The House companion to Sen. Joe Negron's proposal to subject Children's Services Councils to a periodic vote on their existence failed to pass its first House committee last week.

Sen. Paula Dockerys, R-Lakeland, gubernatorial campaign just released their first quarter fundraising figures. Dockery raised $287,000 in cash and over $93,000 from in-kind donations. Dockerys team rightly notes that their candidates hands were tied by the fact that legislators cannot raise funds during the session; however, her chief rival for the GOP nomination, Attorney General Bill McCollum, raised $1.4 million during the same period.

Former Agency for Health Care Administration Secretary Holly Benson, a candidate for the Republican attorney general nomination,just released her fundraising figures for the first quarter of 2010. Benson raised just under $242,000 during that period.

Pam Bondis attorney general campaign just announced that they raised $240,000 for the first quarter of 2010. This places the Hillsborough County Republican behind three of her rivals who already announced their fundraising from that period.

The historic Governors Inn in downtown Tallahassee will be holding its grand reopening on Wednesday and there will be governors galore in attendance.

The inn will be naming rooms after four former governors who will all be in attendance. Former Governors Claude Kirk, Reubin Askew, Bob Graham and Bob Martinez will be present at the reopening. Gov. Charlie Crist is expected to attend.

While the House of Representatives was in the middle of a roughly 9-hour debate on teacher performance pay, the St. Petersburg Times was jumping the gun with an editorial that called the deliberations, which lasted from 5 p.m. Thursday to 2:26 a.m. Friday, a "rush job."

In an editorial titled "An arrogant attempt to reform schools" and released Thursday at 10:48 p.m, before the debate ended, the Times stated:

The Houses handling of teacher performance pay will continue even after the debate.

The House leadership will attempt to adjourn and start a new legislative session in order to move the bill back to the Senate and send it to the governor as soon as possible. The Democrats promise to fight the measure to prove they will not roll over on the issue.

This means the House will be in session (or is that sessions?) for the better part of 12 hours and possibly longer.

The House is wrapping up its seventh hour of debate on the teacher perfomance pay bill with no end in sight. House Speaker Larry Cretul, R-Ocala, just announced that there were still 20 speakers wanting to debate the measure and, with each one having as long as 15 minutes to speak on the issue, this will go on for hours.

Will the measure pass?It appears likelydespite at least nine Republicans breaking ranksto vote against it.

Paul Dunn, we hardly knew ye.

A day after posting its campaign finance figures for the first quarter of 2010 and revealing it was outraised by GOP frontrunner Bill McCollum, state CFO Alex Sinks gubernatorial campaign announced that campaign manager Dunn and finance director Joanna Belanger are off the team. Before his stint as Sinks campaign manager, Dunn was best known for leading the upset effort of Suzanne Kosmas to win a seat in Congress back in 2008.

Sen. Paula Dockery, who's running for governor, is one of very few Republicans who is opposing SB 6 -- the performance pay bill.

But it seems she might be making claims that don't hold a lot of water. PolitiFact.com summarizes it like this:

"Dockery said, 'teachers will not be able to return to work after raising their children.' We find there is a provision in SB 6 to prevent this scenario, but because the rules won't be written until after the bill becomes law, we can't definitely say what will happen. We rule Dockery's claim Barely True."