Governor-Governor-Elect Ron DeSantis along with the rest of the incoming Florida Cabinet honored the state’s veterans this afternoon in the state’s capital city.
The ceremony included speeches from the incoming Commissioner of Agriculture, Attorney General, Chief Financial Officer, Lieutenant Governor and Governor.
DeSantis presented the organization Operation 300 a check for $125,000.
The group helps families of service members who lost their lives in the line of duty.
“When you have somebody who has made the last full measure of devotion in service of the country we obviously can’t forget what they did for us, but we can’t forget the people that are now left behind,” said DeSantis. “The spouse without a husband, the kids without a father.”
The ceremony concluded with a special performance of ‘God Bless the USA’ by singer Lee Greenwood.
Tuesday morning Jeanette Nunez will be sworn in as Florida’s first Hispanic female Lieutenant Governor.
The Lieutenant Governor-elect and soon to be First Lady were in the Capitol Monday morning speaking about the importance women will play in the new administration.
Governor-Elect Ron DeSantis narrowly beat his Democratic opponent Andrew Gillum by a little more than 32,000 votes.
Speakers at the leadership breakfast gave much of the credit for the victory to women including, Jeanette Nuñez, DeSantis’ running mate
“We depend on her and we always have and the women who have followed her have too because she is a woman who stands for families, she stands for women,” said GOP political activist Cindy Graves.
Nunez is a former healthcare executive and state Legislator.
She was the first hispanic woman to server as Speaker Pro-Iem in the Florida House and once sworn in will be the first hispanic woman to serve as Lieutenant Governor of Florida.
“I’m inspired to pave the way and encourage young girls and women of all ages, in all walks of life to follow their dreams,” said Nunez.
Incoming First Lady Casey DeSantis says she has high hopes for Nunez.
“She’s a wife, she’s a mother, she’s a Legislator and all around role model to women all across this great state,” said DeSantis.
While previous Lieutenant Governors have generally taken a back seat, Nunez says she expects to take a larger role in the incoming administration.
“There are certain issues that obviously I spent a lot of time working on during my time in the Legislature so I suspect that I’ll continue to work on those issues,” said Nunez.
Nunez says healthcare will be a top issue for the administration, but didn’t specify exactly what changes might be made.
“Whatever we push forward for Floridians in terms of healthcare reform is something that’s going to lower costs, increase access,” said Nunez.
Nunez says her other priorities include combating human trafficking, increasing school choice and infrastructure.
Both DeSantis and Nunez will take the oath of office Noon Tuesday.
Governor Ron DeSantis officially becomes Florida’s 46th Governor at midnight.
He will be Florida’s youngest Governor in more than a century, and his first week in office is shaping up to be very busy.
At 40, Governor Elect Ron DeSantis is the youngest man to take the oath of office since Park Tramel did it at 36.
He became governor in 1913, seven years before women got the right to vote.
His children, Madison two, and Mason and not quite one, will also be the youngest children to live in the Governor’s mansion since Claude Kirk brought home his son Erik in 1970.
DeSantis signed this oath of office on December 12, which means he’ll become Governor at midnight.
The oath he will take at noon Tuesday is ceremonial.
Amid tight security at a thought leaders luncheon, DeSantis says he’ll travel Wednesday to appoint the first of three Supreme Court Justices.
“The judiciary constantly usurping more and more legislative power over the years,” said DeSantis. “Well, that ends tomorrow, and we will fix that.”
DeSantis also says he will review 70 lame duck appointments made by outgoing Governor Rick Scott, and that he could suspend some local officials like Broward’s Sheriff plus others by the end of the week.
“We’ll definitely have some actions on a number of different fronts. I think you might be surprised at some of the fronts we’re looking at in that respect,” said DeSantis.
DeSantis was non specific on whether he will stop the state’s appeals fighting expanded medical marijuana, but made it clear he won’t stand in the way of the will of voters.
On Friday, DeSantis and the three Cabinet members will meet to discuss the post humous pardon of four black men known as the Groveland Four, accused of raping a white woman in 1949.
The partial Government shutdown has stretched on for nearly two weeks now.
As a result 400,000 federal employees nationwide continue working without pay.
The missed paychecks have been especially devastating for workers in Florida.
In recent years, Federal prison staff was cut by about 6,000 employees.
The Government shutdown means the remaining 36,000 aren’t receiving paychecks.
“It used to be double the work for half the pay, but now it’s double the work for no pay,” said President of the Tallahassee Chapter the American Federation of Government Employees, Reay Coleman Jr.
Florida is home to six Federal prisons, housing more than 10,000 inmates.
“We were given a message that said come to work or face disciplinary action,” said Coleman. “It was pretty much that blunt.”
He says the shutdown couldn’t come at a worse time for Federal workers in the Panhandle.
“A lot of us are still recovering from Hurricane Michael and all the tragedy that left,” said Coleman. “Specifically Tallahassee and the Mariana area, both which have prisons.”
Union reps say even if a budget deal was struck now, federal prison workers still wouldn’t see a pay check until January 25th at the earliest.
To the dismay of Coleman and 400,000 other Federal employees working without pay nationwide, the now Democratic House’s plan to restore funding for agencies like the Federal Prison System is likely dead on arrival in the Senate.
“We’re being used as pawns in like a political chess game and it’s happened a couple of times before, but this one feels a little different because there seems to be no traction being made,” said Coleman.
While Federal Employees have continued working without pay, Coleman points out the 535 elected officials tasked with crafting a budget along with the President and Vice President, continue to receive their salaries despite shutdown.
There are 2.1 million Federal workers nationwide.
While 400,000 continue working without pay, an additional 380,000 nonessential employees have been placed on leaves of absence.
Rachel Perrin Rogers, via text, has told us the photo should be credited to her son, not Mary Beth Tyson. Our apologies for any misunderstanding.
Friday is the last day on the state payroll for the woman who publicly accused a powerful Clearwater State Senator of sexual harassment.
Her resignation and the settlement of a lawsuit is costly for taxpayers.
In an agreement signed December 19th, Rachel Perrin Rogers agreed to drop her lawsuit against the Florida Senate.
In exchange, she gets a one time nine hundred thousand dollar payment.
The settlement was signed one year to the day a special master found former State Senator Jack Latvala had sexually harassed the woman.
He resigned the next day, although it was a charge Latvala vehemently denied.
“The things that were described weren’t done and therefor there was no victim,” Latvala said in December of 2017.
The Senate was in Federal court as recently as November 30th seeking to block Perrin Rogers lawsuit from being heard by the Equal Opportunity Commission.
As part of the settlement, Perrin Rogers resigned from her position in the Senate, effective Friday, saying in part, “I feel an immense sadness at this time.”
Her signature carried the the words ‘Me too’.
According to a statement, Senate President Bill Galvano approved the settlement in an effort to “keep the matter from negatively impacting everyone involved.”
Employment lawyer Richard Johnson says the Senate should have settled long ago, and when it didn’t, it drove up the costs.
“They were increasing the amount of emotional stress that she suffered that they had to compensate,” said Johnson. “I can’t put a number on what the settlement would have been if they had done it a year ago, but it would have been a hell of a lot less.”
Perrin Rogers declined an interview.
Before the scandal, Latvala was in charge of an $89 billion budget and was considered a serious contender for Governor.
Smokers may have to find a new place to smoke or cancel their beach plans if a newly filed bill becomes law.
Some Florida lawmakers want to ban all tobacco smoking on Florida’s public beaches.
The weather was hardly ideal for a stroll on Shell Point Beach Thursday morning, but for Maryssa Smith visiting from Philadelphia the cigarette butts littering the sand made it even less pleasant.
“Seeing the butts on the ground, litter, kind of grosses me out,” said Smith.
It’s illegal to litter on the beach in Florida, but smoking is allowed.
A local effort to ban smoking on the beaches in Sarasota county was even overturned by the courts.
Now, a newly elected state Senator from Sarasota has proposed a bill that would ban smoking on all public beaches in Florida.
Aliki Moncrief with the Florida Conservation Voters says the proposed $25 fine or 10 hours of community service beach smokers could face, would help prevent Florida’s white beaches from becoming someone’s personal ashtray.
“Our beaches are for people to go and have fun, for kids to build sand castles, they’re for wildlife. Nobody wants to go to the beach and have their kid collecting cigarette butts instead of seashells,” said Moncrief.
It can take anywhere from 18 months to 10 years for a cigarette butt to fully decompose.
“Because cigarette butts are a form of plastic we’re really excited to see this first step towards getting plastic pollution off of our beaches,” said Moncrief.
As an added bonus, smoke free beaches could also make the coast more attractive to tourists, like Maryssa.
“I’m not a smoker at all so I wouldn’t mind it if people didn’t smoke on the beach,” said Smith.
If the bill becomes Law the beach smoking ban would go into effect July 1st.
So far the bill has only been proposed in the Senate.
Former Gubernatorial Candidate Andrew Gillum will appear before the Florida Commission on Ethics later this month to respond to claims he accepted gifts from an undercover FBI agent while Mayor of Tallahassee.
The hearing comes less than a month after a Tallahassee city commissioner was indicted on federal bribery charges.
Since the start of Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum’s campaign for Governor he dogged with questions about his possible ties to the FBI probe into city hall.
“This investigation seems to have centered around an individual,” Gillum said in August.
Now, Gillum, no longer in office, is scheduled to appear before the Florida Commission on Ethics on January 25th.
The hearing will focus on determining whether or not there is probable cause Gillum accepted gifts from an undercover FBI agent known as Mike Miller, during trips the two took together.
Tallahassee Activist Erwin Jackson filed the complaint in June.
“The FBI undercover agent arranged these trips, paid for these trips, paid for a baseball game, paid for boat trips, boat rides and also paid for the now famous Hamilton tickets,” said Jackson. “The comments from Andrew in these text messages were, great, look forward to going, thanks a lot.”
In December Tallahassee city commissioner Scott Maddox was indicted by the federal government on 44 counts ranging from racketing to extortion.
Jackson doesn’t believe the investigation is over.
“Not only will he [Gillum] be found to have acted unethically in this hearing, but in the very very near future he will have an opportunity to explain his actions in a Federal trial,” said Jackson.
Gillum’s Attorney Barry Richard told us in a statement, “I am confident that when the full process is completed, Mayor Gillum will be found to have fully complied with Florida law as he has consistently stated. This investigation was not initiated by the Ethics Commission. The Commission is fulfilling its responsibility to investigate all citizen complaints and this hearing is a routine part of its process.”
Barry also said many of the facts in Jackson’s complaint were not true.
Jackson says he expects the Commission of Ethics to decide if there is probable cause Gillum violated ethics laws when it meets January 25th.
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