Governor Charlie Crist undertook a multi-city tour of ceremonial bill-signings Wednesday – touting the unemployment compensation tax delay approved by lawmakers and signed officially by Crist on last week’s opening day of session. The measure postpones what had been a scheduled twelvefold increase in the tax paid by employers that would have been due April 1.

At a Capitol ceremony, Crist and legislative leaders from both parties, flanked by business representatives hailing the two-year delay.

The state has already borrowed $1.2 billion from the federal government to sidestep the tax increase and keep the bankrupt unemployment compensation trust fund afloat, even as unemployment nears 12 percent.

Florida will continue to pull on average $225 million-a-month from the federal treasury to maintain the trust fund.

State officials must begin repaying hundreds of millions of dollars in interest beginning in 2011.

Business organizations, which last year agreed to the increase that is now rolled back, have said they are hoping the Obama administration will forgive unemployment debts run up by Florida and other states.

Crist shrugged off the longterm budget impact. “The important thing is what can we do for the people today,” Crist said. “We are operating in the present and we’re trying to do everything we can to help the people right now. ..a lot of people won’t be here, two years from now, myself included. But I think we will have good committed people who will take care of the issue at that time.”

Similarly, Crist said he had no commitment from business groups that they’ll not seek to again overturn the tax two years from now. “We’ll worry about that two years from now,” Crist said.

Crist visited Orlando, Tampa, Fort Myers and Miami on Wednesday.

Source: newsserviceflorida.com

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By Kathleen Haughney
The News Service of Florida

A Senate panel approved on Wednesday a package of bills that would overhaul Florida’s public education system, creating a system of merit pay for teachers and increasing the amount of math and science a student needs to pass to graduate.

“It’s a Nixon goes to China type of thing,” said Sen. John Thrasher, R- St. Augustine, who is sponsoring the teacher merit pay legislation. “It’s a major move, and there’s nothing wrong with that. If anyone believes the status quo in education is OK then they’ve got their head in the sand.”

The merit pay bill, SB 6, would throw the status quo out the window, tying teacher pay to how well their students perform on standardized exams and putting teachers on annual contracts. And if schools don’t participate in a merit pay system, then the state will hold back funding, making it likely the school board would have to levy a tax on local residents to compensate for the lost dollars.

The bill, a pet proposal of the Jeb Bush-based Foundation for Florida’s Future, won easy passage through the Senate Education Pre-K-12 Committee Wednesday, passing on a party line vote of 6-2. But Democrats and the Florida Education Association, which backed Bush’s 2002 gubernatorial rival, have begun a full scale offensive against the legislation.

Supporters say it will root out ineffective teachers and create better learning gains among students. But opponents argue the legislation could do more harm than good. Sen. Frederica Wilson, D-Miami, said that the bill doesn’t take into consideration students who come from different backgrounds or have families that may not be supportive of their child’s school work.

“We have to remember that education is a evolving process and our children come to us with many experiences,” Wilson said. “They don’t all come to us from the same cookie cutter homes. And we have to take them where they are and teach them where they are.”

Wayne Blanton, director of the Florida School Boards Association, told committee members that the legislation still needed a lot of work and that he was particularly troubled over the taxation penalty that will be forced upon schools if they don’t enact a merit pay schedule. He also warned that it could have a devastating impact on teachers.

“This bill has done more to damage morale than anything I’ve seen in a long time,” he said.

School boards are also grappling with the changes that could come with the heightened graduation standards bill being pushed by Sen. Nancy Detert, R-Venice.

Under the bill – also approved by the committee Wednesday – all would eventually have to take geometry, two years of algebra, biology, chemistry or physics and an additional “rigorous” science course. The class requirements would be phased in as would end-of-course examinations, which would eventually replace the state’s current standardized exam, the FCAT.

Students would have to pass the end-of-course exams in algebra one and two, biology, and chemistry or physics as the exams are phased in to receive course credit.

Similar legislation passed the House last year, but faltered in the Senate. Detert said she believes this year will be different because the package of bills in the overhaul might give the state a leg up in its quest for the federal Race to the Top grant, which could give the state $1 billion in education funding.

Florida has been named a finalist for the federal dollars and state officials should find out in April if the state will receive the money. The major tenets of the state’s application for the money call for the enactment of merit pay and stricter graduation standards.

Rocky Hanna, the principal at Leon High School in Tallahassee, said principals across the state have some concerns about the legislation, particularly how it will affect graduation rates. Hanna said Leon High School currently has an 87 percent graduation rate, but many of his students never set foot in a chemistry class. He said he is worried the graduation rate could drop by as much as 30 percent.

“You can’t even join the military without a high school diploma,” he said.

Detert’s bill, SB 4, and Thrasher’s bill, SB 6, both go to the Senate Ways and Means Committee next. A House version of merit pay is expected to debut some time next week, and the House’s graduation standards legislation has already passed one committee and now has stops at the Education Policy Council and the Full Appropriations Council on Education & Economic Development.

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Days after drawing criticism from his Democratic rival, Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill McCollum endorsed a GOP senator’s proposal Tuesday to enhance investigations of Medicaid managed care.

With close to half of Florida’s 2.6 million Medicaid patients now in managed care, Sen. Joe Negron, R-Stuart, in promoting legislation (SB aimed at adding additional staff to the state’s chief financial officer to pursue Medicaid and public assistance fraud.

The move comes as lawmakers in both the House and Senate look to trim some of the skyrocketing $19 billion Medicaid program by steering more low-income Floridians to HMOs.

McCollum’s involvement also comes just days after Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, his leading rival for governor, criticized the attorney general for a declining success rate in Medicaid fraud investigations. Sink said the number of probes conducted by McCollum’s office last year is roughly half that conducted as recently as four years ago.

McCollum disputed Sink’s findings, saying his office had recovered $198 million for the state through his Medicaid Fraud Control Unit.

The Fraud Strike Force envisioned under Negron’s bill – priced at $1.5 million — would be part of the CFO’s office. The legislation is likely to earn a fast track in the Senate, where Senate President Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, is considered the frontrunner to win the CFO’s post, succeeding Sink. The strike force would include 11 leaders from across state government, an effort that is intended to improve coordination between various agencies involved in public assistance programs.

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In his remarks on health insurance reform in St. Charles, Missouri, President Obama announced today a new effort to to crack down on waste and fraud in Medicare, Medicaid, and other government programs through the expanded use of payment recapture audits.

President Obama pitches his health care reform proposal in St. Charles, Missouri. (Photo credit: White House)

In explaining this new effort, the president said that taxpayer dollars will be recouped through the use of payment recapture audits, which offer specialized private auditors financial incentives to root out improper payments and payment errors.  It is anticipated that the audits could return at least $2 billion in taxpayer money over the next three years– double the current amount of projected recovered costs, the president said.

Obama also announced his support for the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act, bipartisan legislation to expand the government’s ability to fund the audits with recaptured payments.

“The fact is, Washington is a place where tax dollars are often treated like Monopoly money, bartered and traded, divvied up among lobbyists and special interests.  And it has been a place where waste – even billions of dollars in waste – is accepted as the price of doing business,” said President Obama. “Well, I don’t accept business as usual.  And the American people don’t accept it either, especially when one of the most pressing challenges we face is reining in long-term deficits with threaten to leave our children a mountain of debt.”

In discussing health care reform, the president explained that the proposal rests on three main pillars, (i) ending the worst practices of insurance companies (ii) creating a market place which will provide affordable health care options and (iii) reducing costs for families, businesses and the government.

The proposal is anticipated to reduce the federal deficit by $1 trillion over the next decade and as well, reduce premiums.

“So here’s the bottom line, St. Charles. There’s no government takeover, unless you consider reining in insurance companies a government takeover — and I think that’s the right thing to do,” Obama said. “There’s no cutting of Medicare benefits. There’s just cutting out fraud and waste in Medicare to make it stronger.”

Obama said that the health care reform proposal is a common-sense approach aimed at protecting Americans from insurance company abuses and saving money.  He opined that Congress owes the American people a final up and down vote on health care reform.

“The time for talk is over; it’s time to vote,” the president said.

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Florida Back to Work Program is set to receive its first installment of $61.2 million in funds from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, to be administered by the Agency for Workforce Innovation (AWI), it was announced today.  The funds are part of $200 million that the state will receive.

The funds are meant to support the hiring and training of new employees by businesses.

Florida Back to Work uses federal dollars to pay for up to 95 percent of a new hire’s salary.  New employees must meet federal low-income guidelines and have a dependent child in the home to be eligible for the positions.

The Florida Department of Children and Families has successfully used similar federal funding to open a call center in Ocala last year. The call center is helping to serve Floridians needing help with temporary assistance while employing dozens of Floridians.

To date, AWI received more than 1,100 applications from employers and businesses throughout the state.  These proposals include a wide range of businesses, including local government and non-profit organizations, restaurants, manufacturing companies and child care centers.  The majority of the jobs will fall in the $9- to $14-per-hour range.

AWI estimates Florida Back to Work will create as many as 10,000 direct jobs and 15,000 indirect jobs through additional economic activity.  Although federal funding for the program ends in September, the goal of Florida Back to Work is that participating businesses will retain the new employees.

To learn more about the workforce services and resources available in Florida, visit: www.EmployFlorida.com.

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By Kathleen Haughney
The News Service of Florida

A bill approved by a Senate panel Tuesday would establish parole for adolescent offenders, making it likely that life sentences for juveniles would be eliminated.

The case comes just months after the U.S. Supreme Court heard two cases on whether life sentences for juvenile offenders constituted cruel and unusual punishment. The issue was heard through two separate cases in October, Graham v. Florida and Sullivan v. Florida, which involved two Florida men who were sentenced to life as children, even though the circumstances surrounding the cases were questionable.

The measure (SB 184) wouldn’t allow for that to take place, establishing parole for kids who committed a crime when they were 15-years-old or younger and were sentenced to more than 10 years in prison.

The bill was championed in the past by the late Sen. Jim King, R-Jacksonville, but is now being sponsored by Sen. Arthenia Joyner, D-Tampa. Sen. Gary Siplin, D-Orlando, who was presenting the measure to the Senate Criminal Justice Committee on behalf of Joyner, said the legislation was meant to give children who screwed up a “second chance.”

“This bill does not excuse those acts,” Siplin said.

In the October Supreme Court Case, lawyers for Sullivan argued that life without parole was a “vanishingly rare occurrence,” but the state defended its position.

“The states have sovereign responsibility over their own criminal justice systems, and their legislatures decide the appropriate mix of punishment, deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation in determining appropriate prison sentences,” Attorney General Bill McCollum’s office wrote in his brief on the case.

Brittany Black, a third year law student at Florida State who works on child advocacy issues, told the committee that the number of offenders that this would affect would be fairly low.

“But they are truly unique, truly exceptional and truly deserve a second chance at life,” Black said.

The panel approved the bill 6-1, with Sen. Victor Crist, R-Tampa, voting against it. The measure is next slated for the Senate Criminal and Civil Justice Appropriations Committee, which is chaired by Crist. The House bill (HB 23) was passed by the Public Safety & Domestic Security Policy Committee, and is now before the House Criminal and Civil Justice Appropriations Committee.

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Two men were arrested today and charged with a home invasion and robbery last November 2009, but Orange County Sheriff’s Office detectives believe that, along with several other suspects, the two are also involved in a string of robberies to Full Sail University students.

According to OCSO:

Ongoing investigation into November ’09 home invasion leads to identification of several suspects and two arrests in up to 11 robberies to Full Sail University Students

Orange County Robbery Detectives have arrested two men they believe are responsible for at least 11 robberies or attempted robberies dating back to November, 2009.  Investigators believe the two men are a part of a group of possibly four men who have been targeting Full Sail University students for robberies between November, 2009 and February, 2010.

Danorris Balkcom, 25, was arrested on March 9, 2009 on a warrant for a November, 2009 home invasion/robbery at the Whisper Lake Apartments in which expensive home electronics equipment was taken.  Balkcom’s associate in the Whisper Lakes robbery, Ansel Bell, 21, was picked up on a warrant for home invasion/robbery on March 3, 2010.

Tips, investigative leads, and a collaborative effort among several Orange County Sheriff’s units enabled investigators to develop the two men as suspects in that robbery.  At this time the pair have only been charged with the Whisper Lakes home invasion but investigators confirm that they are suspects in the criminal activity targeting the students.

Orange County detectives are continuing with their investigation.

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The world has literally found itself in a unique position as it stretches its hands in need to people who need help on 3 regions of the world.  The earthquake in Haiti, Chile, and Taiwan has quickly reminded us how devastating Mother Nature can be at a moment’s notice.    When I see the people in these regions of the world, my mind instantly thinks of pictures and videos of the devastation in Hurricane Katrina.   In the last 5 years, we have seen nature exact her fury on our people on levels of almost a biblical proportion.

Hurricane Katrina, Downed Buras-Louisiana watertower

Coming from the relatively Flat state of Arkansas, I totally understand the unpredictability of nature and how destructive it can be.  I lived in what was so affectionately referred to as “TORNADO ALLEY” and let me tell you, you don’t know fear unless you’ve found yourself in a position where an F5 140 mph+  tornado is flying over head.  NO sir! It’s not sexy at all!   And, of course, no one will forget about the awesome blizzards that have just crossed our country.  Snow covered 25 of 50 states and lasted all the way into March.

Now, I know you aren’t reading this to merely listen to me recite the facts and stats of which you are already aware.  I’m here because I’m HOPING that with all of these natural disasters and major weather systems coming through that you are conscious of the fact that we are JUST getting into the groove of the weather system.

We have about 3 months before Hurricane Season kicks in and you can expect the temperature to start getting hot around May.  That’s right, my friends, HEAT and HURRICANES are on the menu AGAIN!

So with that being said, I think it’s only appropriate that I share with you some tips to prepare you for the ‘rump shaker’ weather system that is fast coming upon us:

1)      PHONE ROSTER.  Get your phone roster ready and make sure at least ONE person has a land line.  I hate to be the bearer of bad news but how do you plan on making a call if the cell phone lines go down.

2)      ZIP LOCK BAGS.   Keep all of your personal effects that you need to keep dry or safe in a bag that you can grab at a moment’s notice.

3)      ELDERLY CHECK.  If you have friends or relatives that are elderly, make sure their A/C works. Make sure they have ice and water.  Get them OUT of the house if their house is a HOT BOX. More importantly, make sure that someone can get them if need be.

4)      GAS TANK.  I know times are tight but I’ve had the opportunity to try and find a gas station during a hurricane and you would be amazed how empty the pumps are at that time.

5)      INSURANCE.  Make sure you let your insurance company know when a disaster is on its way.  They probably know already.

6)      DESTINATION.  If you gotta roll on a dime, know where you’re going.  Put your destination spot on point so they know that they are going to have visitors.

7)      ADVANCE NOTICE.   Don’t trust that people outside of your region follows the weather IN your region.  Call them and give them a heads up.

8)      YOU.  In the end, remember, YOU are the most valuable property that there is.  You can get more cars, sculptures and pictures but you can’t replace you so LOOK after yourself.

I know that a lot of this is common sense but you would surprised how many people take for granted that you have to prepare for Mother Nature to strike.  Remember, Mother Nature is on her OWN clock.

Anthony Reeves is an attorney at law and host of the blog talk radio “Legal Beat in the Morning” and “In the Know”.  He may be reached at anthony@reevesfirm.com or visit his website at: www.reevesfirm.com

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Hot off their win against the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers, the Magic cruised to a 113 – 87 win against the other LA team.

Superman Dwight Howard, Orlando Magic

Before Tuesday night’s game with the Clippers, Coach Van Gundy celebrated his team for their performance against the Lakers, but added that the same intensity needs to be present during every game, not just when they play the league’s best.

Clearly, the Magic took their coach’s words to heart as they dominated the 25 and 39 Clippers Tuesday night at the Amway Arena.

Superman Dwight Howard finished the game with 22 points, 15 rebounds, and 2 blocked shots. Jameer Nelson was not far behind with 17 points, 8 assists, and 5 rebounds. Rashard lewis contributed a solid 15 points. Vince Carter and Matt Barnes both had double digit tallies.

Orlando kept LA at arm’s length for the whole first-half, maintaining a 10-point lead in the first quarter and going into half-time in spectacular fashion as the big-man, Dwight Howard, grabbed a loose-ball blocked-shot by Brandon Bass, taking it coast to coast before cutting into the paint and dishing the ball back to Bass for the dunk.

The Magic were up 67 – 41 going into half-time.

After the game, Dwight joked with reporters, showcasing his signature Charles Barkley impression and insisting that it’s Chuck telling him to “bring the ball up the court at least twice a game so everyone can see your ball-handling skills.”

The Clipper’s Baron Davis was the lone bright spot for the struggling LA team, scoring 16 points, 9 assists, and 4 rebounds. Drew Gooden and Chris Kaman both had 12 buckets.

The second half played out a little better for the Clippers as they outscored the Magic by 3 points (27-24) in the third quarter and kept it close in the fourth landing 19 points to Orlando’s 22. However, the damage was already done and there was no coming back for LA.

At the end of the night, Dwight Howard acknowledged Orlando’s history of letting teams back in the game saying, “Usually, when we have a big lead coming out after half-time, we play around a little bit and we let teams back in… tonight we came out and I think we did an excellent job of putting them away.”

With this win against the Clippers, Orlando Magic seal their sixth consecutive win.

Now it’s on to Chicago to face the 31 and 32 Bulls.

By: Charles Montoya

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The “dreaded” Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) began again on March 9th for students across the state, including those at Evans High School in Orlando.   Administered to students in Grades 3-11, testing takes place in reading, mathematics and science for the next ten days and results will determine those that would head to  fourth grade and those who will graduate.

Evan High School students cheered on by staff and faculty as they pass through the Spirit Tunnel

Evans High School students have spent months preparing for the test and to help provide encouragement, faculty and staff create a Spirit Tunnel at the bus loop each morning of FCAT testing.  As students arrive, they are cheered on as they begin their day of testing.

The school’s leadership has said that, Evans High students have made substantial gains over the past several years and it’s anticipated that 2010 FCAT performance will even be better.

But perhaps, students may have less to fear as Florida high schools could start phasing out the FCAT, under legislation approved by a panel of lawmakers last month.

There are several changes being introduced to the state’s educational structure which could see the elimination of the FCAT math exam for students in grades 9 and 10 and the FCAT high school science exam, while at the same time increasing the course requirements students need to graduate.

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