Florida's Latest News

A bill targeting union membership in Florida is getting pushback...again

A Republican proposal would make changes to public employee unions in Florida. Under the bill, workers would no longer be allowed to have dues deducted from their paychecks. Members would have to pay them directly to their unions.

“In today's modern times, there are so many different choices on how to pay," said the bill's sponsor, Rep. Scott Plakon, R-Longwood. "I think that's a reasonable part of the bill to reflect modern times.”

That change and others would affect unions representing teachers and government workers — but not those representing law-enforcement officers, correctional officers, and firefighters.

“The bill requires an employee to sign a membership authorization form when they join a union," Plakon said as he presented the bill to the House Government Operations Subcommittee. "The form must include a statement that the employee understands that Florida is a right-to-work state, and union membership is not required as a condition of employment.”

Senators plan overhaul of coastal resiliency measures

Sen. Jason Brodeur has filed an amendment fleshing out his bill to address rising sea levels, part of an effort to improve a 2021 law on environmental policy.

During his first week in office in 2019, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an executive order on the environment that established the Office of Resilience and Coastal Protection within the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). Brodeur’s bill (SB 1940) would codify a Statewide Office of Resiliency within the Governor’s Office and place the Chief Resilience Officer (CRO) as the head of the office. But with Brodeur’s proposed changes to that bill, the one-paged measure would expand to more than 20 pages and include tweaks to state processes within DEP and beyond.

The bill, including Brodeur’s amendment, is scheduled for a hearing in the Sanford Republican’s Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee. It would be the proposal’s first of three committee hearings.

Florida could end court fees for kids. Will election-year politics stop it?

Dequan Jackson’s only brush with the law was at age 13, when he was charged with battery for bumping into a teacher while horsing around in a school hallway.

Even though he was in middle school, he was left saddled with hundreds of dollars in court “user fees” he and his mother couldn’t afford to pay. Those fees are how Florida finances its criminal justice system.

Because he couldn’t pay, he stayed on probation another two years, which added $1 per day in probation fees and kept him from attending after-school activities.

In 2016, he told his story to The New York Times for a front-page article about how states, including Florida, impose court costs on juveniles, even though they usually don’t have jobs to pay the money back.

Brrr! It got so cold in Florida, iguanas fell from trees

A cold snap in Florida is different than in other places. We put on heavy coats when it's 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius).

No blizzard conditions here in the Sunshine State, but we have our issues as well when the thermometer drops.

The National Weather Service said Sunday it's all going to warm up nicely after the weekend. The low temperatures near freezing are quite rare in Florida, but at first glance the citrus, strawberry and tomato winter crops suffered no major damage. Farmers spray water onto the crops to help protect them from the cold.

As for iguanas, well, that's another matter. They are an invasive species, well accustomed to the trees of South Florida. When it gets cold, below 40 degrees Fahrenheit about 4 degrees Celsius), they go into a sort of suspended animation mode. And they fall to the ground.