“Here in Florida, we’re seeing some strong numbers that show positive momentum for the state’s housing recovery and our economy,” said 2012 Florida Realtors President Summer Greene, regional manager of Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Florida 1st in Fort Lauderdale.

The statewide median sales price for single-family existing homes in April was $144,350, up 10.2 percent from the year-ago figure, according to data from Florida Realtors Industry Data and Analysis department, and vendor partner 10K Research and Marketing. The statewide median for townhome-condo properties was $108,000, up 16.1 percent over April 2011.

Statewide sales of existing single-family homes totaled 17,544 in April, down slightly, 0.7 percent, compared to the year-ago figure. Looking at Florida’s year-to-year comparison for sales of townhomes/condos, a total of 9,765 units sold statewide last month, down 4.9 percent from those sold in April 2011.

In April, there was a 5.8-month supply of single-family homes in inventory and a 5.7-month supply for townhomes/condos, according to Florida Realtors.

“The housing numbers for the state of Florida continue to signal recovery,” said Florida Realtors Chief Economist Dr. John Tuccillo. “Sales in 2012 are above where they were in 2011, a harbinger of a third straight year of improvement. More importantly, pending sales are up dramatically, and inventory is still falling. Financing constraints still mean that a significant percentage of these will not lead to closed sales, but with the numbers up, we are confident that closed sales will continue to rise.”

Gov. Rick Scott

The current purging of Florida voter rolls began with a question asked by Gov. Rick Scott.

Last year, Scott asked the former Secretary of State Kurt Browning whether there were non U.S. citizens on Florida’s voter rolls and if those people were voting, myfoxorlando.com reports.

That conversation set the ball rolling and state officials began to work on identifying ineligible voters.

Data analyzed by the Times/Herald found that 6,934 people were removed from the rolls in the first four months of 2012, following felony convictions and that Democrats were three times more likely to be removed than Republicans.

Read More Here.

Florida’s unemployment rate declined to 8.7 percent in April from the previous month’s 9.0 percent, the Department of Economic Opportunity (DEO) announced Friday.

The April figure is 0.3 percentage points lower than March and 1.9 points lower than the 10.6 percent recorded in April 2011. Last month’s jobless rate is the lowest since January 2009.

Despite the decline, more than 800,000 Floridians remain out of work in the Sunshine State.

The U.S. unemployment rate for April was 8.1 percent, with more than 13 million people out of work.

The Hurricane Exercise will be held on Monday, May 21, through Thursday, May 24 at the State Emergency Operations Center in Tallahassee.

The purpose of the exercise is to practice Florida’s emergency plans and procedures for a potential hurricane making landfall in the state. Along with federal, local and private-sector partners, DEM will simulate emergency response efforts to manage an evolving hurricane scenario.

The 2012 Statewide Hurricane Exercise will center on the fictitious tropical system, Hurricane Gispert, named in honor of former Hillsborough County Emergency Management Director Larry Gispert. The scenario includes the fabricated storm making landfall in Florida in the Tampa Bay area during a special event with increased population.

With start of the hurricane season in two weeks, families and businesses are urged to prepare and follow the instructions of local officials if a hurricane threatens your community by knowing the nearest shelter, making an evacuation plan and having a disaster supply kit.

For more information on the Florida Division of Emergency Management and to GET A PLAN!, please visit: www.FloridaDisaster.org. Follow us on Twitter at www.Twitter.com/flsert and on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/FloridaSERT.

At an emergency meeting today and amidst calls for an independent audit of the results, rather than stick with the tougher requirements that raised the passing grade from “3.5″ to “4.0″ the Board voted to go with the “3.0″ rater.

With the passing grade returned to “3.0″ close to 81 percent of 4th graders would pass the test, about the same outcomes as last year.  Similar results are realised for 8th and 10th graders with the lower “3.0″ rater.

Prior to the start of today’s emergency meeting, Central Florida Public School Boards Coalition sent a letter to Florida Department of Education, Commissioner Gerard Robinson, recommending a “thorough external audit” of the results and cautioned against adopting an “arbitrary solution.”

Gerard said the poor results had to do with the way the test was scored and that the more stringent guidelines were not properly communicated to schools and districts.   He also said, the Department of Education would undertake an internal review “to see what happened,” the Palm Beach Post reported.

Meanwhile, Fund Education Now, a non-profit group that advocates for high quality public education said, the only possible explanation for the dismal results arose because “FCAT Writes is a multi-million dollar sham,” and the “Board of Education deliberately manipulated the grading rubric to impact the results.”

“When lobbyists, testing companies and bureaucrats can wave a wand over our childrens’ work and change it from passing to failure and back again, that’s called data manipulation. It’s also called lying,” the group said in a statement.

House Democratic Leader, Ron Saunders (D-Key West) said, “FCAT may be helpful as a diagnostic tool….. (but) it is now being misused as a measuring stick for how we assess student progress and how much we pay our school teachers.”

The decision to drop the passing score down to 3.0 is only effective for the current year.

The four public entities are Orange County Public Schools which ranked in the # 2 spot; Greater Orlando Aviation Authority (# 4); Orange County Government (#8) and the University of Central Florida (# 9). Private employers make up the remaining rankings, which not listed in the report.

In all 67 counties throughout Florida, the report found that there is no county which does not include at least one government entity in its top five largest employees and in 51 counties a single government entity is the largest employer.

The report concludes that, “the government has a massive direct effect on local economies throughout the state through employment and payroll practices, in addition to the indirect effects that government actions, such as regulation, have on the economy.”

Hence, for many counties, closure of a military base, correctional facility or significant layoffs due to federal, state, or local budget shortfalls poses a significant economic threat, the report states.

See the report: http://www.floridataxwatch.org/resources/pdf/jobsbriefing.pdf

About 21,267 unemployed Florida workers lost their jobless benefits over the week-end, as portions of the federal programs expired, according to a new report.

The loss in benefits come as a result of Republicans slashing federal programs to assist those who cannot find jobs.

Overall, some 236,000 unemployed people in eight states, including Florida, lost jobless benefits this past week-end. The other states were: California (11%), Texas (7%) Pennsylvania (7.5%), Illinois (8.8%) North Carolina (9.7%) Colorado (7.8%) and Connecticut (7.7%)

To date, 409,300 long-term unemployed Americans in 27 states will have lost upward of 20 weeks of federal unemployment benefits by this past Saturday, according to a new analysis by the National Employment Law Project (NELP).

The Florida Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments Thursday in a lawsuit that could undo hundreds of thousands of foreclosures and open up U.S. banks to severe financial liabilities in the state where they face the bulk of their foreclosure-fraud litigation.

The court is deciding whether banks who used fraudulent documents to file foreclosure lawsuits can dismiss the cases and refile them later with different paperwork.

Of all the foreclosure filings in 26 states, sixty three percent, a total of 138,288, are concentrated in five states, according to RealtyTrac, an online forclosure marketplace. Of those, nearly half are in Florida. In Congressional testimony last year, Bank of America, the U.S.’s largest mortgage servicer, said that 70 percent of its foreclosure-related lawsuits were in Florida.

Read More Here.

Steve MacNamara - chief of staff to Gov. Rick Scott

According to Tampa Bay Times:

When the Florida Senate was looking for someone to put its budget data online, it set aside $5.5 million and turned to the business partner of a close friend of the Senate’s chief of staff at the time, Steve MacNamara.

The developer of the program, Anna Jo Mattson, owns a software company with Tallahassee lawyer and lobbyist Jim Eaton, MacNamara’s long-time friend. She also owns Spider Data Services, the company that developed the software program licensed by the Senate. She said Tuesday the companies are not related.

MacNamara negotiated the contract with Mattson in February 2011 when he worked for Senate President Mike Haridopolos. He left the Senate to become Gov. Rick Scott’s chief of staff in July. To date, Mattson has been paid $5 million for development of the no-bid project. Another $2.5 million has been set aside in the governor’s 2012-13 budget to pay for access to her patented program next year.

 Read More Here.

Gov. Rick Scott signed legislation to reform auto accident fraud in Florida on Friday.

Among other things, the legislation will lower the cost of auto insurance premiums for Florida drivers by limiting fraud in Personal Injury Protection (PIP) insurance. On average, accident fraud would have cost Floridians over $1 billion if PIP was not passed.

“Growing up in a family without a lot of money, I truly understand the value of the hard-earned dollar for Florida families,” Scott said in a statement after signing the legislation. “By helping reduce fraudulent auto accident claims, this legislation will benefit the pocketbooks of every Florida family who drives an automobile. I am glad to do my part in keeping the cost of living low in Florida, and I will continue to work to find ways to do so.”

According to the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation, the number of Florida drivers has remained stable, and the frequency of crashes has declined from 2006 to 2010. In spite of these facts, the number of PIP claims opened or recorded spiked 28 percent, while the payment on PIP claims jumped 66 percent during the same period.  The legislation is aimed at preventing this fraud.