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Mitch Perry Report for 6.12.15 — On this LGBT issue, Florida and Rick Scott resist social conservative pressures

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Thirty-eights years after Anita Bryant, Florida no longer officially bans gays from adopting children. Though it’s been legal for such couples to adopt since 2010, Governor Scott signed a bill into law last night that now makes that official.  As you’ll recall, this issue roiled social conservatives in and outside of the Legislature this spring. The inclusion of the amendment by Miami Beach Democrat David Richardson to repeal the state statute on gay adoption (which was ruled unconstitutional by a court in…

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Victor Crist insists entire BOCC wants to pass an effective wage-theft ordinance

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For the second time in the past month, the conservative editorial page at the Tampa Tribune is taking the five Republicans on the Hillsborough County Commission to task for their approach in resisting a proposal offered by Democrat Kevin Beckner on a wage-theft ordinance. Last week the GOP-led majority of the BOCC fought back efforts to pass a wage-theft ordinance based on a model created in Miami-Dade County in 2010, the first such ordinance of its type in Florida and one still…

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Transit activists unhappy with reported Hillsborough transit tax proposal

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Hillsborough County Administrator Mike Merrill was briefing some members of the Hillsborough County Commission Wednesday afternoon, a day before he’ll unveil before the public his recommendations on how the county should address its huge transportation needs. As first reported by the Tampa Tribune’s Mike Salinero, Merrill will propose that commissioners put a half-cent sales transit tax on the 2016 ballot, but with only 30 percent of those funds being allocated to mass transit. Sixty percent would be for building and rebuilding…

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William March reports what we’ve already reported

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William March is something of a hero among journalists in the Tampa Bay area. He’s been a staple of enterprise reporting for decades. When he was abruptly let go from his longstanding post at the Tampa Tribune, colleagues and competitors alike were astonished, angered and, of course, saddened. But alas, he has returned as a correspondent for the Tampa Bay Times. Now March is penning columns for the area’s biggest print newspaper following all the insider politics readers loved from…

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With emotions flaring, Hillsborough County Commission advances potential wage theft ordinance

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On the face of it, it didn’t look like a very close comparison as the Hillsborough County Commission met on Wednesday to review what type of system they’d like to model a policy shift to try to combat wage-theft in the county, rated in a recent report as the second worst in the entire state. Speaking via Skype from South Florida, Jeanette Smith, executive director of South Florida Interfaith Worker Justice, went through a basic comparison of two of the…

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Hillsborough County Commission picks Janet Dougherty as the next EPC chief

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She didn’t even make the initial list of finalists, but now Janet Dougherty will soon become only the third executive director of the Hillsborough County Environmental Protection Agency (EPC). The 53-year-old Hillsborough County native comes with 25 years of experience in local and state environmental policy and business management, and she wasn’t even on the short list recommended by the EPC’s selection committee last month. But the door opened up for her after Scott Emery, the EPC wetland enforcement manager, had to…

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Hillsborough County Commission meeting gets hot talking wage theft

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Although every member of the Hillsborough County Commission weighed in this morning regarding their concern about the issue of wage theft in the county, the Republican members’ prescription of how to alleviate the problem drew the wrath of the measure’s proponent, Democrat Kevin Beckner. Beckner said that his colleagues’ worries about growing the size of government outweighed their professed concern for workers losing wages unfairly in the county, and they rejected his proposal, based on a Miami-Dade County ordinance. The issue isn’t dead…

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