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Budget, health care issues cloud Legislature’s opening day

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The Republican-led Florida Legislature kicked off its annual session Tuesday with the usual pomp, but the celebratory nature was overshadowed by lingering questions about the state budget, tax cuts and health care. The two GOP legislators in charge opened the session by stressing areas on which they plan to work in tandem over the next 60 days. That included dealing with the state’s standardized testing system. But Senate President Andy Gardiner and House Speaker Steve Crisafulli struck decidedly different tones…

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Bills to move back presidential primaries zoom through committee

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Two proposed committee bills to move back the date of Florida’s presidential primaries have sailed through legislative committees in as many days. The House version of the proposal, PCB RCEC 15-05, was introduced and approved in the House Rules Calendar & Ethics Committee without questions or debate in under three minutes on Monday, resulting in one of the fastest gavel-to-gavel hearings this observer has ever seen. In Senate Ethics & Elections, there was slightly more discussion, but not much. SPB 7036 was…

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The day that was in Florida politics — March 3

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The Florida House and Senate have a joint work plan but when Senate President Andy Gardiner recapped day one of the 2015 legislative session the conversation shed light on the issues separating the chambers. The different priorities will be the bargaining chips lawmakers will exchange over the next 10 weeks of policymaking and budget writing. The Senate sits with a greyhound injury reporting bill already passed, prison reform and a desire to reduce the number of uninsured Floridians. Across the…

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Jackie Toledo, Guido Maniscalco to run off in Tampa City Council District 6 race

in The Bay and the 'Burg/Top Headlines by

As Mayor Bob Buckhorn cruises to easy re-election victory, facing only a write-in candidate, one Tampa municipal race has brought at least a modicum of drama, despite lower than expected turnout numbers. In the Tampa City Council District 6 contest — a guaranteed new face on the board — civil engineer Jackie Toledo will face jeweler Guido Maniscalco in a March 24 runoff. District 6 represents West Tampa and some of South Tampa. Toledo led in the three-way race with 46 percent, but it was not…

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Mike Suarez defeats Susan Long in Tampa City Council District 1 race

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Incumbent Tampa City Council member Mike Suarez defeated opponent Susan Long, a longtime Seminole Heights neighborhood activist, in Tuesday’s race for citywide District 1. Final numbers give Suarez, a third-generation Tampa resident, the substantial victory with just under 62 percent. It will be his second four-year term on the council. For many municipal elections, incumbency sets a high bar. In Long’s case, a clear victory over Suarez would have been particularly challenging. “He is better known,” Long told Florida Politics’ Mitch Perry earlier in the day.…

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Bob Buckhorn steamrolls Tampa mayoral race, lowest turnout election in 40 years

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It was an early evening for Bob Buckhorn. Tampa’s incumbent mayor overwhelmingly won his second term with just under 96 percent of the vote. In one of the lowest turnout elections in more than four decades, Buckhorn, whose only challenger was a write-in, took 24,227 of the 25,260 total votes cast in the mayoral race, with all precincts reporting. During his victory celebration, shortly after polls closed, Buckhorn told supporters: “This is the place where people want to be. This is the place that offers…

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Governor asked to suspend testing after glitches

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Several school districts on Tuesday suspended Florida’s new standardized tests for a second day, despite assurances that the problems had been fixed. Education Commissioner Pam Stewart asked districts early in the morning to resume using the online portal that middle-school and high-school students must use in order to log on and take the state’s annual standardized tests. Testing had been suspended a day earlier because of technological problems. Stewart blamed problems on “software issues” and told school superintendents the company…

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