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The Ray Sansom saga continues, as the former house speaker was back in court today continuing his call for the charges against him to be dropped. Sansom faces charges stemming from a legislative plan to use his leadership position to help build an airplane hanger for a political contributor. Sansom says the money wasn’t for a hanger; it was meant to build an emergency shelter to better prepare his district for a hurricane. We caught up with his Attorney Steve Dobson after today’s hearing.

Reporter: You seemed to hammer that one point pretty hard, that it would have served as an education facility and it would have served as a management area?

Dobson: It was going to be exactly as the legislature had appropriated funds for.

The Judge in the Sansom case says he’ll have a decision about whether or not to drop the charges next month.

Twenty four Floridians have announced their intentions to become the state’s next governor. So far only five have qualified. Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink filed her papers this morning. Sink is the Democratic frontrunner. She says her business background and her focus on taxpayer money will give her a boost with voters.

“I would advise the people of Florida to look at my plan for reforming government that I wrote out a couple weeks ago, and see the specific places where I would achieve just more than 700 million dollars in savings,” said Sink.

Sink shrugged off questions about Independent gubernatorial candidate Bud Chiles and how is entrance in the race might cost her votes.

The number of independent candidates running for statewide office is soaring.

So far 27 people have announced their intentions to run as an independent for Congress, state cabinet or the governor’s mansion. Just four years ago, only 11 people ran for statewide office with no party affiliation. As Whitney Ray tells us, the surge in independent candidates may be a symptom of the growing distaste for incumbent candidates.

State qualifying began Monday, and the first two candidates through the door were running as independents.

“I don’t think at this point we should care about who is Democrat and Republican, we should care about America and American people,” said Farid Khavari, an Independent running for governor.

“We shouldn’t be trying to pit one team against another,” said Miranda Rosenberg, an independent for State Senate.

In 2006, 11 candidates ran for statewide offices with no party affiliation. So far this year 27 people are running as NPAs… Seven of them want to be governor… like Bud Chiles, son former Democratic governor Lawton Chiles. He announced his departure from the Democratic Party June 3rd.

“It’s time to step outside the party and try to bring people together,” said Chiles.

One reason for the surge in independent candidates is the growing number of independent voters. More than 2-million Floridians are registered with no party affiliation.

Another reason is independent candidates get to skip costly primary elections and go straight to the November Ballot. Steve Vancore, a political consultant, says candidates are dropping their party affiliations to feed the voters’ appetite… Vancore says voters are tired of the hyper partisanship on Capitol Hill.

“It’s a lot like a parent seeing two children fighting. You really don’t care who did or who didn’t, you just want them to stop fighting,” said Vancore.

One of the disadvantages of being an independent is that after the primaries; Democrats and Republicans will lend seasoned staffers and volunteers to their candidates… Independents won’t be so lucky.

Law enforcement officers are split on who to endorse for commissioner of agriculture.

Today seven sheriffs and the Florida Fraternal Order of Police endorsed Democratic candidate Scott Maddox. His Republican Rival Adam Putman has tallied the support of more than 30 sheriffs. Maddox says getting the endorsements from the sheriff’s is important because of the consumer protection and fraud prevention role of the office his is running for.

“This department and the job I’m running for, Commissioner of Agriculture and Consumer Services, plays a key role in law enforcement and especially in protecting the consumer. I will bring with me the values of law enforcement and the values of the folks who are standing behind me, as well as the values of the Fraternal Order of Police and their 20-thousand members,” said Maddox.

One of the sheriff’s endorsing Maddox had to travel across state lines. John Bunnell has taken a break from fighting crime and now hosts several police shows including COPS, America’s Most Wanted and World’s Craziest Police Chases to name a few.

Attorney General Bill McCollum isn’t just going after BP to help fishermen and people who work in tourism… he’s also asking the oil giant to make the state whole.

McCollum meet with former Florida Attorneys General today to discuss how to get BP to pay for lost tax revenues and state money spend protecting the coast. McCollum says he’s not looking for a fight.

“I know and our team knows, that at the end of the day they owe everything. They are at fault. BP is the primary guilty party here without any question about it and we would like to believe that they would be up front and make those payments in a timely way,” said McCollum.

The state is trying to track down the amount of state taxpayer dollars have been spent so far on the oil spill. If BP doesn’t refund the state, McCollum says he will sue.

The state tourism agency is beginning to shift the focus of its advertising campaign as two huge oil plumes move closer to Florida’s Panhandle beaches. Visit Florida is launching a new commercial today with more statewide appeal. As Whitney Ray tells us, the ads targeting the panhandle will still run, but will be scaled back if oil closes those beaches.

More than 10 days after tar balls began washing up on a few panhandle beaches, the message to travelers is changing. In Mid-May it was “Florida is open for business.”

Then June 4th the first tar balls from the BP Oil Spill began washing up in Pensacola, and the message changed to “here is what you need to know.”

Now with two huge oil plumes just miles from Florida’s western most beaches, the state’s tourism agency is tweaking the message once again.

The new ad that began running in the Southeast Monday… moves the focus from Panhandle beaches and paints a broader picture of Florida’s coastline. Will Seccombe with Visit Florida says the agency has to be flexible and keep travelers in the loop.

“Our messages are going to have to evolve as the impacts evolve and really at the most basic level it’s a hyper local event,” said Seccombe.

But Visit Florida isn’t abandoning the panhandle. The new ad is only running once for every three times the Northwest Florida themed ad is running, but that could change if panhandle beaches begin to close.

But what will continue is the push to the Florida live website where travelers can see up to the minute pictures of different tourism hot spots across the state.

And so far the ad campaign has been successful in driving people to the web. Since the campaign was launched on May 11th, the tourism websites have seen more than 300-thousand visits but overall tourism is still down from a year ago.

The good news is the message hasn’t changed too drastically from the time Visit Florida began its BP funded tourism campaign. So far the oil that has washed up in Florida has been mainly tar balls and it’s taken a lot longer to get here than experts predicted.

The 2010 political season is officially underway in Florida.

At noon today, qualifying for the general election and August primaries began. The distaste for incumbents continued, as the first two candidates through the door were running with no party affiliation. 23-year old Miranda Rosenberg is running for state senate seat 25.

“I’m running because politics shouldn’t be a mud wrestling match. It’s not a sports game. It’s not something where one team loses and one team wins. I’m running because I’m running for the people of district twenty-five. And because Florida’s future needs a voice. This is a future I’ll be living in,” said Rosenberg.

Farid Khavari, an economist from Miami, left the Democratic party to run for governor as an independent.

“The party was kind of unfair. They have taken the right of it from the voters. They have anointed the candidates and they have not given the equal chance to all other candidates too. And that’s why I think I prefer to go as an independent,” said Khavari.

Qualifying ends at noon Friday.

Thousands of students across the state are on pins and needles, as are their teachers and principals, over a private company’s delays in delivering this spring’s FCAT scores.

The company, NCS Pearson, could face millions of dollars in penalties. And as Mike Vasilinda tells us, the company could end up paying hefty fines since it did not meet an end of May deadline to deliver.

Florida is spending 254 Million dollars this year just to grade FCAT tests. The scores were due at the end of May but won’t arrive until the end of June. The company, NCS Pearson, is telling the state it is having data processing issues. The company’s contract calls for an increasing fine, now up to 250 thousand dollars a day. But the State’s Education Department says it just wants the scores now.

“We’re going to be looking at that now, our legal office is,” DOE spokesperson Tom Butler said. “And no determination on the amount, yet. But certainly we are going to be assessing those damages.”

Some critical sores for third graders who needed to pass to go to fourth grade are in…so are scores for high school seniors, who needed to pass FCAT to graduate. But everyone else is waiting.

The delay is a nightmare for school districts across the state. For one thing, they don’t know how many students to put into remediation.

The problem is critical for school administrators, who must hire teachers now to meet class size requirements.

“They’ll hire X-number of math teachers and Y-number of art teachers and all that may fall apart now because some students won’t be able to take art, as an example, and will have to take an additional math class,” Bill Montford, with the School Superintendents Association, said.

But not everyone is concerned. or wants to know their score. Katie Kennedy just transferred from a private school this year and doesn’t mind the delay.

“I might get grounded a little early and I don’t really want to get that,” Kennedy said.

Reporter: So you don’t care if they come back soon?

“Not really,” she said.

While late, the state says the scores it has been receiving are accurate.

The President of NCS Pearson is scheduled to appear and answer questions at the State Board of Education meeting tomorrow in Orlando.

Owners of a panhandle marine lab are rushing to gather animals and bacteria from the Gulf of Mexico, in anticipation of oil destroying the delicate ecosystem. The scientists are calling their project Noah’s Ark and as Whitney Ray tells us, collecting the samples will help speed up the recovery in the gulf.

It’s a battle against time for Marine Biologist Jack Rudloe, who is rushing to collect shrimp, oysters and anything else he can fit in a tank before the oil hits.

“The ability to even put back one or two, or two of everything else like that, may be absolutely futile but who knows,” said Jack Rudloe.

The project is called Noah’s Ark; Jack and his wife Anne have already collected dozens of animals in their Gulf Specimen Marine Lab.

But the lab doesn’t have enough room to hold the thousands of gallons of salt water needed to support the massive herding effort, and that’s not all that’s lacking. Noah’s Ark will take lots of man hours and lots of money. The lab is asking for half a million dollars, but so far BP isn’t willing to pay.”

So the lab has spent 30-thousand of its own dollars to get the project moving; cleaning up an abandoned shrimp hatchery, and pumping sea water from a mile away into huge tanks.

“The purpose of this is sustainability, to hold these things and then as needed and in the appropriate places, start releasing some of this stuff back into the environment,” said Rudloe.

And while the focus is on protecting and preserving marine life research grinds to a halt. The lab ships gulf coast specimens to universities across the county, the backlog keeps building.

“So far this month we are running at about 50 percent below where we were last year, mostly because of orders like these that we could get if we could get to do it, but we are preparing for the oil spill instead,” said Anne Rudloe.

And right now there’s no guarantee the lab will get any help from BP to make up for the lost revenues. The Gulf Specimen Marine Lab began asking BP for money for the Noah’s Ark project on May 10th; so far their request has been ignored because it’s not a claim based on damage.

Attorney General Bill McCollum is asking BP to put 2.5 billion dollars in an escrow account to help pay claims from Floridians effected by the gulf oil spill. The request comes, as questions about the company’s financial abilities to make good on a promise to pay those claims begin to surface. Attorney General Spokeswoman Sandi Copes says no one knows how expensive the oil leak is going to get.

“It’s important for us to ensure that over the long run we have the resources available to the state to make citizens whole. This recovery process is likely going to take years and I think anybody has any idea how much it is going to cost, but we know it is going to be incredible expensive,” said Copes.

So Far BP has given the state 75 million dollar to help protect Florida’s coastline and promote tourism. The company has also paid more than eight million dollars in claims.

Governor Charlie Crist vetoed a controversial bill that would have made getting an abortion in Florida harder. The measure would have required women in their first trimester to pay for an ultrasound before they could have an abortion. Both sides lobbied the governor with rallies, protest and letter campaigns. Progress Florida was one of the groups calling for a veto. Director Damien Filer says the bill would have put politics in the doctor’s office.

“What it would have done is insert politics and politicians into the exam room, in-between women and their doctors, exactly where they don’t belong. Today they got kicked out of that exam room and that’s a good thing,” said Filer.

Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum wrote a letter to the governor asking him to sign the legislation. His spokeswoman, Sandi Copes, says McCollum likes a provision in the bill banning taxpayer dollars from being spent on abortion as well as language to overthrow part of the new federal health care regulations.

“There was a provision in there that would have effected whether or not Congress could mandate individual coverage of health insurance and it would have enabled the Attorney General to further represent individuals in court,“ said Copes.

The veto will allow the state GOP to run ads against Crist in his race for US Senate, questioning the governor’s previous statements that he is pro-life.

911 operators in Florida will have to undergo extensive new training after July 1st.  As Mike Vasilinda tells us, the legislation requiring 232 hours of training was the direct result of a Southwest Florida case in which operators bungled the pleas of a kidnapped woman, and ignored calls from a concerned driver.

Denise Amber Lee was kidnapped in 2008. Astonishingly, she was able to use her cell phone to call 9-1-1

But 911 operators failed to respond and they ignored the call of a passing motorist who saw Denise in the kidnapper’s car.

The young woman’s family spent two years walking the Capitol hallways to pass training legislation.

Now, by October 2012, every 911 operator will need 232 hours of training.

Until now the training has been basically on the job, fragmented and voluntary.

Friday, these 12 dual enrolled high school seniors graduated from one of the states police academy’s. Their training will certify them as 9-1-1 telecommunications operators under the new law.

“We have talked so much in the past five months,” a training graduate said.

Even as graduates, they will be required to take 20 hours of refresher courses every two years.

“So it’s going to be an ongoing process to make sure that they are current so that they can provide the best support,” 911 training instructor Kim NeSmith said.

The only exception to the additional training is someone who already has five years experience, but they must apply for certification before October 2012.

The increased training costs will be paid for from an existing 50 cent monthly fee, already collected on phones bills.

(Tallahassee, FL) Fourteen women from across Florida, who had abortions, are now asking the governor to sign legislation that would make the procedure harder to get. Governor Charlie Crist is leaning toward vetoing the legislation but as Whitney Ray tells us, the women who regret their decisions want Crist to hear their stories first.

Tears of regret and sobs over past decisions followed 14 Florida women who traveled to Tallahassee Thursday to share stories about their abortions.The women belong to an anti-abortion group called Operation Outcry. They’re asking Governor Charlie Crist to sign legislation requiring ultrasounds for women seeking an abortion.

They hand delivered testimonies from women who regret their abortions to the governor office; then placed baby shoes in the capitol courtyard. Each pair of shoes represents an abortion. On average there are 235 a day in Florida. That’s more than 85-thousand a year.

Dottie Rathel is writing a message on a pair of shoes representing the abortion she had more than 30 years ago. She says an ultrasound might have changed her mind.

“What I aborted had arms, and legs, and fingers, and toes,” said Dottie.

Opponents of the bill say forcing women to have an ultrasound and pay for it would make the procedure too expensive for some and undermines a women’s ability to make her own decisions. The ACLU is fighting for a veto.

“It’s certainly a violation of women’s privacy,” said Courtney Strickland, with the ACLU.

While the women shared their stories… silent protesters in the capitol rotunda joined the call for the governor’s signature. Governor Crist has until June 20th to make a decision on the legislation, but says he’ll act sooner than that.

New polling shows millionaires Rick Scott and Jeff Greene either leading or tied in their respective primaries for the US Senate and the Governor’s Mansion.  Both have spent millions introducing themselves to voters and as Mike Vasilinda tells us it’s working.

It doesn’t matter what channels you watch, if you’ve turned on a TV in the last month, you’ve met two new people.

Combined, Greene and Scott have spent more than 10 million dollars telling voters who they are, and a Quinnipiac poll says it is paying off.

“Rick Scott, who two months ago no one outside his immediate family had ever heard of, now holds a double-digit lead over Bill McCollum in the race for the Republican nomination for governor,” Quinnipiac pollster Peter Brown said.

Greene’s millions have pulled him to a statistical dead heat with Democratic frontrunner Kendrick Meek. Right now the winner in the Senate primary is still undecided, with 37 percent.

In the case of both big-spenders, they’ve gained traction, while the other side has not responded.

A shadowy 527, Alliance For America’s Future, has already spent more than a million attacking Scott for McCollum. FSU Political Scientist Bob Jackson thinks Meek and McCollum will have to come out swinging sooner than later.

“Charlie Crist kind of learned the lesson that you maybe don’t want to wait too long and enable someone to kind of define yourself and define the campaign,” Jackson said. “So McCollum will no doubt begin to go on the air to the extent that he can over the next few weeks here.”

Both Scott and Greene have controversial past careers, so hang on to your seats, the mud is going to fly this summer…and beyond.

Bill McCollum has started running ads rebutting Rick Scott’s claims. So far, the Kendrick Meek campaign has been ignoring Greene.

It’s been 51 days since oil began gushing from a busted pipe in the gulf and now swimming at a Florida beach has been band. Perdido Key is closed and more beaches are likely to follow as the oil moves east down the panhandle. As Whitney Ray tells us, as the oil ekes closer, state business and tourism leaders are looking for ways to slow the financial disaster hitting Florida.

So far the state has spent 15 million of BP’s dollars to protect the coast. Another seven million to tell travelers Florida’s beaches are open. Still tar balls are making their way on to panhandle beaches… and fewer travelers are making their way to Florida. Wednesday, the Gulf Oil Spill Economic Recovery Task Force began gathering data to evaluate the financial impact. Governor Charlie Crist says BP will play a key role in Florida’s economic recovery.

“It’s incumbent on us to stay on BP to make sure these claims are paid in a timely fashion that we continue to market that tourism is open and good in Florida,” said Crist.

The state’s tourism agency has been running a media blitz to attract travelers. One out of every five sales tax dollars collect by the state comes from tourism, the industry also employees a million Floridians.

Which means the state budget could tank even more if the oil keeps people at bay. The Department of Children and Families is preparing to supply more food stamps and counseling services for fishermen being forced out of their life’s work.

“We are looking at negotiating with BP for behavioral health services so we can send some crisis councilors out,” said DCF Secretary George Sheldon.

The need for counseling and food stamps has already hit Florida. Last month in Escambia County food stamp applications rose five percent, most of the new applicants were fishermen.

Many of those fishermen are turning to BP for jobs. BP has hired 628 fishing boat captains to use their boats to deploy protective boom and break up oil sheen. They’ve also hired 13-hunded workers to help with beach cleanup.