Alia Faraj-Johnson, managing director of public relations and public affairs at Sachs Media Group, is joining Hill+Knowlton Strategies and will lead the firms Tallahassee office, company officials announced Monday.

The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services on Monday released the top nine consumer complaints filed during 2013.

Were here to help consumers, said Commissioner of Agriculture Adam H. Putnam. Floridians can call our 1-800-HELP-FLA consumer hotline to file a complaint, as well as find information about registered businesses and professionals and learn how to protect themselves from fraud and scams.

Martin County commissioners voted Tuesday to repay the city of Stuart more than $500,000 in the next two budget years because an error that went unnoticed for more than a decade in the property appraisers office resulted in unpaid property taxes. And those tax dollars were lost specifically to the citys Community Redevelopment Areas (CRAs).

In fact, millions of dollars were lost to CRAs in the county, too.

Democrat William Rankin's campaign for chief financial officer has all the excitement of a dud firecracker.

In the whole of November Rankin brought in $151. Which at least is six times more than his October harvest of 25 bucks. As much as Democrats are looking for a worthy challenger to take on CFO Jeff Atwater, their donors are probably discovering Rankin -- whose claims about himself are off the charts -- isn't the one.

Missionary Waters, a nonprofit organization just west of Stuart in Palm City, is preparing to send 3,000 portable water filtration kits to the Philippines to aid in the production of safe drinking water for the remote areas and islands hit by Typhoon Haiyan.

It is seeking donations to do even more.

Note to Allison Tant:

Are you eating your words yet, Allison? Gov. Rick Scott isn't pushing flat college tuition to win votes, he's been consistently advocating to keep tuition as low as possible for Florida's tapped-out college students. He's right on message.

Sen. Joe Negron, R-Stuart, was announced Monday as recipient of the 2013 First Amendment Foundations Pete Weitzel/Friend of the First Amendment Award for working to ensure Floridas government remains open and transparent.

Florida Democratic gubernatorial candidate Nan Rich brought her campaign to Tallahassee Thursday, specifically to participate in two holiday Democratic Executive Committee parties, one in Leon and the other in Jefferson County.

"Things are going well," Rich said. "We had our first grassroots conference call for supporters Tuesday night, and it was such an enthusiastic event. Certainly, I was heartened."

The Florida director of bipartisan education-advocate StudentsFirst issued a statement Tuesday claiming the proof is at hand, Florida students are falling behind much of the rest of the world.

Nikki Lowrey was commenting on the morning release of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) report: