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It’s been dubbed the Tallahassee Taj-Mahal, a 112-thousand, 48-million dollar building to house Florida’s First District Court of Appeal. Today former state lawmaker Loranne Ausley used the courthouse as a backdrop to launch her campaign for Chief Financial Officer. Ausley voted against the building and says if she’s elected she’ll stop state funded projects like the Tallahassee Taj-Mahal from moving forward.

“The building I am standing in front of is a perfect example of everything that is wrong and broken with Tallahassee. 48 million dollars complete with 60 inch flat screen TVs and granite countertops. It’s outrageous. It’s embarrassing and it’s a product of politicians like Jeff Atwater and Ray Sansom refusing to let transparency and accountability into the budgeting process,” said Ausley.

Ausley is taking on Senate President Jeff Atwater. Atwater was not the Senate President in 2007 when the project was slipped into a transportation bill on the last day of session, but Governor Charlie Crist was in office and he signed off on the deal.

“I think the money could have been spent more wisely. I think any thinking person would feel that way,” said Crist.

Crist says he doesn’t remember the project or whether or not he was asked to veto it.

Florida will receive 1.3 billion federal dollars for education and Medicaid. Today the US House held a special session to pass a 26 billion dollar state aid bill aimed at saving jobs in cash-strapped states like Florida. 550 million dollars will go to save teaching jobs and hire back some teachers who lost their positions when budget cuts forced layoffs. Governor Charlie Crist hopes the money also helps create jobs.

“We need all the help we can get, especially in this economy, I mean it’s all about Jobs, Jobs, Jobs and what ever assistance we can get and get some of those Florida dollars back to Florida, we deserve to get,” said Crist.

The 780 million dollars for Medicaid will save the state budget and help free up money for other cash strapped programs. Nearly a third of the state budget is spent on Medicaid.

Early voting is underway, and there are half a million more voters in Florida this year than were registered for the 2008 primaries. As Whitney Ray tells us, there’s a slight surge in Republican voters, growth in the Democratic party is slowing and people registering with no party affiliation is up nine percent.

Monday morning the polls opened for the primaries, and Carolyn Holifield didn’t waste any time casting her ballot.

“I think it’s important to give people as many options as possible. A lot of people work. In the past I’ve had to vote on Saturday,” said Carolyn.

This year there are more people than ever before registered to cast a ballot in Florida. The latest statistics show more than 11 million registered voters in Florida. But the count leaves out more than a million inactive voters.

Without the inactive voters, Republicans have about four million registered voters and Democrats have 4.6 million. But growth in the Democratic Party has slowed since the 2008 election, when the Obama Campaign spent millions in Florida. It doesn’t seem to bother Gubernatorial Candidate Alex Sink.

“I’m talking to all Floridians; I’m talking to Democrats, Republicans, and independents because I want all Floridians to hear my message,” said Sink.

Early voting has traditionally favored Democrats, with more Republicans choosing to cast ballots on Election Day.

In Leon County a group of Democrats walked to the Courthouse to choose their candidates.

“I just wanted to make sure I got my vote in, sometimes there’s lines, depending on the schedule on the actual day of voting,” said Adam.

Absent from the polls were Florida’s two million voters with no party affiliation. Their numbers are growing, but in Florida only Democrats and Republicans are allowed to vote in the primaries.

While the primaries are for members of the two major parties, the rest of Florida’s registered voters can still cast ballots for city and county candidates. Early voting ends August 21st.

While most of Florida’s Judicial Branch is suffering from back-to-back years of budget cuts, the First District Court of Appeal is getting a new 48 million dollar building.

Construction is almost complete on the new courthouse, which was slipped into a transportation bill on the last day of the 2007 legislative session. Loranne Ausley, a Democratic candidate for Chief Financial Officer and a former house member, voted against the bill.

“We are cutting courts, we are cutting across the board, but meanwhile we have the money to put 48-milllion dollars to put in a court. It’s excessive, it’s outrageous and it’s got to stop,” said Ausley.

The current building housing the First District Court of Appeal has been paid off. Land where the new courthouse is being built was donated to the state.

Today is day three of a ten day bus tour across Florida for US Senate Candidate Kendrick Meek. The tour started Wednesday in Orlando and began this morning in rural Jefferson County, about 25 miles east of Tallahassee. About a dozen staunch Democrats were on hand for early morning coffee and donuts. As Mike Vasilinda tells us, Meek has pulled ahead in the recent polls against billionaire Jeff Greene, a man Meeks calls “bad.”

It was just after 9 a.m. in near 90 degree heat when day three of the Kendrick Meek Real Democrat Bus Tour got to tiny Monticello, Florida. Democrats here outnumber Republicans 3 to 1. Juanita Crumity grew up here, moved to Palm Beach and returned.

“His mother has done a lot of things and I think people remember his mother,” Crumity said. “I think he’s going to do very well.”

Inside, Meek spent more than half an hour assessing his chances, pitching himself, and talking about support from Bill Clinton and President Obama.

“I’m must carry Jefferson County,” Meek said.

Dick Bailar retired here from South Florida, where Meek’s mother is a legend.

But Bailar made it clear if Meek gets past the primary, the general could be a problem.

“Crist is going independent,” Bailar said.  “They say, well, you know, they have trouble voting for a black man.”

Outside, the candidate personally handed out yard signs and posed for pictures.

Back on Board the “Real Dem Express,” we asked Meek if he thought he could win in North Florida.

“I do believe that there are people in the state of Florida who would never vote for a woman or vote for a Hispanic, or vote for a person of color such as myself,” Meek said. “But I believe that there are more people in the state of Florida that are looking for strong leadership.”

The bus hits Pensacola over the weekend, and then returns to South Florida on the 14th.

Nearly a third of Florida’s elementary and middle schools dropped a letter grade this year according to the scores released today by the Department of Education. The individual school scores are two months late and their accuracy is being challenged by superintendents who say the testing company responsible for the delay is also responsible for the falling scores. Tom Butler, a spokesman with the Department of Education, says even though the scores are down, the trend is upward.

“If you look at the five year trend for school grades, especially for elementary schools, what you see is, pretty much we’re maintaining the progress that we have, so our schools are still doing great work. Elementary schools are doing great work, middle schools are doing great work,” said Butler.

High school test scores will be out later this year. The individual grades help determine a schools funding. Many are likely to be appealed.

Medicaid costs the state of Florida 20 billion dollars a year; that’s nearly a third of the state budget. Incoming Senate President Mike Haridopolos is on a mission to bring those costs down. Haridopolos is touring the state, talking to doctors, administrators and today some students at FSU Med School in hopes of building support and gaining ideas to help solve the problem. Haridopolos says strict bureaucratic guidelines are keeping costs high.

“Right now doctors feel constrained, hospitals feel constrained by the one size fits all scenarios and with the additions of 1.4 million Floridians going on Medicaid because of what they did in Washington DC is making things more difficult,” said Haridopolos.

Nurse Practitioner Mai Kung has a few ideas to bring down the cost. Kung is asking state lawmakers to allow nurse practitioners to write prescriptions for controlled drugs, so patients don’t have to waste more time and money waiting for a doctor to do what the nurse practitioner tells them.

“Studies have show repeatedly that we can provide high quality cost effective patient centered care at a much reduced cost and we can practice to our full scope of practice and we can save Medicaid cost,” said Kung.

Florida and Alabama are the only states that don’t allow nurse practitioners to write prescriptions for controlled substances. Legislation allowing the 15-thousand Florida NPs to write the prescriptions has died 15 years in a row. If passed it’s estimated to save the state hundreds of millions of dollars.

Legislative leaders may delay a special session to provide relief to gulf coast residents who have lost jobs and money because of the BP oil spill. A session was tentatively scheduled for September, but as Whitney Ray tells us, some high ranking state senators are starting now saying it could be November before they hold a session on helping Floridians hurt by the spill.

When lawmakers met in July for a special session on oil drilling, a vote was taken to go home with the promise to try to come in September, but with the leak capped and the oil disappearing the urgency may start waning.

Carol Dover the President of the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association doesn’t want the pain her members are feeling to be forgotten.

“The perception is that if it gets cap then the oil just automatically goes away and all of our problems go away. I have to tell you, in fact, for us now its worse,” said Dover.

The story is the same when it comes to the environment. BP and the Feds say 75 percent of the oil has been collected, burned skimmed or eaten by microbes. Environmentalists say there is still a crisis.

“Clean up is going to take a long time and we are going to continue to see oil washing up on our beaches,” said Eric Draper with Audubon of Florida.

The changing status of the impact in the gulf is changing the way the state responds. The emergency operation center is now in just a partial activation mode, and there’s still no date set for a special session to help Florida fishermen, hotel owners, and people losing property value because of the spill.

September was the target lawmakers were shooting for, but now there are talks of waiting until November.

“If we can work out a deal were we can have a plan in place well get it done, but no later than organizational session in November,” said Incoming Senate President Mike Haridopolos.

“The hope is that we’ll be able to get some resolution of those problems through either a special session or at the organizational session of the new legislature,” State Senator Don Gaetz said.

By holding a special session in November when the legislature is already scheduled to be in Tallahassee to reorganize after the election and swear in new members, lawmakers could save taxpayer money.

Florida’s House Speaker has organized workgroups to focus on six areas where the state could lend a helping hand. Those groups must submit their findings by the end of the month.

A month delay in the release of FCAT scores and three audits later parents, students and school administrators still aren’t satisfied with the results. The Department of Education says the scores are accurate and final, but as Capital correspondent Whitney Ray tells us, a group of school administrators are still pushing for another review.

Carol Lambert has a son in high school, but his latest FCAT scores don’t reflect his academic history.

“He was way up here on the scores and now here,” said Carol Lambert.

Carol questions the accuracy of the scores, because they were released a month late, and the results show a statewide drop in learning gains.

Learning gains portion of the FCAT lets teachers know which students need more help and they also account for half of a schools overall letter grade. The results were audited three times, verifying their accuracy, but a handful of superintendants say there wasn’t enough time to do the audits correctly.

“Three week audit is not enough time. I hope that the commissioner will reconsider,” said Jackie Pons, Superintendent of Leon County Schools.

The Department of Education says the results are final, and individual school grades based on the results will be released Friday.

“We are not making progess as much as we used to be, so it’s important to note that we still are doing a great job here in Florida when it come to education,” said Tom Butler, the spokesman with the Department of Education.

Still, parents like Carol aren’t buying it.

“I think they should throw out this years FCAT scores. Just throw them out, because something had to have gone wrong,” said Carol.

School officials want to make Carol’s son take an extra hour of classes a day based on the results still in question. Individual school scores will be released tomorrow at noon and the Department of Education will hold a conference call to discuss the results.

Ending FCAT

The FCAT debacle has some state lawmakers calling for an end to the test. The high school FCAT will begin being phased out next year, but there’s no end in site for elementary and middle school students. Representative Michelle Rehwinkel Vasilinda is filing legislation to end the test immediately.

“The FCAT has been problematic from the beginning, and then when the grading problems came up I just decided we couldn’t trust the process. The other thing is we are in grave financial difficulty in this state. To spend 250 million dollars on test grading in this state and then not have any one of those people be in the state of Florida, there’s something wrong with that,” said Rehwinkel Vasilinda.

Rehwinkel Vasilinda is hoping her bill will be heard when the legislature comes back for special session tentatively scheduled for September. She says the 250 million dollars saved from grading the FCAT could be used to create jobs.

Florida Emergency workers are scaling back efforts in response to the BP oil spill. Today the EOC went from full activation to a level two activation mode. The scale back comes as BP and the Feds claim 75 percent of the 4 million barrels of oil spilled is gone, but many marine biologist don’t agree with those figures. They say the oil has just sunk under the surface and there’s still a threat facing sea life.

The Governor’s Energy Office isn’t answering questions about a three month delay in issuing rebates to Floridians who bought energy efficient appliances.

17.5 million dollars was supposed to be paid back no later than July 15th, but 50-thousand Floridians are still waiting on their checks. We called Rob Vickers, the Director of the Governor’s Energy Office, 10 times to request an interview. He called back once and said he wasn’t comfortable talking about the issue on camera. We also called the governor’s office to see if there was anyone there willing to tell Floridians why they hadn’t received their rebates. We are still waiting on a call.

A new study that will be used by policymakers and insurance companies ranks Florida’s 12 largest metropolitan areas in order of hurricane vulnerability. Miami ranks number one with a category three storm expected once every 12 years and Tallahassee is at the bottom with a major storm expected just once every 500 years. Whitney Ray explains.

On November 20th, 1985 Hurricane Kate ripped through the Big Bend, passing just west of Tallahassee. The storm sent a tree crashing onto Peggy and Ray Munroe’s roof.

“It was scary. The wind was strong. My neighbor across the street was standing on his front porch. He said a little tornado tore that big pine tree in half and threw it through my house,” said Ray.

The Munroe’s shouldn’t have to worry about another major hurricane headed to Tallahassee in their lifetime. According to a new study, a storm like Kate will only hit Tallahassee once every 500 years. FSU professor James Elsner and doctorial student Jill Malmstadt ranked 12 Florida cities in order of their vulnerability to extreme storms.

“An extreme would be what are considered category threes, fours, fives; 112, 113 miles per hour and above,” said Malmstadt.

Miami is the most vulnerable, with researchers predicting a Cat 3 or higher will hit the city once every 12 years. Pensacola and Panama City are dead in the middle. The peninsula normally protects the panhandle from high winds. Jacksonville, Orlando and Tampa ranked near the bottom, with Tampa coming in at number 10.

“Tampa is vulnerable to storms that develop in the western side of the Caribbean and move up into the Gulf of Mexico, but that’s a lot rarer event,” said Elsner.

For those who didn’t make the list, the risk is still there because hurricanes know no manmade boundaries.

Several hundred friends and family members paid tribute to the late Admiral LeRoy Collins Jr. this morning in Tallahassee. Collins was killed while riding his bicycle in Tampa last Thursday. He was the son of a man many call Florida’s greatest Governor.  As Mike Vasilinda tells us, greatness runs deep in the Collins Family

Admiral LeRoy Collins grew up in the shadow of a famous father but achieved his own greatness. He was laid to rest next to his mother and father in a family cemetery with full military honors.

His father, LeRoy Collins, was Governor at the height of the civil rights struggle.

Governor LeRoy Collins was the first southern leader to embrace integration and was the first to use a live statewide TV address to calm a nervous state.

Admiral Collins ran briefly for the US Senate in 2006, then went on to head the Florida Department of Veterans affairs. Former FSU President Sandy D’Alemberte knew both father and son well.

“Roy Jr. was never content to just be the son of the governor,” D’Alemberte said.  “He set off on his own path and contributed immensely as a Naval officer.

The Collins family home has been donated to the state and will be a museum.

An estimated four million barrels of oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico before the leak was capped. Now the oil appears to be disappearing. As Whitney Ray tells us, beach businesses looking for more advertising dollars and environmentalists who think the damage has been worse than predicted are afraid out-of-sight may mean out-of-mind for BP and the federal regulators sworn to hold BP accountable for every penny.

For many gulf coast residents, the bulk of the summer was spent waiting for oil to come ashore… and waiting for BP to cap its leaky well.

87 days later BP capped the well…. And some oil landed on Florida’s westernmost beaches. Today a majority of the estimated 4 million barrels of oil leaked from the well is gone… having been burned, skimmed and broken up by waves.

“I’m sure the bacteria is probably really working robust overtime right now and now that the oil is reducing it’s showing its benefits,” said DEP Secretary Mike Sole.

With the oil disappearing from the surface, the fear among beach businesses and environmentalists is that out of sight could mean out of mind… and BP won’t end up paying for all the damage its spill caused. Marine Biologist Jack Rudloe believes the bulk of the oil is still in the gulf.

“We’re talking about an ocean that’s a mile, two miles deep. There’s a whole heck of a lot of oil sitting down there that’s getting metabolized very very very slowly,” said Rudloe.

There’s also an ongoing battle to save the tourism industry. BP awarded seven million advertising dollars to seven Panhandle counties last week. Florida asked for 50.

“There’s some repair that needs to be done to the Florida brand and to some of our county brands with in the Florida brand so we certainly made that very clear to BP. They are aware of that situation,” said Chris Thompson, CEO of Visit Florida.

But as things return to normal on the surface, getting more out of BP may get harder.

A GOP gubernatorial debate being organized by the Florida Press Association and Leadership Florida will go forward whether frontrunner Rick Scott agrees to come or not. As Mike Vasilinda tells us organizers say Scott has not confirmed the August 11th face-off, even though they have made concessions to his campaign.

So far, GOP gubernatorial front runner Rick Scott has not agreed to the only televised statewide debate being organized by the Florida Press Association and Leadership Florida.

“We think the voters of Florida deserve to know about the candidates. We want them to have this information,” Dean Ridings, President of the Florida Press Association said.

In a rare Tallahassee appearance in mid-June, we asked Scott about his knowledge of Florida government.

“Well, you never know enough, right? But I’ve spent a reasonable amount of time in Tallahassee,” Scott said.

That is why well-connected GOP voters like Herb Fillyaw want to see a debate.

“A lot of mud-slinging going on right now,” Fillyaw said. “There’s a lot of unknowns about Mr. Scott, and I think everyone would love to hear him talk about it.”

Unscripted?

“Oh, absolutely,” Fillyaw said.  “Unscripted and unhandled. You know, throw him the hard questions and see what happens. Because once you get elected, there’s no script.”

By avoiding  a statewide, hour-long debate, political scientists say Rick Scott will be better able to control his message through paid TV, which he has spent 20 million doing. They also say he avoids making a major gaffe. But even if Scott doesn’t agree to the hour-log face off, organizers say the debate will go on as fairly as possible.

“Our panel, who will be well-versed in these issues, will give his response that he has stated, if he doesn’t show up,” Ridings said. “Again, it’s our desire that Rick Scott show up at the debate.”

The organizers agreed to move the debate from Orlando to Jacksonville to accommodate Scott. But then he asked for a venue to accommodate a large audience.

The Leadership Florida and Press Association debate is scheduled for August 11th.