a new poll released this morning found.

The Quinnipiac University poll found Scott’s approval rating climbed to 35 percent, up 6 percentage points, since May.

But the survey of registered voters found more than 50 percent of Floridians still don’t like Scott’s policies or his handling of the state budget, and more than three-fourths don’t know that the budget did not raise taxes.

And the survey found that even voters who approve of Scott’s accomplishments in theory don’t know what he’s accomplished, and many don’t like him personally.

The poll showed voters approved by a 58-29 percent margin a budget approach that cuts only spending rather than a combination of spending and tax hikes. But more than three-quarters of registered voters who responded to the poll did not know that Scott’s budget did not raise taxes. And more than half – 51 percent – said the state budget is unfair to them, compared to 33 percent who found it fair. The poll also found that voters dislike Scott’s policies by a margin of 54-34 percent; forty-two percent of those polled said the budget cuts went too far, 20 percent said they did not go far enough and 25 percent agreed with the cuts.

“It would seem that Gov. Rick Scott and his aides have failed to get their message out,” Quinnipiac University pollster Peter Brown said.

Read the full story here.

The Talking Heads’ 1983 “Burning Down The House” video (above) features an appearance by the late actor and comedian Rockets Redglare. Sen. Marco Rubio’s “Save The Whole House Or It Will All Burn Down” video features an appearance by Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass, around the 7:40 mark.

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio‘s Saturday speech on the national debt is a YouTube sensation, drawing more than 310,000 hits as of this afternoon and possibly boosting his standing among independent voters.

(By comparison, it appears the most YouTube hits for Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson were generated by this 106,000-view gem from 2009 in which he and Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., sing Elton John‘s Rocket Man.)

Rubio backers suggest his debt speech contributed to a sudden improvement in Rubio’s approval/disapproval rating among independents — from 40/35 in a Quinnipiac poll taken July 27 through Sunday to 54/29 in a poll taken Monday and Tuesday.

From The Palm Beach Post‘s Kimberly Miller:

Two Democratic state lawmakers seeking federal assistance to investigate the ouster of state foreclosure fraud investigators have expanded their public records request of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s office.

Sen. Eleanor Sobel, D-Hollywood, and Rep. Darren Soto, D-Orlando, say the request is in response to information they received about high-level attorney general lawyer Joe Jacquot going to work for Lender Processing Services, or LPS, as well as a former general counsel for Gov. Rick Scott’s former health care company, Solantic.

The Jacksonville-based company is under investigation by the attorney general’s office for its foreclosure-related practices. Shortly after Jacquot left Bondi’s office and went to work for LPS, Bondi fired two foreclosure fraud investigators.

“A number of troubling questions have come to our attention involving past and current employees of the Attorney General’s office and at least one mortgage processing company currently under investigation,” the two lawmakers wrote in a press release today. “In particular, we are especially concerned with the sudden departure to Lender Processing Services of your former special counsel, Joe Jacquot, and the subsequent dismissal of two apparently top notch foreclosure fraud attorneys _ June Clarkson and Theresa Edwards.”

Lender Processing Services is a former subsidiary of Fidelity National Financial. Both companies gave big donations _ to both Republicans and Democrats _ during the 2010 general election.

The Republican Party of Florida received about $19,000 from Fidelity, while the Democratic Party picked up $6,000. Fidelity also gave $2,000 to Democratic gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink, and $1,500 to winner Rick Scott.

LPS gave $36,500 to the Republican party and an additional $12,500 to the Democratic party.

Read Kimberly Miller’s blog here.

President Obama‘s approval rating is back under water in crucial Florida after briefly bobbing above the surface in May following the killing of Osama bin Laden.

A Quinnipiac Unversity poll released this morning shows Florida voters disapproving of Obama both before and after the president and Congress reached a weekend debt-ceiling deal. In polling done Wednesday through Sunday, 44 percent approved and 50 percent disapproved of the way Obama is handling his job. Among those surveyed Monday and Tuesday, Obama had the same 44 percent approval score with 51 percent disapproving.

Obama and Republican presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney were tied at 44 percent apiece in polling done after the debt deal, compared to a 46-41 percent Obama lead in the days before the deal. Romney tops the GOP presidential field with 23 percent, with the potential candidacy of Texas Gov. Rick Perry second at 13 percent.

The poll finds Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson leading an unnamed Republican challenger by a 46-to-35 percent margin.

The GOP Senate race remains wide open, according to Quinnipiac, with businessman Mike McCalister topping the field at 15 percent, former appointed Sen. George LeMieux at 12 percent, businessman Craig Miller at 8 percent and former state House Majority Leader Adam Hasner at 6 percent. Fity-three percent of Republicans remain undecided.

In May, 51 percent of Floridians approved and 43 percent disapproved of Obama in a poll taken a few weeks after Obama ordered the Navy SEAL raid in which bin Laden was killed in Pakistan. That poll was the first in more than a year showing a positive approval score for Obama in Florida.

While not going to the lengths of U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Pa., and comparing domestic political opponents to terrorists, the two Democrats in Palm Beach County’s congressional delegation — U.S. Reps. Ted Deutch of Boca Raton and Alcee Hastings of Miramar — likened Republicans and tea partyers to hostage-takers in the recent debt-ceiling showdown.

Democratic congressional hopefuls Lois Frankel and Patrick Murphy, vying for the right to challenge U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation, both used the H-word to describe Republican tactics in interviews about the debt deal this week.

As the conservative Daily Caller enumerates (with more than a dozen examples from the last few days), the hostage metaphor has become the new talking point for liberal commentators from Al Sharpton to Chris Matthews.

And with debt debate dudgeon depleted, Democrats are now using the hostage-taking charge to slam Republicans over Federal Aviation Administration funding.

Democratic Rep. Scott Randolph got his answer — sort of — from House Speaker Dean Cannon about how much the Republican-ruled chamber is spending in the challenge to Amendment 6, the voter-approved standard for congressional redistricting.

Randolph, an Orlando lawmaker, wrote Cannon last month, seeking information on how much was being spent on legal fees in the Amendment 6 case.

 But he was told Thursday by House attorney George Levesque that he couldn’t provide the public records the lawmaker was seeking because they might “undermine the significant interests of the House” in the legal matter.

But Levesque did say in his response that the House has spent about $114,000 in its role as an “intervenor” in the lawsuit brought by U.S. Reps. Corrine Brown, a Democrat, and Mario Diaz-Balart, a Republican, which looks to block the measure from being applied to next year’s redrawing of congressional district boundaries.

“Once the litigation surrounding redistricting and reapportionment is concluded, the detailed billing of the legal services provided to the House will be released, as required by law,” Levesque said.

All told, that means likely means sometime in 2012.

State senator Lizebeth Benacquisto, R-Fort Myers, was deputized Wednesday by Senate President Mike Haridopolos, with the first-year lawmaker promoted to a high-ranking spot in the 28-member GOP caucus.

Benacquisto, a former Wellington city council member whose district includes northern Palm Beach County, was elevated to the newly created leadership role, under Majority Leader Andy Gardiner, R-Orlando.

Benacquisto already has two Republicans filed to run against her next year, in what is expected to be a dramatically redrawn Senate District 27. Haridopolos’ move appears to be a profile-raiser.

 ”Sen. Benacquisto embraces her role as state senator wholeheartedly, and I know her colleagues in the Senate majority will benefit from her characteristic focus and drive,” Haridopolos said in announcing her appointment.