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Michael Moline - page 30

Michael Moline has 306 articles published.

Michael Moline is a former assistant managing editor of The National Law Journal and managing editor of the San Francisco Daily Journal. Previously, he reported on politics and the courts in Tallahassee for United Press International. He is a graduate of Florida State University, where he served as editor of the Florida Flambeau. His family’s roots in Jackson County date back many generations.

Visit Florida defenders swarm Senate Appropriations Committee hearing

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Tourism business owners flocked to a Senate committee room Thursday to plead the case for Visit Florida, the state’s embattled tourism promotions agency. Representing both large operations and independent hotels and restaurants, they urged members of the Appropriations Committee to let the agency continue to sell Florida to potential tourists in the United States and overseas. Sheldon Suga, a manager at Hawks Cay Resort in Duck Key, brought 1,000 letters from hotel housekeepers and desk clerks, charter boat captains, and other…

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Tampon tax exemption clears Senate committee

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Members of the Senate Committee on Commerce and Tourism couldn’t resist hazing Sen. Kathleen Passidomo before approving her bill to exempt female sanitary products from the sales tax. “I think this is Sen. Passidomo’s first bill” as a member of the committee, Sen. Jack Latvala said of his colleague, a Naples Republican elected to the Senate last year following service in the House. “What an interesting bill this is!” He asked what SB 176 — her tampon tax exemption — would…

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Enterprise Florida’s new chief defends the economic development program

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The new head of Enterprise Florida Inc. defended the organization Monday against complaints that it doesn’t raise enough private-sector money, saying a required one-to-one match of public and private dollars applies only to operating expenses. Chris Hart, who became president and CEO just weeks ago, cited the statute that created the economic development organization in 1996 during a meeting of the Senate Committee on Commerce and Tourism. “We do meet our private sector match,” Hart said. “That one-to-one match that’s been required…

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Council sees breakdown of trust with Office of Insurance Regulation

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Proposed reforms to Florida’s continuing care retirement community regulations ran into heavy flak Wednesday during an advisory council meeting, with the body’s president lamenting a breakdown of trust in the Office of Insurance Regulation. Joel Anderson, chairman of the Governor’s Continuing Care Advisory Council, complained that office staff unexpectedly unloaded a 61-page rewrite of the statute governing the facilities, also known as CCRCs. Anderson said he hoped the staff would not view his comments as overly “inflammatory,” saying the council has worked…

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FSU “policy pub” chat surveys a future with robot cars

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Self-driving cars promise to reshape the country into a more urban, but more humane, place. But we need to make sure the technology serves human needs, rather than adjust ourselves to technology’s demands. That was the word Tuesday evening from Tim Chapin, a professor of urban and regional planning and interim dean of the College of Social Sciences at Florida State University. “It’s happening, and it’s happening very quickly. Your grandkids and great-grandkids are going to grow up in a…

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Jack Latvala to House: The Senate makes its own rules

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Senate Appropriations Chairman Jack Latvala sent a message Thursday to the House leadership: Don’t expect to force the Senate to abide by your strict new budget rules. “We have our own rules in the Senate. We are going to abide by our own rules,” Latvala told reporters following a committee meeting. “I think it would be unfortunate if we got to a position where, because the House is trying to force their rules on the whole process, that we get into some kind…

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Ratings agency warns in brief against ‘dramatic expansion’ of Sunshine Law

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An insurance organization that proposes workers’ compensation coverage rates in Florida defended itself in pleadings to a state appeals court this week, seeking to overturn a lower court ruling that it had violated open-government laws. Attorneys for the National Council on Compensation Insurance, or NCCI, submitted their arguments in a brief filed Wednesday with the 1st District Court of Appeal. The state office of Insurance Regulation is also a party to the suit, filed by Miami workers’ compensation attorney James Fee.…

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