Bill Nelson says gay marriage should be left to the states

A day after President Barack Obama announced support for gay marriage and on the eve of his accepting an award from Miami-Dade County’s leading gay rights group, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., has tip-toed out of the political closet.

“I have a record fighting against discrimination and standing up for people’s civil rights based on their sexual orientation,” Nelson said in an email Thursday to The Miami Herald, not revealing whether he agrees with Obama’s progressive stance on gay couples marrying. “I believe marriage should be left to the states, and Florida voted on same-sex marriage in 2008.”

“That’s interestingly safe,” said C.J. Ortuño, executive director of SAVE Dade, which Friday night presents Nelson its 2012 Champions of Equality Award. “Bill spent his whole career saying I’m not this liberal Democrat, parts of me are conservative.”

MacNamara changed gov's travel policy for friend

When Gov. Rick Scott came to office, he adopted a policy for his agencies that required out of state travel to be “cost effective” and “have a direct and measurable benefit to getting Floridians back to work.”

It was a point that Scott’s chief of staff, Steve MacNamara, hammered home at staff meetings. It prompted the head of the Department of Economic Opportunity, Doug Darling, to compile a list of trips that had “true market impact and the best chance for success” and get MacNamara’s approval. Download DD Approval of OFE Bus Outreach 10-7-11

But MacNamara changed the rules for Shari Kerrigan, a lawyer and friend of MacNamara’s whom the governor appointed the state’s film commissioner in December.

A month on the job, she asked MacNamara to let her travel to the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, even though the trip wasn’t on the list approved by MacNamara before Kerrigan had the job.Story here.

When Darling told Kerrigan she couldn’t go, “her reaction was unprofessional and abusive to staff,’’ he wrote in a Jan. 24 memo to MacNamara. “Without notifying either her direct supervisor or myself, she attended on her own. Unfortunately she did not notify us that she was attending and, to date, has not called. We only learned this by contacting her staff.”  Download DD Friday Meeting

Kerrigan took the trip to the world famous film festival, stayed three nights at the Zermatt Resort in Park City, Utah, and ended with a trip to Miami Beach for a meeting of television executives. The cost to taxpayers: $2,713. She then stayed four nights at The Raleigh in Miami Beach and spent $1,293 there, including $93 in “room service/mini bar charges,” according to her travel vouchers. Download 03.28.2012 -- Kerrigan travel expense request.redacted

As oil rig drills off Cuba's coast, embargo could threaten safety

The 50-year-old U.S. embargo of Cuba is getting in the way of safety when it comes to deepwater drilling in Cuban waters, an expert on the communist country’s offshore drilling activity said Thursday.

Lee Hunt, the former president of the International Association of Drilling Contractors, warned that Cold War-era economic sanctions threaten not only Florida’s economy and environment but that of Cuba, too, in the event of a major disaster on the scale of 2010’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The worst-case scenario is “state-sponsored chaos at a disaster site,” Hunt said during an event sponsored by the Center for International Policy, a Washington think tank that advocates for a foreign policy based on human rights.

The U.S. Coast Guard has extensive response plans, as does the state of Florida. But Hunt said he would give prevention efforts an “F” grade. He likened the work to stocking body bags for a plane crash — but not training pilots to fly safely or to maintain aircraft properly.

Hunt for 180,000 possible non-citizen voters exposes partisan divide

Amid an increasingly partisan dog fight, Florida elections officials say the number of potential non-citizens they’re examining on the state voter rolls is far higher than what was initially reported: 180,000.

Florida’s Division of Elections said Thursday that it’s combing through this initial, mammoth list of names -- which were flagged during a computer database search -- to make sure its list is as clean and as small as possible.

The state is then turning over smaller batches of the more-verified names to local county election supervisors, who are contacting the potential non-citizens to see if they can lawfully vote.

By the end of the process, the state could send counties as many as 22,000 names to check, one election source indicated, in a state with more than 12 million total voters.

Right now, supervisors have been sent nearly 2,700 names, about 2,000 of which are in Miami-Dade, Florida’s most-populous and most-immigrant heavy county.

Some Democrats accuse the Republican-appointed Secretary of State Ken Detzner of engaging in a type of “voter suppression.” But Detzner’s office said he’s trying to make sure no unlawful votes are cast -- and it indicated that Obama’s Administration is stonewalling the effort by refusing to share Department of Homeland Security databases that could more easily show who’s a citizen and who’s not.

“We have been requesting DHS access since September of last year,” said Florida’s Division of Elections spokesman, Chris Cate. “We can do our checks. But we’re restricted in the level of confirmation we can do. We need help from the federal government. But so far, we’ve been unsuccessful.”

DHS has yet to comment.

FL Supreme Court hears foreclosure appeal

TALLAHASSEE — In a case that could impact thousands of homeowners facing foreclosure, Florida's Supreme Court heard arguments Thursday on whether a judge can revive a dropped case when the plaintiff is suspected of fraud.

The justices took up Pino vs. The Bank of New York, a Palm Beach County case in which drywall hanger Roman Pino accused his bank of fraudulently backdating documents used against him in foreclosure proceedings.

The bank dropped the case, corrected the paperwork, and re-filed five months later. The parties reached a settlement, but justices still wanted to rule on whether a plaintiff's right to drop a case trumps the court's obligation to penalize for fraud.

Sen. Miguel Diaz de la Portilla's firm lobbies for FPL in South Miami, which is at odds with...FPL

When South Miami commissioners were readying to take a vote opposing Florida Power & Light's proposed base-rate increase, Mayor Philip Stoddard got an unexpected phone call -- from his state senator.

Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, a lawyer and lobbyist, called on behalf of his firm's client: FPL.

"He did ask me to delay it, and I think they wanted me to delay it again," said Stoddard, who pushed back the resolution for unrelated scheduling reasons. "I wouldn't delay it a second time."

It's not the first time that Diaz de la Portilla or any other lawmaker lobbies a city in his or her district. Nothing prohibits them from doing so.

But Diaz de la Portilla, a Coral Gables Republican who works at Becker & Poliakoff, is not a registered lobbyist in South Miami. And South Miami -- along with Coral Gables, Miami and Pinecrest -- is engaged in an ongoing fight against FPL over the company's proposal to build power-transmission lines along U.S. 1.

Diaz de la Portilla called the brouhaha an attempt by "liberal Democrats ... to slander a Republican Senator." He noted his firm's long relationship with FPL and said he never spoke to Stoddard "about the merits of his resolution." Someone else is representing FPL before South Miami, Diaz de la Portilla added.

"I do not currently represent FPL before South Miami or any City within my Senate District," he said in a text message.

His appearance on behalf of FPL at a recent executive board meeting of the Miami-Dade League of Cities outraged Pinecrest Mayor Cindy Lerner, a former Democratic state representative. She called Diaz de la Portilla's gig lobbying cities in his district "unconscionable."

"It's got to be a conflict of interest," she said. "It is a breach of his duty as a representative."

Corrections Secretary Ken Tucker loses his chief of staff

Florida Corrections Secretary Ken Tucker must launch a search for a new chief of staff, now that top aide Steven Ferst has resigned. Ferst's last day on the public payroll will be Friday, May 11. He earned $120,000 a year.

For any state agency head, the chief of staff is a key appointee who interacts not only with agency officials and other agencies, but with Gov. Rick Scott's office, too. Ferst, 54, was one of Tucker's first hires and was considered an expert in purchasing issues when he worked for the Department of Education. In the past few weeks, the agency chose two vendors to privatize all inmate health care, but that award requires approval by the Legislative Budget Commission. 

Reached at his Tallahassee home Thursday, Ferst declined comment. Tucker said Ferst's departure was amicable. "Steve just indicated to me that he wanted to pursue other options," Tucker said. "I can't tell you much more than that about it. It was a personal decision. If that's what he wants, I'd prefer to have somebody in that position who wanted to be there."

-- Steve Bousquet

FAMU 'Marching 100' band director resigns

Julian White, the director of the embattled Florida A&M University Marching 100 announced his resignation today. White had been on paid administrative leave pending a the outcoming of several investigations regarding the acclaimed marching band and the hazing death of drum major Robert Champion.

White issued a statement Thursday afternoon via his attorney, Chuck Hobbs, that said he was choosing to retire after a 40-year tenure at FAMU. The statement gives no indication about the timing of the announcement or what caused him to drop efforts to be reinstated at the school.

Recently, news surfaced that three of 11 band members facing charges as a result of the investigation of Champion's death were not FAMU students or enrolled in a music course, a violation of university policy. FAMU President James Ammons sent a letter to the school's Board of Trustees Tuesday that said 101 of 457 members on the roster did not meet the requirements to march with the band.

Rubio: The new DREAM Act is about humanitarian relief, not immigration reform

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., on Thursday offered up a new explanation for his version of the DREAM Act, casting it less as immigration reform than humanitarian relief for a specific group of young people who face deportation.

He described their cases as similar to those of Cuban refugees who are allowed to come to the United States and stay, jumping in line in front of other possible immigrants because the U.S. has made an exception in light of the political circumstances in Cuba.

"This is for a very specific case of people," said Rubio, speaking in Washington D.C. to a group of business people from Des Moines. Rubio was there at the invitation of Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who frequently invites fellow senators to speak to the gathering.

Rubio, who recently has previewed pieces of his proposal, didn't address immigration directly until he was asked questions after his speech. And even then, while he was critical of the country's existing immigration system, he had to be pressed to talk about his own alternative to the DREAM Act.

The DREAM Act -- supported by many Democrats and President Obama and stalled in Congress -- allows young people who came to the U.S. illegally with their parents as children to stay in this country. Rubio's proposal would not provide a direct path to citizenship for those young people, who would nontheless be allowed to stay in the country under his proposal. They would still have to apply for residency and citizenship, though.

Rubio also suggested that he's not interested in tackling comprehensive immigration reform. That allows bad ideas in with the good, he said. Instead, Rubio said, Congress needs to address the DREAM Act kids and other specific immigration problems, such as creating a guest worker program and a way for employers to verify the immigration status of potential hires.

Rubio was highly critical of specific provisions of the existing DREAM Act. The direct path to citizenship allows young people to become U.S. citizens and then sponsor family members for citizenship. Rubio said he's concerned some of those the young people could sponsor would be their parents -- the very people who brought their children to the U.S. illegally. He said it would allow up to 3 million people to become U.S. citizens -- although it's unclear where that figure came from.

Florida failing neglected and abused children, report says

A nationwide study of state policies governing legal proceedings for abused and neglected children resulted in an "F" for Florida and nine other states.

The report titled A Child's Right to Counsel: A National Report Card on Legal Representation for Abused and Neglected Children was released today by First Star, a national organization working to improve the lives of abused and neglected children, and the Children's Advocacy Institute at the University of San Diego Law School. It graded each state and the District of Columbia on dependency court procedures and the type of legal representation children received.

Florida received low marks in several categories because state law does not require an attorney to be appointed to represent children in dependency proceedings. The state's guardian ad litem program allows non-attorneys to service in this capacity. Florida scored a 55 out of 100 possible points.