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FAIR, Industry Leaders Call on Florida Legislature to Extend Sales Tax Holiday to Cover Home Hardening Materials

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As the Florida Legislature considers creating two disaster preparedness sales tax holidays, the Florida Association for Insurance Reform (FAIR) and industry leaders are urging that home hardening materials be added as part of the eligible items to be exempted.

“Home hardening is an essential part of stepping up preparation and being able to weather storms to reduce property damage and loss of life,” said Jay Neal, President and CEO of FAIR. “Providing a good and reasonable financial incentive for Floridians to take action steps to harden their homes could reduce our state’s losses in the next storm – and everyone would benefit from reduced insurance costs.”

The legislation – PCS/CS/SB 620 – provides for two 7-day sales tax holidays on a host of items related to disaster readiness, from batteries to generators. But the bill does not currently extend to items like impact-resistant windows/doors and hurricane straps, which could make Florida homes significantly better able to withstand a serious storm. FAIR research shows that for every $1 of investment in mitigation, Florida saves $4 or more in costs post-hurricane.

PGT Innovations President and CEO Jeff Jackson said a sales tax holiday for home hardening materials would also be a boon to Florida’s economy. PGT Innovations, a publicly traded company and Sarasota County’s largest private employer, is the nation’s leading manufacturer and supplier of high-quality impact-resistant windows and doors.

“People put off major purchases that could make their homes so much safer,” Jackson said. “A sales tax holiday could be just the thing to positively prompt Floridians to make smart investments in hardening their homes, instead of putting it off and crossing their fingers.”

Jackson praised the bill sponsor, Sen. Kathleen Passidomo, and co-sponsors, Sen. Greg Steube and Sen. Dana Young, for their leadership in sponsoring the hurricane preparedness sales tax holiday and said that extending it to home hardening materials would significantly enhance its positive impact for all Floridians.

Jackson said a flurry of new construction-related activity related to home hardening could put Floridians to work while making the state more disaster-resistant. “This idea could trigger a round of economic activity that benefits the state, Florida homeowners, and the economy,” said Jackson.

Companies like PGT Innovations – which houses PGT Windows & Doors, CGI Windows & Doors, and WinDoor – have pioneered innovations that make construction materials such as windows and doors much better able to withstand hurricane-force storms, which experts say are occurring more frequently. But many older homes – even homes built as recently as 5-10 years ago – don’t often already reflect the latest technology.

FAIR, which advocates for all Florida consumers to have affordable, quality property insurance coverage, fully supports the tax holiday for home hardening materials. Neal said Florida has positioned itself as a national leader in strengthening and holding the line on a unified statewide standard building code. Offering a sales tax holiday to promote home hardening would further establish Florida as a leader, making the state the most disaster-ready and best able to withstand a storm despite its natural geographic vulnerabilities.

For more information or media inquiries, email Lisa Garcia [email protected].

The Florida Lottery Invites You to Win Big With the CASH4LIFE® Bonus Bucks Promotion

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TALLAHASSEE – The Lottery is celebrating the one year anniversary of Florida’s CASH4LIFE® launch during the month of February with a promotion giving away cash prizes and Scratch-Off tickets.

Starting today, through February 28, each CASH4LIFE ticket, excluding those purchased as part of a GROUPER play, will print with a voucher that includes a unique number that can be entered on the Lottery’s website to earn one entry into the Bonus Bucks promotion. One drawing will be held on March 2, 2018, from all entries received during the month of February. Twenty-eight winners will be selected to receive $1,000, and 72 winners will be selected to receive $100 worth of $1,000 A WEEK FOR LIFE Scratch-Off tickets.

The next CASH4LIFE drawing will be held tonight, February 1, at 9:00 p.m. ET. Tickets must be purchased by 8:30 p.m. ET to be eligible for this drawing. CASH4LIFE 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.

 

ABOUT THE FLORIDA LOTTERY

The Florida Lottery is responsible for contributing more than $32 billion to education and sending more than 775,000 students to college through the Bright Futures Scholarship Program. The Florida Lottery reinvests 98 percent of its revenue back into Florida’s economy through prize payouts, commissions to more than 13,000 Florida retailers and contributions to education. Since 1988, Florida Lottery games have paid more than $56.3 billion in prizes and made more than 2,000 people millionaires. For more information, please visitwww.flalottery.com.

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Just Imagine®

FEMA reverses decision, will continue distributing food and water aid to Puerto Rico

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Under pressure from lawmakers such as U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), who took to the Senate floor yesterday to call on FEMA to continue providing aid to the people of Puerto Rico “until all of the island has access to potable water and electricity,” FEMA officials reportedly said today that the agency has reversed its decision to end the distribution of food and water aid to the people of Puerto Rico and will continue providing food and water to communities in need.

“The people of Puerto Rico are still struggling to recover from two massive hurricanes, and cutting off aid to them now would have been a travesty,” Nelson said today. “Reversing this disastrous decision was the right thing to do.”

Here’s a background article on the agency’s decision today:

In Reversal, FEMA Says It Won’t End Puerto
Rico Food And Water Distribution Wednesday

By Adrian Florido
Published: Jan. 31, 2018

A spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Wednesday that the agency’s plan to end its distribution of emergency food and water in Puerto Rico and turn that responsibility over to the Puerto Rican government would not take effect on Jan. 31.

“Provision of those commodities will continue,” spokesman William Booher said. A different spokesperson, Delyris Aquino-Santiago, had earlier told NPR that it would “officially shut off” its food and water mission on the island on Jan. 31 and hand its remaining food and water supplies over to the Puerto Rican government to finish distributing. But on Wednesday, Booher said that date “was mistakenly provided.”

The agency has been working on that transition but has not finalized it, he said, adding that in the meantime, FEMA will continue providing food and water to communities on the island that need them.

The turnabout came after politicians from both political parties reacted angrily to news of FEMA’s plan and after the Puerto Rican government released a statement saying it had not been informed of the impending change. On Tuesday, lawmakers from both parties had called on the agency to reverse its decision.

Speaking on the Senate floor, Florida Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson said he was “absolutely shocked” by FEMA’s decision. “I urge the administration to reverse this disastrous decision immediately and to continue providing the people of Puerto Rico with the help that they need as they are trying to recover from two disastrous hurricanes.”

His concerns were echoed by Democrats and Republicans alike, including Democratic Rep. Nydia Velazquez of New York and Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.

“There are still a lot of people that wonder why we are giving foreign aid to Puerto Rico,” Rubio told USA Today. “You have to remind them, Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory and its residents are U.S. citizens.”

But perhaps the most surprising reaction came from the government of Puerto Rico itself. In a statement, the island’s public security secretary, Hector Pesquera, said that while he was aware that FEMA would eventually transfer responsibility for distributing food and water supplies over to the island’s government, “this has not happened yet and we were not informed that supplies would stop arriving.”

His statement contradicted information that FEMA sent NPR in an email last week. An agency spokeswoman wrote that “FEMA will continue to provide commodities to the State [Puerto Rico] until January 31st.”

But as public concerns mounted over FEMA’s plans following NPR’s report, the agency released a new statement. While reiterating its belief that emergency food and water supplies were no longer needed on the island, it said that FEMA would “continue to support the Government of Puerto Rico to meet the needs they identify.”

Spokesman Booher said one thing that had not changed was FEMA’s plan to end the shipment of new food and water supplies to Puerto Rico. He said the agency is confident it has enough of a stockpile there already to meet the need that remain. If supplies run out, he said FEMA would reconsider purchasing more. He did not say when the agency would finalize its plan to hand the remaining supplies over to the Puerto Rican government.

Senators request independent review of administration’s actions to combat opioid crisis

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U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) and others sent a letter to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) today requesting an independent review of the actions taken by the administration to address the opioid epidemic since he declared it a public health emergency.

President Trump directed the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to declare the opioid crisis a public health emergency on Oct. 26, 2017. Despite that declaration, the administration has yet to officially allocate new funds to address the crisis and, instead, has proposed funding cuts to several agencies responding to the crisis.

“Given the severity of the crisis, we have grown increasingly concerned by reports that the President has done little to make use of his public health emergency declaration, leaving state and local communities without the resources they need to fight the opioid epidemic,” the senators wrote. “Despite saying it would work with Congress, the White House has put forward no proposals for authorizing new funding.”

To ensure the federal government is utilizing all resources available, the senators have asked the GAO to review, specifically, what resources are available to the executive branch and what steps they have taken to combat the opioid crisis since declaring the crisis a public health emergency.

An estimated 2.6 million Americans suffer from opioid use disorder and, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 42,000 people died from opioid-involved overdoses in 2016. In Florida alone, more than 5,200 people have died from an opioid-related event in 2016 – a 35 percent increase from the year before.

The president’s initial emergency declaration expired on Jan. 23, 2018. On Jan. 24, Acting HHS Secretary Eric Hargan extended the emergency for another 90 days.

In addition to Nelson, the letter was signed by Sens. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Edward Markey (D-Mass.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Bob Casey (D-Pa.), Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Cory Booker (D-NJ), and Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.).

A copy of the lawmakers’ letter is here.

Wauchula man claims top prize in new FLORIDA 20X THE CASH Scratch-Off game

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The Florida Lottery announces that Salvador DeLoera, 42, of Wauchula, claimed a $1 million top prize in the FLORIDA 20X THE CASH Scratch-Off game at Florida Lottery Headquarters in Tallahassee. He chose to receive his winnings as a one-time, lump-sum payment of $770,000.00.

DeLoera purchased his winning ticket from Cardena Tienda Mexicana 2, located at 1775 North Florida Avenue in Wauchula. The retailer will receive a $2,000 bonus commission for selling the winning Scratch-Off ticket.

The new $5 game, FLORIDA 20X THE CASH, launched on January 15, and features 14 top prizes of $1 million, and more than $110 million in cash prizes. The game’s overall odds of winning are one-in-4.22.

Scratch-Offs are an important part of the Lottery’s portfolio of games, generating more than $784 million for the Educational Enhancement Trust Fund (EETF) in FY 2016-17, and comprising approximately 68 percent of ticket sales.

UCF Seeks New Way to Mine Moon for Water

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UCF’s Phil Metzger and Juliet Brisset from the Florida Space Institute recently landed a contract to develop a model to mine the moon for water.

Data suggests the moon has water locked away in its icy soil, especially at the moon’s poles. The challenge is finding an effective and inexpensive way to get it.

Water is important because its chemical composition could be split into hydrogen and oxygen, which could then be made into rocket fuel. The ability to generate rocket fuel in space could open up more launch possibilities and reduce costs for transportation throughout lunar space and beyond.

Metzger and Brisset aim to come up with a viable method to extract the water. The idea would be to drill holes deep into the moon and pump heat through the holes to warm the regolith underground, which has water locked in frigid ice chunks. As the regolith warms up, the water would be released as vapor and collected through pipes in the hole.

Others have proposed having big equipment dig for the water and drag ice chunks to processing plants on the moon. But the proposed process may require equipment that has less mass and be more reliable than the wheeled digging equipment needed dig up piles of regolith and haul it to processing plants that would extract the water. By extracting the water in-place in the ground, there would be no need to move tons of soil around, Metzger said.

“When you talk about getting things into space, weight matters,” he said. “So we are looking at a technique that would require less stuff you have to transport which still gets the job done.”

Mining the moon is a focus of many researchers around the nation. But most are investigating techniques that collect and process the regolith of the moon rather than the ice. The regolith is the unconsolidated residual material that overlies the solid rock.

The United Launch Alliance (ULA) has contracted the UCF duo to find out if their proposed method is realistic and cost effective.

“Procuring propellant derived from the Moon may be substantially less expensive than hauling the propellant out of Earth’s deep gravity well,” said Bernard Kutter, ULA’s chief scientist. “This in turn could reduce the cost of space transportation by as much as a factor of five.”

Those who can figure out a way to tap into water in space may be in a position to mine it and sell it for a variety of uses from life support systems and rocket fuel to radiation shielding and drinking water for space explorers.

Metzger, a planetary physicist who worked at Kennedy Space Center where he co-founded KSC Swampworks before joining UCF, is leading the project. Brisset, a research associate at the institute who has multiple degrees in mechanical and space engineering as well as physics, will work on the algorithms to run the computer simulations they hope will lead to a viable model. They also plan to hire a student to help with the testing.

The biggest challenge is a matter of geometry, Brisset said.

The team already has data that indicates heating the moon’s underground is possible. But converting the lunar ice into vapor requires high temperatures and unfortunately most of the heat will travel away through the lunar soil and be wasted.

“We have to figure out the right geometric configuration of the holes to increase the area that is heated,” Brisset said. “If we do it right, we should be able to increase the area and the time it stays warm. We will be doing a lot of modeling.”

FWC to meet Feb. 7-8 near Tallahassee

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The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) will meet Feb. 7-8 at the Florida Public Safety Institute, 85 Academy Drive, Havana, FL 32333. The Institute is west of Midway on U.S. 90. Both sessions are open to the public.
The FWC is committed to providing opportunity for public input at each Commission meeting. As standard practice, the Commission welcomes public input regarding agenda items using the approved speaker registration process and time limits. To accommodate as much input as possible from those attending, the Chairman reserves the right to designate the amount of time given to each speaker, including time donation to other speakers.
The meeting will start at 8:30 a.m., and the public will be provided opportunities to speak on agenda items each day. The Commission will also provide time for public comment on subjects not on the agenda at the end of the first day, Feb. 7. Those who wish to offer comments during this period will be asked to make sure their comments are not related to any agenda item.
For the full Feb. 7-8 agenda and links to background reports, go to MyFWC.com/Commission and select “Commission Meetings.” Those who cannot attend can follow coverage at Twitter.com/MyFWC (@MyFWC) and join in the conversation by using the #FWC2017 hashtag. Check the Florida Channel for possible live video coverage at TheFloridaChannel.org.

FDLE arrests former Veterans Foundation director for grand theft

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Agents with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement arrested 57-year-old Antonio Colmenares and 60-year-old Antonio Sabatier, both of Miami, on first-degree grand theft related to more than $300,000 worth of donated items to the Florida Veterans Foundation (FVF).
The FVF is a nonprofit that offers support to the Florida Department of Veterans’ Affairs (FDVA).
Colmenares, of 4345 SW 10th St., was a volunteer as the Miami Director for the FVF; Sabatier, of 4247 SW 10th St., is a close friend of Colmenares. He did not have an appointed position with the FVF.
In March 2015, FDLE received a complaint from the state Department of Veterans’ Affairs alleging a theft of disaster blankets and ready-to-eat emergency meals. The items had been provided to FVF by a Tampa-area nonprofit agency to be used for an event to help homeless veterans in Miami. Colmenares had organized the event. During the investigation, agents found that in February 2015 Colmenares and Sabatier arranged for the sale of more than 27,000 blankets and 9,700 meals instead of using the items for their intended purpose. The proceeds from the sale of the items totaled $46,800 and did not benefit FVF but were deposited into an account of Nike Management, a company owned by Sabatier.
The investigation uncovered that other donated items, such as sleeping bags, cots and back packs, were also sold for profit. Colmenares and Sabatier sold most of the items to Worldwide Tactical, a Miami company, on three different occasions: April 2014, February 2015 and May 2015 for a total of $79,394.41. Worldwide Tactical had no knowledge the items were being sold illegally.
“These donated items should have gone to help feed and warm veterans struggling to get back on their feet—instead they were sold to fatten the pockets of those charged with preying on the good intentions of others,” said Attorney General Pam Bondi. “I want to thank FDLE for their tireless efforts investigating this case and working with my Office of Statewide Prosecution. I also want to commend the Florida Department of Veterans’ Affairs for immediately contacting law enforcement about the alleged theft so an investigation could be opened.”
FDLE Commissioner Rick Swearingen said: “These items were donated with the express purpose to help our veterans who unselfishly serve our country. To take advantage of any opportunity that would benefit them is indefensible.”
The Inspector General’s Office of the FDVA assisted with this investigation. Both Colmenares and Sabatier were booked in the Miami-Dade Jail on a $20,000 bond each.

Gov. Scott: Florida Job Demand Outpaced the Nation

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More than 7,000 Job Openings Added in the Last Year

Governor Rick Scott today announced that job demand in Florida increased by 2.8 percent over-the-year in December by adding 7,342 job openings. Florida’s job demand outpaced the nation’s demand, which increased by only 0.3 percent over-the-year in December. There were a total of 265,244 job openings across Florida in December, according to Help Wanted OnLine. In December, Florida also had the fourth-highest over-the-year increase in job openings out of the 10 most populous states.
Governor Rick Scott said, “I am proud to announce that Florida job demand outpaced the nation last year, further proving that Florida remains an ideal location to find a good job and raise a family. Florida businesses are hiring here because we have worked every day for the past seven years to cut taxes and reduce regulations to make it easier for job creators to invest in creating new opportunities. Last year was a great year for families to find the jobs needed to succeed and we look forward to another year of economic growth across our state.”
In December, more than 68,000 advertised positions were in STEM-related fields. The top occupation in demand continued to be registered nurses, with nearly 14,000 openings across the state. The job demand over-the-year growth rate was highest in the following cities: Hollywood, Tallahassee, Gainesville and Melbourne. Hollywood had the highest percentage gain in online job demand over-the-year, with job ads climbing 29.2 percent since December 2016. Over the last year, Florida businesses also created more jobs than any other state in the trade, transportation and utilities industry, with 33,600 new jobs.
Florida Department of Economic Opportunity Executive Director Cissy Proctor said, “Our state’s job demand over-the-year is growing more than nine times faster than the nation’s. This rapid pace is due to the vast amount of small, medium and large businesses that want to hire hardworking, qualified Floridians. Our goal is to match jobseekers with these openings and ensure that every Floridian who is looking for an opportunity is able to find one.”

Monofilament recycling website gets new look, interactive map

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Do you know how or where to recycle your used monofilament or fluorocarbon fishing line? How about how to prevent your fishing gear from negatively impacting wildlife and their habitat?
You can learn all of this and more by visiting the newly updated Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) Monofilament Recovery and Recycling Program’s website at MRRP.MyFWC.com.
Use this website to locate a monofilament recycling bin near you by using the new interactive recycling bin map; watch a video on how to make your own monofilament recycling bin; join an existing organized cleanup event or create your own; or learn about our many statewide and national partners.
Don’t forget to join our community online by following us at Facebook.com/FloridaMRRP.