As head of the Florida League of Cities, Michael Sittig strives to ensure that municipal leaders are given the respect and authority to do their jobs well. Since the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, Sittig has been responsible for ensuring the groups members, who cover most of the states 410 cities, get the information and money they need to keep their beaches clean.

Health care executive Rick Scott, leading in the polls over Attorney General Bill McCollum for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, said that he made a financial contribution to the state of Arizonas legal defense fund to fend off a lawsuit from the federal government over new state immigration laws -- and urged Floridians to do likewise.

The Republican Party of Palm Beach County hosted Lobster Fest on Thursday and a number of high-profile GOP candidates appeared to pitch their campaigns. Health care executive Rick Scott, running against Attorney General Bill McCollum for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, was in attendance. So were U.S. Rep.

After business executives, deal-makers, politicians and academics had their say at the Florida Energy Summit last week, rank-and-file Floridians spoke out. Many weren't impressed.

Hours after a judge threw out a legislatively-proposed constitutional amendment dealing with the rules for drawing political boundaries, backers of two other ballot questions seeking to change the way redistricting is done were in court defending theirs.

The two remaining proposals still slated, as of now, to be decided by voters in November, seek to keep lawmakers from trying to protect incumbents or political parties when they take on the once-a-decade task of redrawing Senate, House and congressional boundary lines.

Northwest Florida residents are suing property appraisers in three counties because they want to know now whether the oil spill in the Gulf has devalued their properties.

For property appraisers and those attempting to calculate the economic cost of the spill, the owners are asking for too much, too soon.

I think its totally unreasonable, said Okaloosa County Property Appraiser Timothy Pete Smith, one of the appraisers named in the suit. We dont have enough data to make any decisions at this time.

A Tallahassee judge struck Amendment 7 from the fall ballot Thursday, claiming the wording was ill-presented and voters would have no idea what it would actually do.