House Speaker Will Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel, is confident Florida will be a pocket of prosperity in the coming decades in a global world of winners and losers that includes other states.

However, he said the state needs to be creative in building its transportation system to better position itself for an increase in global trade.

And, Weatherford suggested, one of those innovative means should be to consider establishing direct airline flights from Florida to China and India, which he acknowledged will be expensive.

Citizens Property Insurance Corp. hopes to shed 15 percent of its coastal accounts after board members made a precedent-setting move Monday morning to shift about 31,000 into private hands.

Board members agreed to have Florida-based Weston Insurance Co. take over the approximately 31,000 personal residential, commercial residential and commercial nonresidential wind-only policies that should reduce Citizens coastal exposure by $30 billion.

The move also reduces the potential for emergency assessments, which must be paid by all Floridians, by 11.9 percent.

The message to business leaders on Monday, gathered at a remote rural resort near the Georgia state line, was that Floridas reliance upon gas tax revenues to pay for transportation projects is in decline while the call to build the air, road, rail, and sea cargo infrastructure grows.

So for a state where lawmakers are more than reluctant to raises taxes, business and political leaders say creative ideas are needed to generate more revenue for the state to pay for desired upgrades to the states ports, rail lines, airports and roads.

I haven't been able to pilfer an advance copy of the president's State of the Union address, but I hereby offer some guesses as to what he'll say tonight.

When do you need to hire a lobbyist or government relations professional? That can be a tricky decision, especially for small-business owners. Looking back, Mike Cikacz wishes he had made the decision sooner.