News

The Florida Department of Economic Opportunity is asking state lawmakers for half a million dollars in order to recoup a $20-million investment in the now-defunct digital animation studio, Digital Domain.

And according to local experts, Florida has a tough fight ahead to get its money back.

The state originally gave Digital Domain $20 million in incentives in order to lure the company--and jobs--to Port St. Lucie. Four months ago, the firm filed for bankruptcy, shut down and let go 300 Florida workers.

With the Super Bowl only a few short days away, anticipation is building up for the superstar lineup of commercials.  The spots are widely known to be the products of endless hours of brainstorming, and deeper pockets than the average citizen can fathom.

A determined Palm Beach County teenager is gaining ground on a big goal -- stopping people from smoking at Florida's beaches and public parks.

Caitlyn Johnston's campaign caught the eye of State. Rep. Bill Hager, R-Boca Raton, who filed a bill (HB 439) giving cities and counties the power to ban smoking on their own public lands.

Politics can be quite the poetic muse - especially statehouse politics, it turns out.

We recently challenged members of the Public Insight Network to write about politics in the Sunshine State - in a limerick.* 

Florida voters may be asked to raise the salary of a rookie teacher by $10,000 starting two years from now. If they approve, the pay increase would be part of a constitutional amendment that ties Florida teacher pay scales at all career levels to national averages.

The average Florida teacher salary now is $46,000, about $10,000 less than the national average.

When Florida sued to overturn the Affordable Care Act, lawmakers targeted a piece of the law that would have forced Florida to make Medicaid available to more than a million uninsured Floridians.

The U. S. Supreme Court upheld most of the act but it made Medicaid expansion optional.

Now some Florida lawmakers who originally opposed Medicaid expansion are seriously considering that option.

Perhaps you’ve seen the phrase “Live to Ride—Ride to Live” on a T-shirt or bumper sticker somewhere. It has been on my belt buckle for about 30 years. Motorcycling has been a passion of mine pretty much from the day I got my driver’s license. The activity of being in the wind, leaning into corners, the sight of a bike, and the very simplistic nature of the machine, all bring joy.

The toughest child abuse reporting law in the nation went into effect in Florida last October, and the state has launched a campaign to raise awareness about the legal obligation to report suspected abuse.

The new law was introduced in response to the scandal at Penn State University.  Former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky was convicted of molesting children years after the abuse was discovered by staffers.

One day more than seven years ago, Debbie Brunson  woke up to an unfamiliar sound. She and her husband were camping on their land in the Redlands farming area. The sound she heard was that of an adult male Bob White quail.

It shocked her because she hadn't heard that bird call for over a decade.

"In Florida, there use to be quail everywhere.  But because of farming and pesticides and buildings,  they’ve disappeared," Brunson said.

South Florida may be a source for banned performance-enhancing drugs making their way into major league baseball.

Governor Rick Scott was at Miami-Dade College's North campus today to announce that eleven more state colleges have accepted his challenge to create bachelor’s degree programs costing $10,000 or less.

That means all 23 Florida state colleges offering four-year degrees have signed on. 

Broward College is developing a bachelor's degree program in teacher education and business. President David Armstrong told the News Service of Florida that the goal is to open doors for more students.

Florida’s Marco Rubio is among a group of eight Democratic and Republican Senators unveiling a bipartisan immigration plan today.

The leader of the Democratic National Committee says the U.S. embargo of Cuba should remain in place, in spite of recent reforms in the Communist island nation.

Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz spoke before a crowd of over 500 people Friday at an event sponsored by the Forum Club of the Palm Beaches. 

The DNC chair says it doesn't make sense to lift the embargo, in light of what she calls the "unbelievable oppression" in Cuba.

For many years I both lived and worked in Coral Gables, and since my house was less than a mile from work, I decided to ditch my car and purchased a scooter. I conveniently biked, walked or scootered around town. I could get to the beach or the Grove by scooter, bike or public transportation.

An additional $60 million in assistance from a national mortgage settlement is now available to Floridians who lost their homes due to unfair foreclosure practices.

Attorney General Pam Bondi announced how the money will be used.

Over the weekend,  more than 250 dogs competed in an American Kennel Club event at Miami-Dade County’s Tropical Park. Anyone in attendance learned that canine athletes are capable of feats humans can only dream of doing and would never dream of doing.

The Marketplace Morning Report is broadcasting this week from WLRN's studios in the city it thinks typifies the evolution of America: Miami.

In its first segment this morning, host Jeremy Hobson discussed the region's "inferiority complex" with Miami Herald economy reporter Doug Hanks and how that might drive spending on sports arenas.

Also, WLRN's Kenny Malone explored Broward County's gigantic Sawgrass Mills, which is an international tourist destination as well as a shopping mall, and lost his car in the parking lot.

Yesterday was a big day for bars and restaurants in Oakland Park. After a unanimous commission vote last week, the city lifted its law prohibiting the sale of alcohol between 7 a.m. and noon on Sunday mornings.

Oakland Park is the latest in a string of cities (including Fort Lauderdale, Margate and Deerfield Beach) to repeal their so called "blue laws.”

Hooligans Rule!

You can make an argument that Oakland Park’s blue law repeal started with a group of English hooligans who wanted to watch their European soccer matches.

OK, show of hands: How many of you Miamians have ever heard of Argentine tech guru and entrepreneur Martín Varsavsky and his based-in-Spain "public wi-fi" company, Fon?

Well, he has certainly heard of you. So impressed is he with Miami -- and so dismayed by the South Florida brain drain he attributes to the lack of a significant tech sector in our economy -- that he's planning to launch his North American operations here.

The Maltz Jupiter Theater nearly doubled its closest competitors Friday with 23 Carbonell Award nominations in a field thinned by the closure of three regional theaters.

   Marketplace Morning Report wraps ups its week in Miami with a look at the cruise industry and an interview with Adam Goldstein, president of the cruise line, Royal Caribbean.

Once the pastime of the very wealthy, cruising has become a mainstream vacation, Goldstein tells MMR host Jeremy Hobson, and the U. S. is the biggest "source market" for the cruise industry, even though the growth rate of other source markets is greater.

What does that say about the New American Dream here and elsewhere?

 Tucked away on a high shelf in the collections room of the Museum of Science is a startlingly unique rock specimen. It is white with long jutting crystal arms and made of a fragile mineral called calcite. The piece looks like it comes from completely different planet.

On the Florida Roundup: From immigration reform to gay rights, we’ll discuss how the president’s inauguration speech resonated here.  

The Dolphins win the first battle in their fight for public funding to renovate Sun Life Stadium, with the Miami-Dade County Commission agreeing to ask the state for an increase in the hotel tax.  But Florida state lawmakers might not be receptive.

Florida's system for the mentally ill is an underfunded shambles that leaves most people untreated and settles for locking up many of the rest.

Officials and experts told a House committee in Tallahassee on Thursday that system funding levels, in real terms, are below what they were in the 1980s and that the crisis is "deepening."

Miami-Dade commissioners on Thursday voted to get behind state legislation that would provide nearly $200 million in public funding to Sun Life Stadium renovations sought by the Miami Dolphins.

If all goes as planned, the Florida Legislature will approve a package of sales tax and hotel bed tax revenue that the team will match to proceed with their $400 million stadium-improvement project.

Thousands of West Palm Beach senior citizens will have to wait another month for a decision on a controversial development planned near their retirement community.

After hours of public comment on Thursday, a Palm Beach County Commission meeting ended in a tied vote on the future of the project, named "Reflection Bay."

Developers want to turn an unused golf course next to the West Palm Beach Century Village into a neighborhood of homes and retail stores.

Several times a week, Miami reminds me of Los Angeles. For better and worse. We're both the land of sunshine, palm trees (theirs are taller) and beautiful beaches (ours are nicer based on ocean temperature and clarity, but we're missing out on the mountains). And both places have much beneath the surface of our beautiful things. Extreme wealth and poverty pressed up against each other, but rarely mixing -- largely because both places are so deeply devoted to the automobile.

The Overtown section of Miami was the heart and soul of music during the early to mid-1960’s.

It developed as Southern and Bahamian blacks relocated to Miami area to work on Henry Flagler’s railroad.

As they prospered, so did the club and performing arts scene.

Other venues included the Rockland, Palace, the Harlem Square Club, the Cotton Club, the Ritz Theater, the Mary Elizabeth Hotel and the Sir John, to name a few.

On  the last day of its week in Miami, searching for the New American Dream, Marketplace Morning Report visits exclusive Fisher Island, where people pay a million dollars for the slips where they tie up their $40 million yachts.

Host Jeremy Hobson learns that few of  Fisher's residents had money "fall from the sky" on them. Most of them worked for it, says a real estate agent who sells homes there, so the dream -- even the Fisher Island dream -- is still within reach.

Safe driving is the focus of two proposed bills being filed in Tallahassee this session. One bill addresses texting while driving. The other bill deals with slow people in the fast lane.

According to the News Service of Florida, Senator Nancy Detert, a Venice Republican, believes this year will be the year her texting-while-driving ban passes.

This will be her fourth attempt.

Although the bill has passed the Senate twice before, Detert says it has never been heard in the House.