After 10 Glorious Years, Sunshine State News and I Are Passing the Baton

As an addendum to Monday's Senate hearing on immigration issues, the Federation for American Immigration Reform reported that Florida incurs nearly $5.5 billion in costs related to the estimated 950,000 illegal aliens residing in the state, along with their 186,000 U.S.-born children. Here's the Florida breakdown from FAIR's 2010 study, The Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on United States Taxpayers: K-12 education $2.78 billion.English (LEP) $559 million.Medicaid $530 million.SCHIP+ $129 million.Justice $579 million.

Newly inaugurated U.S. Rep. Sandy Adams announced her committee assignments on Monday. The Florida Republican will serve on the Science, Space and Technology, and the Judiciary committees. She will hold a seat on the Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security and the Intellectual Property, Competition and the Internet subcommittees under the Judiciary Committee umbrella and the Space and Aeronautics and Investigations and Oversight subcommittees under the jurisdiction of the Science, Space and Technology Committee.

The 334,000 customers of the Peoples Gas System utility company will receive refund payments totaling $3 million, thanks to a settlement agreement with the Office of Public Counsel agreed to Tuesday by the Public Service Commission. PGS earnings over the 11.75 percent authorized by the PSC will be returned to the company's customers throughout Florida. Customers using a certain amount of gas will receive a one-time credit of $3.74 on their March bill.

On Monday, the Florida chapter of Americans for Prosperity (AFP-FL) released their grades for the Sunshine States congressional delegation. Based on the congressmens votes on a number of issues during 2009 and 2010, the group gave the delegation members higher marks based on their adherence to the principles of less government, lower taxes and more personal freedoms.