Florida News Straight From the Source
Commissioner of Agriculture Adam H. Putnam will attend the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles’ annual Veterans Award Ceremony today.
Event: Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles’ Veterans Award Ceremony
Date: Wednesday, June 14, 2017
Time: 1:30 p.m.
Location: DHSMV Auditorium
2900 Apalachee Parkway
Tallahassee, Florida 32399
Governor Rick Scott will sign SB 7022 and present veterans medals at the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (DHSMV) Auditorium in Tallahassee today.
WHAT: Bill Signing and Veterans Award Ceremony
WHEN: 2:00pm
WHERE: DHSMV Auditorium
2900 Apalachee Parkway
Tallahassee, Florida 32399
NOTE: Governor Scott will be available to the media following this event in lieu of his normal press briefing after Cabinet.
The Florida Lottery announces that William Hensley, 57, of Orlando, and Sandra Huggins, 65, of Melbourne, each claimed their share of the $550,000 jackpot from the June 9, 2017, LUCKY MONEY™ drawing at Florida Lottery Headquarters in Tallahassee.
Hensley chose to receive his winnings as a one-time, lump-sum payment of $205,248.89. He purchased his winning LUCKY MONEY Quick Pick ticket from Publix, located at 825 Rinehart Road in Lake Mary.
Huggins chose to receive her winnings as a one-time, lump-sum payment of $205,248.89. She purchased her winning LUCKY MONEY Quick Pick ticket from Circle K Gas Station, located at 2455 North Wickham Road in Melbourne.
The next LUCKY MONEY drawing will be held Friday, June 16, 2017, at 11:15 p.m. ET, with a $550,000 jackpot. The LUCKY MONEY drawings are broadcast on 17 carrier stations throughout the state. Winning numbers are available on the Lottery website, at retailers statewide and by phone at (850) 921-PLAY.
Representative Jay Fant made the following statement this morning regarding the shooting in Alexandria, Virginia:
“My thoughts are with the victims of this morning’s shooting outside Washington. My wife and I are praying for a quick and full recovery for Majority Whip Scalise and the others who were wounded. As always, I’m grateful for the quick and effective action by law enforcement. They are heroes, and I am thankful for their service and sacrifice.”
Sen. Bill Nelson just tweeted the following about the shooting at this morning’s congressional baseball practice:
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Miami-Dade Police Department today arrested current Sweetwater Police Department Sergeant Reny Armando Garcia, 46, of Palmetto Bay, FL, and former Sweetwater Detective William Garcia, 42, currently incarcerated at the U.S. Penitentiary in Pennington, VA., each on one count of organized scheme to defraud, one count of racketeering, and one count of conspiracy to commit racketeering.
FDLE, in collaboration with the Miami-Dade Police Department and the FBI, interviewed numerous victims and witnesses during the course of the investigation and found that the allegations and supporting evidence revealed an ongoing pattern of criminal activity by members of the Sweetwater Police Department that spanned several years and affected dozens of victims.
The investigation revealed that members of the department engaged in a protracted pattern of racketeering activity that included battery, theft, fraud, burglary, and other violent crimes against civilians, often specifically targeting foreign-born victims with limited knowledge of the English language and the U.S. legal system, in order to exploit these victims’ vulnerabilities, as well as conceal the officers’ unlawful activities from outside authorities.
The arrests are part of a larger investigation based on decades of corruption, cultivated from the top down, at the Sweetwater Police Department and City. The investigation has not revealed criminal wrongdoing of the current Sweetwater police administration, and its chief has fully cooperated.
Reny Armando Garcia was arrested today and booked into Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Facility. William Garcia will be transported to Miami to face these charges. The case will be prosecuted by the Attorney General’s Office of Statewide Prosecution in Miami.
Senator Gary M Farmer Jr. sent the following letter today to Governor Rick Scott urging him to veto HB 7069, a bill that would deal a devastating blow to Florida’s public school system.
June 13, 2017
Governor Rick Scott,
As you are well aware on Monday May 8, the State Legislature passed HB 7069. This bill, which faced bipartisan opposition in the State Senate, has the potential to devastate Florida’s public education system.
This dreadful piece of legislation, if signed into law, would dramatically reduce the ability of school districts across the state to devote resources towards improving our public education. HB 7069 would force school districts to give an even split of locally derived capital outlay funds to charter schools. This would cut $13 million a year from Broward County’s budget alone. In Palm Beach County, officials have predicted that this piece of legislation could impact districts so harshly that districts may see their credit ratings decrease, as mandated spending rises. This funding would be on top of PECO dollars that charters have regularly been receiving from general revenue.
What is further troubling about the proposed new capital outlay mandate is that it would allocate funds for charter schools to construct privately owned buildings. This will allow private management companies to build facilities for charter schools, which will then revert to private ownership in the event that the charter school either closes down or relocates. While we had language in the Senate education bill which would have prohibited the use of capital outlay funds for individual or corporate enrichment, this language was not included in HB 7069.
This bill would also mandate that traditional public schools allow charter schools to use their facilities at a deeply discounted rate, which does not reflect the fair market value of the property. It would allow charter schools to use vacant space in existing district facilities. This poses a major potential problem, as it would severely limit a school district’s ability to adequately plan for future growth.
HB 7069 also creates potentially harmful exemptions for charter schools with regard to zoning laws. This bill would allow charter schools to bypass land use or zoning requirements of local jurisdictions. This could harm both communities and students, by placing students in locations that are not suited for schools, and causing local complications such as negatively altering traffic patterns. There is a reason zoning laws are localized, and no industry should be exempt from this oversight designed to preserve and protect neighborhoods.
In addition to the negative policy effects of HB 7069, the process through which this bill was passed also raises some serious transparency issues. One of the highlights of your time as governor of this great state has been your commitment to making Florida one of the most transparent states in the nation. While there are many issues which you and I fundamentally disagree upon, making sure that the people have a clear view of our government during every step in the process, is something on which we see eye to eye. Unfortunately, the process by which HB 7069 was passed through both the House and the Senate was anything but transparent.
Until May 5, HB 7069 was a bill which dealt entirely with the Best and Brightest Scholarship Program. However, that afternoon the bill was fundamentally changed into a 278-page amendment that slashes funding for struggling schools and requires school districts to pay for charter school projects that they cannot afford. This amendment also included provisions that were the subject of some 55 other bills, the vast majority of which either had been voted down in committee or had stalled. The amendment also hijacked unrelated issues, such as recess and Gardiner Scholarships for students with special abilities, in a blatant attempt to borrow support. That may be the most offensive part of this process, as these issues enjoyed broad, bipartisan support – unlike the other controversial provisions of the bill.
This massive amendment was not released to the public until it was proposed during the appropriations conference committee meeting, leaving no time for public review or comment before it was agreed upon. This bill is a textbook example of a failure in government transparency.
Governor Scott, on behalf of my constituents in Broward County as well as parents and students across the state I implore you to please exercise your authority to veto HB 7069. While there are small pockets of good policy hidden within this bill, it is a monstrosity when coupled with the multitude of bad policies that have been included. Understanding the bad policy that is contained in this bill and the lack of transparency employed in its passage I urge you to please veto HB 7069.
Sincerely,
Senator Gary M. Farmer
District 34
Former Miami City Commissioner Marc Sarnoff today went to court to block the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) from moving forward with its award of a contract to build a new, signature I-395 bridge, arguing the award violates a settlement agreement that promised local control over the bridge’s aesthetic design.
Attorneys Jay Solowsky and Mason Pertnoy of Miami law firm Solowsky Allen, P.L., reopened the class action lawsuit they filed in March 2013 on behalf of the residents of Miami, seeking to enforce the parties’ settlement agreement. The Motion to Enforce the Settlement Agreement asserts, in part, that FDOT breached the parties’ agreement by causing the scores of the community-based Aesthetics Review Committee to be diluted.
“The additional weight given to technical reviewers has effectively stifled the voice of the community. This is Miami’s equivalent of the Golden Gate Bridge or the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. It is only right that Miami-Dade residents should determine that iconic design, not state bureaucrats,” Sarnoff said. “It is unfortunate that it requires ongoing litigation to protect a process established by the settlement agreement.”
Sarnoff said FDOT should honor its commitment to allow Miami-Dade residents to decide the design of the signature bridge, which will become an enduring icon of Miami for decades to come. FDOT is seeking to award the $800 million contract to build a design that received “poor” and “fair” marks from the local review committee during the final scoring phase.
“This motion is about protecting a process that FDOT and the plaintiffs agreed to, it’s not about trying to dictate a result,” attorney Solowsky said. Added Pertnoy: “The simple fact is that the process required that the five-person Aesthetics Committee would be the sole scorers of aesthetics.”
Sarnoff’s 2013 lawsuit resulted in FDOT’s agreement to establish the Aesthetics Review Committee, made up of four local representatives and one FDOT representative, who were to serve as the sole scorers of aesthetics during the procurement process. A five-person technical review panel of FDOT and MDX engineers was established to ensure that all designs selected for final consideration met the technical standards outlined in the bid criteria. The four local members of the Aesthetics Committee considered all qualified proposals and were unanimous in their preference for the design that finished second overall.
Sarnoff said FDOT’s recent actions disregard the settlement by giving more weight to the views of road builders and engineers than to the judgment of local committee members specifically asked to consider the look and feel of competing design proposals.
The motion filed today says, “This community came together and loudly proclaimed with a unified voice its support of a Signature Bridge project. The Settlement Agreement implemented that voice. By casting additional votes, FDOT diluted the voice of the community.”
Sarnoff noted that the settlement agreement expressly required that five members serve on the Aesthetics Committee, including one FDOT representative, each with one vote – not a nine-member Aesthetics Committee that gives FDOT five votes. By casting additional votes FDOT improperly undermined the weight given to community input, he said.
Sarnoff said he filed his motion to ensure that Miami’s voice is heard and its choice is reflected by this enduring, iconic project, which will also serve to reknit together Overtown, breaking down walls that divided and destroyed the historic community.
“Our local representatives on the Aesthetics Committee took seriously the task of choosing a design that would mend the divide caused decades ago when FDOT built I-395 through the heart of Overtown, cutting it off from downtown Miami,” Sarnoff said. “Since FDOT agreed to let local voices be the sole voice on aesthetics, it must be held to that commitment. FDOT must follow the process that it agreed to.”
To view a copy of the Motion to Enforce, click here.
Governor Rick Scott kicked off his five-city “Fighting for Florida’s Future Victory” tour at Jungle Island in Miami to celebrate the major wins for Florida families and students during last week’s legislative special session. The tour is highlighting an all-time high of K-12 per-pupil spending, the establishment of the $85 million Florida Job Growth Grant Fund, full funding for VISIT FLORIDA, and $50 million to kick-start repairs to the Herbert Hoover Dike surrounding Lake Okeechobee. Governor Scott was joined by House Speaker Richard Corcoran and local legislators. The tour also made a stop at the South Florida Water Management District in West Palm Beach and will continue in Fort Myers, Tampa and Jacksonville.
Senate President Joe Negron said, “I am grateful to Governor Scott for his commitment to fighting for Florida’s future in several key areas this session. From unprecedented per student funding for K-12 public education, to historic investments in student financial aid and higher education operations and infrastructure, Governor Scott and the Florida Legislature have prioritized Florida’s public education system in a manner that will provide a strong return on investment for taxpayers. Critical investments in our environment through the passage of Senate Bill 10 and funds to expedite the repair of the Herbert Hoover Dike will protect the health of our citizens and our economy in communities surrounding Lake Okeechobee for generations to come, while strategic funding for tourism marketing and economic development provide important tools that lead to a vibrant job market and growing economy. Additionally, Governor Scott and the Florida Legislature have demonstrated fidelity to the Constitution through legislation that fully and faithfully implements medical use of marijuana, as well as a number of other key pieces of legislation that protect the constitutional liberties of freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and other rights we hold so dear.”
Nearly 200 League members gathered in Fort Lauderdale Beach on Friday and Saturday at their State Convention to make decisions that will help direct and shape the League of Women Voters of Florida for the next two years.
But the overriding headline was the League’s explosive 65% membership growth this past year. LWVF is now the second largest state league in the country. Orange County with more than 750 members is now the second largest local league in the country, followed by third place Palm Beach and St. Petersburg fourth. A number of Leagues throughout the State have doubled their membership.
This is a year of which we can all be proud,” said LWVF President Pamela Goodman. “Our non-partisan, multi-position stand is drawing new members daily. But it is not just a question of numbers, it is the energy, knowledge, and determination of our members that makes Florida an example to Leagues throughout the nation. Our historical process is one of credibility and integrity. In the end, we make things happen.
The Open Primary Study, which achieved consensus earlier this year by its membership, was added to the League’s statewide positions. The aim of the study, which was headed by Orange County’s Michele Levy, and took two years to complete, was to examine ways to increase voter participation in primary elections. It recommended “statewide use of an Open Primary election system that would allow for the broadest possible voter participation, including No Party and Minor Party affiliate voters.<
Vikram Amar, dean of the University of Illinois College of Law, who spoke on the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, said that slavery was the biggest single driver behind the Electoral College. Dr. Amar said that today the Electoral College benefits from just a handful of states. “It is a good moment in U.S. history to change the Electoral College rules,” he said. “…we need a standard, national ballot
Additionally, The League formally began their work as a coalition partner in the campaign to get the citizen initiative regarding Restoration of Former Felons Rights on the 2018 ballot and discussed their role in the Constitution Revision Commission process.
There were workshops, caucuses and meetings, as well as time to make friends, influence people and hear words of wisdom from the League’s National President Chris Carson, Rick Christie, editorial page editor Palm Beach Post, former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fl., and Chris Hand, the senator’s co-author of “America The Owner’s Manual.”
Officers and Board Directors were also elected. Goodman, from Palm Beach County League, was re-elected as President for an additional 2 year term.
The remaining Board elected are:
1st Vice President: Patti Brigham,
2nd Vice President: Cecile Scoon,
Secretary: Pat Drago
Treasurer: Theresa Francis-Thomas
Board Members: Shawn Bartelt, Anna Eskamani, Lisa Hall, Julie Kessel, and Michele Levy
Nominating Committee: LaVonne Grayson, Mary Gutierrez, and Maggie Fernandez
The League of Women Voters of Florida, a nonpartisan political organization, encourages informed and active participation in government, works to increase understanding of major public policy issues, and influences public policy through education and advocacy. For more information, please visit the League’s website at: www.TheFloridaVoter.org.
