Miami-Dade has been stockpiling cars for 5 years -- and commissioners have known for at least 2

Miami-Dade County has been stockpiling vehicles for five years because administrators bought hundreds of vehicles in 2006 — and then decided a year later to drastically reduce the size of the county fleet, leaving scores of new and surplus vehicles gathering dust.

Commissioners have known about some of the extra vehicles for at least two years, records show, when the former county manager told them they had more than 100 unused Toyota Prius hybrids sitting in a county parking garage.

Yet the mayor and many commissioners have expressed shock and anger at a recent report that hundreds of brand-new Priuses and other vehicles — vans, pickup trucks, police patrol cars — remained parked in the county’s Earlington Heights garage for years.

Former County Manager George Burgess sent commissioners a memo on June 23, 2010, stating that 103 Priuses were being kept in the garage. The memo did not address other vehicles in the county’s fleet, which currently comprises some 7,300 vehicles.

Burgess wrote that the county had reduced the size of its fleet and extended the life of vehicles in use, creating a surplus of vehicles being stored and maintained in reserve.

Mayor Carlos Gimenez, who was then a commissioner, came to a similar conclusion Thursday in his own memo explaining why the county has 157 vehicles in the garage. Story here.

More bad news for out-of-work Floridians: Unemployment benefits will run out sooner

The state's 836,000 unemployed workers are in for more bad news: Their unemployment benefits are going to start running out sooner.

State officials said this week that 20 weeks of federal extended unemployment benefits are to start disappearing next month. That's on top of three weeks of state unemployment benefits that evaporated in January for newly unemployed workers.

Bottom line: The meager check for the state's unemployed — $275 a week — is going to have to stretch further.

The change is more the result of policy decisions in Washington and Tallahassee than a reflection of the state's improved economic scenario.

"It's not fair to characterize it as an indicator of an improved economy," said Maurice Emsellem, policy co-director of the National Employment Law Project. "It's just an indicator that the economy hasn't gotten worse."

Story here.

Look out, Romney, Obama launches FL voter drive that could help decide presidential race

In a nondescript store front next to a Pembroke Pines gym, Florida Democrats launched a major offensive this week to boost their ranks despite a Republican law that makes the voter-registration push harder than ever.

The President Obama’s re-election campaign has closely studied the registration-crackdown law for months and devised a step-by-step quality-control process and is ready this weekend to train hundreds of volunteers at its 24 offices throughout the state.

The battle for the White House could literally hinge on the effort in a state where President George W. Bush won his first term in 2000 thanks to a margin of 537 votes in Florida.

But long before Election Day, Democrats will gather in meetings much like the one led Wednesday by Organizing for America Florida activist Meghan Hardy. Bearing a chipper attitude and a Power Point presentation, Hardy taught about a dozen volunteers the dos and don’ts of voter registration. She gave a six-question quiz at the end.

“When we just register someone to vote, we don’t just register them and then stop,” Hardy said. “We think about it as the beginning of a conversation that we’re going to be having with voters between now and Election Day.”

Once new voters are registered, campaign will call and mail them to get them to the polls. As a result of their efforts, Hardy says, voters signed up in 2008 by the campaign were up to 20 percent more likely to vote when compared with voters signed up by other registration groups.

The new voter drive comes not a moment too soon for Democrats.

Since 2008, Democrats have lost 172,000 active voters – a roughly 4 percent decline -- while Republicans have quietly launched a modest registration campaign of their own that has increased their ranks by almost 1 percent, or nearly 37,000. Also, the latest Florida poll shows Republican Mitt Romney ahead of Obama, 47 percent to 45 percent -- an inside-the-error-margin lead.

Obama won Florida by less than 3 percentage points four years ago. In 2010, Republicans swept the state.

That makes every new voter count all the more heading into November.

Democrats still lead Republicans overall by a margin of 448,000 active registered voters. And, the Florida Democratic Party notes, they lead by an even greater amount – 540,000 – by including the pool of so-called inactive voters, who cast ballots so infrequently that the state doesn’t post information about them.

The Florida Democratic Party points out the inactive voters can become active. It says that about 100,000 of them showed up in 2008, when president Obama won the state – and the White House in the process – by about 236,000 votes.

There are about 11.2 million active voters (plus 1.1 million more inactive voters). About 41 percent are Democrats, 36 percent Republicans, 20 percent has no party affiliation and fewer than 4 percent belong to a smattering of other parties.

Voter registration statistics aren’t clear predictors of an election’s outcome; just because a new voter registers Democrat, doesn’t mean he’ll cast a ballot or that he’ll vote for a Democrat.

But the numbers are a good barometer of the mood of the electorate and the state of the political parties and campaigns.

For instance, white voters appear to be dropping from the Democratic rolls, with 206,000 of them leaving since the last election. Black voters continue to leave the Republican Party, where African American active voters declined 7 percent to about 59,000.

Florida senators split votes on Violence Against Women Act

Florida's senators split their votes on the Violence Against Women Act, with Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson voting to extend it, and Republican Sen. Marco Rubio voting against it. The bill passed 68-31. The 31 no votes came from Republican men. All of the Republican women in the Senate voted for the legislation.

The 18-year-old federal law created a national strategy to prevent domestic violence against women and pours resources into efforts to help victims of domestic violence. But like everything this year, it's caught up in politics. 

The original act passed in 1994 with bipartisan support, but some opponents are trying to block the legislation because they fear it would broaden American Indian tribal rights and has too many protections for gay and illegal immigrant victims of violence. Conservative Republicans _ already feeling political heat for being insensitive to women _ complain such provisions are unneeded and are reluctant to go along.

Rubio said today he would vote for the act as originally written, and says he hopes he "can vote for it once it comes out of the House-Senate conference committee." Perhaps feeling the heat, he wrote an extensive defense of his votes on Thursday, including the amendments, on his webpage. It can be found here:

Elections officials incensed over Scott's 'rating system'

Florida supervisors of elections are incensed with Gov. Rick Scott and his chief elections official over what they say is a flawed and inaccurate survey that ranks them in eight areas. Elections officials went public with their frustrations on Thursday in hopes of keeping the governor's office from posting survey results online that they say are inaccurate.

"The process was flawed from the start," said Pinellas Supervisor of Elections Deb Clark. "Questions and procedures were unclear, obviously written by people who can cite statutes, but have no understanding of what is required to conduct an election."

The survey results appear below.

The idea came from Scott, a firm believer in accountability and measurement. Election supervisors are not political appointees; they are independently-elected constitutional officers, like sheriffs or court clerks. 

The supervisors had a contentious 90-minute conference call on Wednesday with Secretary of State Ken Detzner. During that conference call, the elections officials cited inaccuracies in the survey and asked the state to delay posting the results online. "Our request was denied," Clark said in an email to Pinellas legislators. "So they are posting information they know is incorrect."

The survey rated elections officials in areas such as how quickly they posted their first election night results; when they mailed absentee ballots; and when they notified the public of early voting sites. Supervisors also received extra credit if they mailed in the survey results ahead of the deadline, which Pasco Supervisor of Elections Brian Corley called "silly."

"This is completely devoid of any statutory validity," Corley said. "I'm almost embarrassed ... it's sad."

The governor's office and Detzner's office have no immediate reaction to the criticism. Worth noting: One of the lowest-rated supervisors of election in the state is a Scott appointee, Thomas Hardee of Madison County, who was appointed by the governor last year when his predecessor was charged with elections fraud.

-- Steve Bousquet

Three South Florida Democrats bash Gov. Scott over public safety task force

On the same day that the New York Times published an op-ed bashing Gov. Rick Scott over the gun-friendly slant of his public safety task force, three South Florida representatives called on him to overhaul the 19-member group.

Reps. Dwight Bullard, D-Miami, Cynthia Stafford, D-Miami and Barbara Watson, D-Miami Gardens, said they want Scott to appoint a more diverse task force to look into Florida's controversial Stand Your Ground law.

At a press conference at Church of the Open Door UCC in a predominantly black section of Miami, the three Democrats criticized Scott for his task force appointees, and called out task force chair Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll for mischaracterizing the selection process last week.

Last week, the Herald/Times reported that three of the four lawmakers on the task force voted for Stand Your Ground in 2005, and a fourth joined the Legislature in 2010. The first bill he passed was a gun-friendly measure banning doctors from asking patients about gun ownership.

Counties sue state over Medicaid billing dispute

The Florida Association of Counties filed an anticipated lawsuit in circuit court today on behalf of 47 counties challenging the state’s new Medicaid billing system. The counties are accusing the state of creating an unfunded mandate by withholding revenue sharing dollars to cover future Medicaid costs, as well as a disputed payment backlog.

“This suit does not challenge whether counties should participate with the State in making its Medicaid payments,” the association said in a statement on its website. “That policy decision was made long ago. Rather, counties want to pay their fair and accurate share of the Medicaid bills on behalf of their residents, which they have been prevented from doing because of a State billing system plagued with rampant errors.”

Hillsborough, Miami-Dade, Broward, Pinellas, Pasco and Hernando counties are among the 47 named in the suit. The Florida Department of Revenue, which collects tax revenue, and the Agency for Health Care Administration, which oversees the Medicaid program, are named as defendants.

Marco Rubio joins a Democrat in condemning violence in Syria

He talked bipartisanship in his big foreign policy speech this week; now, Sen. Marco Rubio is living it.

Rubio, R-Fla., joined Democratic Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania in a resolution that calls for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to "end his campaign of violence and to step down from power so that the Syrian people can begin the transition to an inclusive democratic government." 

The two called for the U.S. to do more to provide humanitarian assistance to those suffering under the regime’s brutality, and to assist opposition organizations that seek a peaceful, democratic future for Syria.

"Assad has committed atrocities against the Syrian people, and it's essential that the United States keep applying pressure on the regime and plan for a post-Assad Syria," he said. "Assad's departure from power needs to be accelerated, while we lay the foundation for Syria to begin its difficult path towards a true inclusive democracy," Rubio said in a statement.

The two senators issued a statement that says their resolution asks the Obama administration to continue to provide support, including communications equipment, to the political opposition in Syria. It also asks for the administration to provide robust humanitarian assistance to those affected by the ongoing violence. Finally, it calls for a plan to identify and secure the Assad regime’s stockpiles of conventional, biological, and chemical weapons.

Citizens slows plan to allow uncapped rates for new customers

Florida’s mammoth state-run insurance company decided Thursday to move more slowly on a plan to allow unlimited rates for new clients.

Part of an aggressive push by Citizens Property Insurance to reduce its number of policies by more than 400,000 (or about 30%) in the next 18 months, the plan would remove the 10 percent cap on rates for any new customers, causing them to pay as much as 50 percent more than existing customers with similar policies.

After a wave of outcry from the public and lawmakers, the board of governors decided to ask Citizens’ staff to study the issue further before bringing it up for a vote.

Legislator calls for investigation into Supreme Court's document drama

Gov. Rick Scott is considering calling for an investigation into whether or not three Supreme Court justices are guilty of a misdemeanor in their scramble to get papers filed last week in their merit retention races.

Rep. Scott Plakon, a Longwood Republican, had sent a letter to Scott on Thursday asking for the probe into whether or not three Supreme Court justices violated state law by using court employees to "prepare the campaign documents" relating to their merit retention election on the November ballot. The governor is evaluating whether to order the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate, according to the governor’s staff.

Plakon cited media reports about the court's rare, hour-long break in redistricting arguments on Friday when the lawyer heading up the merit retention campaigns of Justice Barbara Pariente, Peggy Quincy and R. Fred Lewis, alerted them that they had failed to file the required financial disclosure form and qualifying papers by the noon deadline.

"If correct, the news reports indicate that Florida law may have been violated by the Justices,'' Plakon wrote, citing state statute that prevents a candidate for public office from using the services of state staff during working hours.