Did Walt Disney want to build in Miami instead of Orlando?

A battle over whether to turn a swath of trees near the Zoo Miami into an amusement park has touched off a debate about whether Disney decades ago wanted to build in Miami-Dade and whether county officials told Disney "to take a hike."

County commissioners will consider declaring the area blighted at a March 3 hearing which could pave the way for developers to build a $930 million 20th Century Fox amusement park. Environmentalists vow to fight the plan.

County Commissioner Dennis Moss, who has advocated for an amusement park in his district, told the Miami Herald that the land had been planned for redevelopment for years. And he says the county shouldn’t miss another opportunity to have an amusement park.

"When Disney was looking to build Disney World, they came to Miami and we told Disney to take a hike, and they took a hike to Central Florida. You see the economic impact they had on Central Florida. We have a chance to do that with 20th Century Fox in our community," he said in a Dec. 19 article.

His claim set off a flurry of letters to the editor by readers who debated whether Disney World  considered Miami-Dade as a site and if local officials rejected it. Here’s one from prominent South Florida attorney Ben Kuehne:

"I wonder who were the unidentified officials in then-Dade County who told Disney to ‘take a hike,’ when Disney does not seem to have ever expressed an interest in South Florida as a potential location for its Disney World attraction. To the contrary, official Disney history is that Disney particularly chose Central Florida in order to not compete with existing tourism areas on the Atlantic Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico. Is Moss trying to pull a fast one on the Miami-Dade residents in his haste to pursue a massive theme park development in his district, contending that we lost a nonexistent opportunity once and cannot afford to do so 50 years later?"

But then Larry Capp, former executive director of the governmental entity Metro-Miami Action Plan during the 1980s, wrote a letter saying that Moss is correct. Capp’s information is based on conversations he had with the late County Mayor Stephen R. Clark in the 1980s.

Clark "never deviated from his account that Disney wanted to come to Miami," Capp wrote. But the negotiations with the county commission fell apart when Disney demanded that the county pay for infrastructure, Capp wrote. He added that Disney had already acquired large parcels in the county in the area that is now Trump National Doral. (Clark, who has since died, was first elected to the Miami city commission in 1963 and later became county mayor.)

Time to pull out PolitiFact’s Truth-O-Meter: Did Disney consider Miami-Dade and did county officials tell Disney to go take a hike? Take a wild ride with us as we try to separate the lore from the truth about the twists and turns in the development of Disney World.

Turn to PolitiFact Florida to see what we found.

Medical-marijuana, then and now, a 2014-16 comparison of the FL amendments

@MarcACaputo

People United for Medical Marijuana has drafted a 2016 proposed constitutional amendment that makes numerous changes to its 2014 proposal. Petition-gathering begins Monday (more here). Here's a side-by-side look at the differences in wording between the two proposals:

A medical marijuana killer in 2014: voter 'rolloff'

@MarcACaputo

University of Florida political science professor Dan Smith weighs in on what "really hurt" Florida's medical marijuana initiative in 2014: "down-ballot roll-off."

That is, 101,807 fewer people voted for the amendment than governor.

Smith wrote his analysis in response to yesterday's Miami Herald story (here) about the resurrection of the amendment. This is from Smith's Election Smith blog:

As this Figure [reproduced below] reveals, support for Amendment (Yellow line) was fairly strong across the state of Florida (it only dipped below 50% in 15 mostly rural counties). The big problem for Morgan and his campaign consultants was ballot roll-off, that is, voters who cast ballots in the gubernatorial race for Democrat Charile Crist (Blue line), but who didn’t vote for legalizing medical marijuana.  Support for Crist in Broward county, for example, topped 70%, and support for Amendment 2 was nearly as high.  The down-ballot roll-off on Amendment 2, however, was 5.3%. Crist tallied 17,000 more votes than Morgan’s Amendment 2 in Broward.  In Miami-Dade county, Crist out-polled Amendment 2 by more than 28,000 votes, as roll-off was 6.7% in the populous South Florida county.  Amendment 2 failed to achieve 60% in Miami-Dade not because of poor turnout, but because of the high roll-off among Crist supporters.  Across the state, roll-off on Amendment 2 was by far the greatest in Broward and Miami-Dade, strongholds for Democrats and support for the legalization of medical marijuana.

What's interesting about the Miami-Dade and Broward numbers is how it indicates the affect of big money in the race. In the closing days of the campaign, the medical-marijuana opponents, Drug Free Florida, saturated the Miami-Fort Lauderdale market with negative TV ads. Drug Free also hired Javier Correoso, a Republican Cuban-American, to reach out to that demographic in Miami-Dade (where Cuban-Americans account for roughly 72 percent of registered Republicans). People United for Medical Marijuana couldn't afford to keep up and didn't advertise in the market at all.

Overall, Drug Free Florida outspent People United by about 3 to 1 on TV. And the amendment still got 57.6 percent of the vote. But it failed because it didn't meet the 60 percent voter-approval threshhold.

Yup, money -- especially money in TV in a political campaign -- matters.

Jeb Bush fundraising goal: $100 million?

File this Bloomberg story under how not to set expectations -- albeit the Bush campaign denies setting a fundraising goal of $100 million (but that doesn't make Bloomberg's story untrue):

Jeb Bush's allies are setting a fundraising goal of $100 million in the first three months of this year—including a whopping $25 million haul in Florida—in an effort to winnow the potential Republican presidential primary field with an audacious display of financial strength.

The targets were confirmed by multiple Republican sources involved in finance meetings with Bush's team. They requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. One said the point is to persuade some establishment candidates to stay on the sidelines in the 2016 race.

The attempt to intimidate the wide-open field with a shock-and-awe fundraising machine echoes the strategy Bush's brother, former President George W. Bush, used to win the White House in 2000. In 1999, then-Texas Governor Bush raised $37 million in the first half of the year and $29 million in the third quarter, breaking records and pressuring other contenders, such as Elizabeth Dole, Dan Quayle, John Kasich, and Lamar Alexander, to end their campaigns swiftly or decide not to start one.

More here

Note: Posted has been updated, a question mark placed at the end of the headline to reflect the campaign's position.

Before father threw his daughter off bridge, he had history of abuse

@Marbinus

By age 5, Phoebe Jonchuck already had a significant history with Florida child protection authorities: Her father, they were told, was habitually violent with his domestic partners, and had been accused of “smacking” his daughter in the face. Phoebe’s mother, according to reports to the agency, was a meth user who had been charged with cruelty to another child in 2008.

A Tampa judge left to determine custody between them faced difficult choices.

The battle between John Nicholas Jonchuck and Michelle Kerr ended tragically early Thursday when Jonchuck tossed his 5-year-old daughter from a bridge approaching the iconic Sunshine Skyway, which spans Tampa Bay between St. Petersburg and Manatee County. Phoebe’s body was found by an Eckerd College dive team.

The report of Phoebe’s death to the state Department of Children & Families child abuse hotline was the sixth report the agency had received about the family in the past 2 1/2 years. Records of those contacts suggest little was done to ensure Phoebe’s safety since the first report was received at 9:51 p.m. on April 14, 2012. More from Carol Marbin Miller here. 

Advocates make early push for Medicaid expansion

Health care advocates are making an aggressive push to put Medicaid expansion back on the table.

Their latest effort: a statewide "Day of Action" to close the coverage gap.

For the past two years, Florida House Republicans have refused federal dollars to extend publicly funded healthcare coverage to nearly a million residents. But there are signs 2015 may be different. A new plan offering an alternative to expansion as envisioned under the Affordable Care Act has found support in the Capitol. And a federal judge ruled last week that the state's artificially low Medicaid budget has caused needy children to be deprived access to healthcare.

Thursday's Day of Action included events in Miami, Tampa, Orlando and Tallahassee. 

In Florida's capital city, advocates addressed the moral and economic reasons for expanding Medicaid.

"We're going to pay physicians, we're going to pay nurses, we're going to pay assistants," said Karen Woodall, executive director of the Florida Center for Fiscal and Economic Policy. "Medicaid is one of the largest economic multipliers we have available to us."

Athena Smith Ford, of the advocacy group Florida CHAIN, she was "very encouraged about the upcoming session."

"We know that lawmakers are hearing the same things we are hearing -- that there is a lot of room and flexibility from [the U.S. Department of] Health and Human Services to find a plan that works well for Florida," she said. "We also know that it is going to be a great boost to our economy, it is going to keep our citizens healthier and that overwhelmingly, from both Republicans and Democrats across the state, there is public support for this."

The politics and policy of medical marijuana, 2016 edition

@MarcACaputo

Florida’s medical marijuana initiative is back and, its backers say, new and improved.

The proposed amendment, submitted Thursday to the Florida Secretary of State’s office, closely resembles the 2014 initiative that narrowly failed at the ballot box — however it was rewritten throughout in an attempt to quiet critics who said it had too many loopholes.

The amendment backers, People United for Medical Marijuana, on Monday will start gathering the 683,149 voter signatures needed to get the measure on the 2016 ballot.

“I’mmmmmmmm baaaaaaaaaack,” joked John Morgan, the wealthy Orlando trial lawyer who sunk about $4 million of his own money into last year’s effort.

“Last time I did this, it was like a maze,” Morgan says. “Well, I’ve been through it once. I know how to do this. We made a lot of mistakes and we won’t make them this time.”

The new proposal specifies that parents would have to consent if their child is to receive medical marijuana. It adds extra language to clarify that only people with “debilitating medical conditions” can receive the drug. It makes sure to say that it can only be recommended by a licensed medical physician. And the Department of Health would be empowered to deny felons the ability to be so-called “caregivers” who deliver marijuana for a qualified patient.

Story here

Download 2016 MMJ initiative

Teachers union won't appeal decision in log-rolling lawsuit

The statewide teachers union will no longer pursue one of its school voucher lawsuits.

The decision came after discussions with Senate President Andy Gardiner, Florida Education Association Vice President JoAnne McCall said Thursday.

McCall said the union had "opened a dialogue with the Senate president on a broad range of issues, including testing, special-needs students and other public-education concerns of paramount importance to the FEA.”

The suit threatened a program that has been a top priority for Gardiner.

It took aim at SB 850, which both created a new scholarship program for special-needs students (championed by Gardiner) and expanded Florida's controversial school voucher program. The FEA argued that SB 850 violated a provision of the Constitution limiting each law to a single subject.

The bill became law earlier this year. 

A judge dismissed the suit on procedural grounds last month, and discouraged the union from amending its complaint. Union leaders said Thursday they would not appeal the ruling.

Gardiner said he was "pleased to see the FEA drop their lawsuit."

"The families of the more than 1,300 students with unique abilities currently awarded Personal Learning Scholarship Accounts can now rest assured that they will have access to school choice options that are best suited to their unique needs," he said.

But the union was clear that Thursday's decision would not impact a separate lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the school voucher program, which provides private-school scholarships to children from low-income families.

In a video statement released Wednesday, McCall said she would take that lawsuit to the Florida Supreme Court, if necessary.

"Opponents have challenged us to drop this lawsuit," she said. "But when it comes to standing up for our students, we will never hold back and we will never give up."

 

John Morgan files revised medical marijuana amendment for 2016

Making good on his promise to file another constitutional amendment to legalize medical marijuana, Orlando attorney John Morgan on Thursday filed a revised version of his original proposal with the Florida Secretary of State's office.

Morgan, who spearheaded the constitutional amendment that won 58 percent of the vote in November, said the new amendment "is essentially the same amendment with clarifications." (Here's full story with side-by-side analysis.)

If he collects enough signatures, and wins court approval, it will be on the 2016 presidential ballot.

The original Amendment 2 failed to become law despite collecting a majority of votes because it fell short of the 60 percent threshold needed for constitutional initiatives in Florida.

Morgan told the Herald/Times he would prefer that the issue be addressed by the Legislature, so that it is not embedded into the state Constitution, but because lawmakers have not shown a desire to act he will make one more try. 

"After this, I'll never do this again,'' Morgan told the Herald/Times. "The lesson in playing big is you set yourself up to lose big and losing big gives you humility and perspective that I didn't have when I was trying to find my way in the woods on this the first time."

Among the lessons learned, he said: "A lot of it was about me and it should be less about me and more about the patients." He said he also wrongly assumed the first time that if he got young voters out to the polls to vote for the amendment, it would pass. "But they didn't come out to vote,'' he said.

Meanwhile, Amendment 2 lost the greatest share of voters among those 65 and older and they are "the people most likely to benefit,'' he said.

Rick Scott's Mostly False claim about New Yorkers and others moving $2 trillion of income to escape taxes

Rick Scott began his second term as Florida’s governor in much the same fashion as he started his first -- by railing against high taxes.

In his inaugural address on Jan. 6, 2015, Scott boasted that scads of people had moved to Florida in recent years, allegedly lured by the state’s lack of income tax and low cost of living.

"Over the last 20 years, millions of people have escaped from states with climbing tax rates to move to states with lower taxes," Scott said. "For starters, estimates say individuals who escaped these high tax states have taken with them around $2 trillion of adjusted gross income. They’re voting with their feet."

Scott went on to point out that between 1992 to 2011, New York and Illinois had lost billions in adjusted gross income, and that "their No. 1 destination was Florida." The Sunshine State, meanwhile, had "inherited" more than $100 billion in adjusted gross income from other states in the same time period.

Considering Florida just last year passed New York as the third-most populous state in the union, it’s obvious people are moving into the state. We wondered about the larger point here, whether $2 trillion in adjusted gross income transferred into Florida and other states to avoid higher taxes.

Turn to Joshua Gillin's fact-check from PolitiFact Florida.