Blame it on the after-effects of Thanksgiving turkey, Black Friday or Cyber Monday, but lawmakers and state officials largely took a pass this week as the capital city was quiet in preparation for a busy preholiday committee week that starts early Monday.
Hatched in 2008 when Marco Rubio held power in the state Capitol, the Florida Health Choices program expects to start offering health-insurance plans to small businesses in July 2012.
Chairman Aaron Bean on Friday acknowledged frustrations with the pace of Florida Health Choices, which supporters have long touted as a new type of "marketplace" for buying health coverage. But he also said officials want to make sure it is developed correctly.
Are you feeling it? The Obama administration claimed Friday that a 0.4-point drop in the unemployment rate to 8.6 percent "provides further evidence that the economy is continuing to heal."
But the November jobs report revealed a discouraged and shrinking U.S. work force, while spurring suspicions of statistical manipulation by the government.
Does Newt think he can compete for Hispanic voters (legal and illegal) who have supported Barack Obama? He's sure trying.
The former House speaker's "humane" musings on illegal immigrants made Mitt Romney look like a solid, rock-ribbed conservative at the recent GOP presidential debate.
Now comes an analysis from the Center for Immigration Studies that puts Gingrich in the same company as John McCain, George W. Bush and Teddy Kennedy. Needless to say, it's not overly complimentary.
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Florida hasn't been hit by a hurricane in six years, but a long "hurricane tail" continues to lash the insurance industry, a new report shows.
The 2011 storm season, which ended Nov. 30, continued the longest stretch without a hurricane in Florida since the nine-year gap between Opal (1995) and Charley (2004).
The last hurricane to hit the Sunshine State was Wilma, which first struck the southwest peninsula as a Category 3 storm in October 2005.
So why arent property insurance rates dying down like the winds?
It's a familiar promise: If lawmakers do something to bring a new business to Florida, the new enterprise will generate thousands of jobs, and boost Florida's reputation as business-friendly.
Eight years ago, lawmakers were considering whether to spend money to lure Scripps Research Institute into opening a Florida campus, hoping to mimic the biotechnology success that Scripps brought to San Diego.
LOS ANGELES -- In 1941, Carl Karcher was a 24-year-old truck driver for a bakery. Impressed by the large numbers of buns he was delivering, he scrounged up $326 to buy a hot dog cart across from a Goodyear plant. And the war came.
The Florida Senate and House have reached their first deal on redistricting.
The House will concentrate on the new lines that the Senate proposed for Senate districts. The Senate will work on the new lines that will be proposed by the House for new House districts.
Both chambers will still have to work out a compromise for the congressional lines.
On Friday, House Redistricting Committee Chairman Will Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel, accepted the redistricting proposal from his counterpart in the Senate, Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville.
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Gov. Rick Scott said he turned down free coffee from Starbucks as he spent his 59th birthday on Thursday in Orlando,
Everywhere I went they knew it was my birthday. I never had that before, Scott said, meeting with reporters outside his office in the Capitol on Friday. (See video here.)
I stopped in a Starbucks and they knew it was my birthday, he added. They offered, but I didnt accept it.
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A 60 Minutes piece on widespread homelessness in Florida helped spur a pair of state legislators to file a bill that would allow people to donate $1 to homeless programs when registering vehicles and renewing driver licenses.
Sen. Ronda Storms, R-Valrico, and State Rep. Betty Reed, D-Tampa, filed similar bills this week -- SB 1130 and HB 531 -- in their respective chambers, that seek to raise awareness and funding to help combat homelessness.
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