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DeSantis announces US Marine veteran as new director of Florida State Guard

United States Marine Corps veteran Mark Thieme will be the latest director of the new Florida State Guard, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Friday.

Thieme spent more than 35 years in the Marines, most recently as a senior operations officer, according to the governor’s office. His accomplishments include “launching and standing up a new civil military organization,” according to the office.

Thieme will be the third director of the State Guard in the last year. Its first director died by suicide. Its second director, U.S. Navy Reserve Capt. Luis Soler, quit halfway through the State Guard’s first training class in June.

The World War II-era organization was revived by the Legislature last year, at DeSantis’ urging, but it has struggled to get off the ground.

Amid Florida insurance crisis, investors and a senator see opportunity

When Floridians go to shop around for a new homeowners insurance policy next year, they could find several new companies offering coverage.

Including one company backed by a current state senator.

Lured by the nation’s highest premiums and new laws making it harder to sue insurance companies, investors see an opportunity in Florida’s broken insurance market. Current and former state officials and other observers said they are receiving regular inquiries from potential investors looking to make a profit.

“As soon as we were done with the last vote in session, I had a couple of people... including legislators, asking if I wanted to invest in an insurance company,” Sen. Jason Pizzo, D-Hollywood, told the state’s insurance commissioner last month.

Florida parents get angry as school voucher system struggles to keep up

Florida families receiving school vouchers for their children with special needs say the state program is a “godsend.”

They don’t have the same feelings for the organization that manages the state’s newly expanded voucher initiative.

After battling for months over delayed and inaccessible funding, with few answers to their many questions and complaints, parents have launched a social media review campaign against long-time scholarship funding organization Step Up for Students. They want state lawmakers and the general public to know of their struggles as the Legislature heads to a Nov. 6 special session where lawmakers will consider putting more money into the system to meet rising demand.

“So many parents can’t get in their cars and drive to Tallahassee,” said Longwood parent and voucher advocate Barbara Beasley. Writing negative online reviews for all to see “is one of the few places parents feel like they have any power.”

Florida’s population boom drives bigger hurricane losses, despite tougher building codes

Florida leads the nation in strict building codes, and the decades of hard work have paid off in the increasing number of homes and buildings that survive each time a hurricane slashes the state.

But a new report from Swiss Re, a major global re-insurance company, suggests that all those hard-won gains have been undermined by the explosion of growth along the coast. And that has likely helped fuel the skyrocketing price of wind-storm insurance across the state.

One year ago, Hurricane Ian struck Southwest Florida as a powerful Category 4 that wiped whole blocks off the map along the coast and damaged homes and roofs miles inland. It’s the most expensive storm in the state’s history.

If that same storm had struck in the 1970s, the Swiss Re report said, it would have caused half or even a third as much damage as it did.