Brevard County's school board has agreed to stop turning its cameras off: non-agenda public comment, long held off-camera at the end of meetings, will now be streamed like the rest. The change follows a First Amendment fight the district already lost — a lawsuit settled for nearly $568,000 and a federal judge's order in January. The policy still has to be formalized and voted on.
Port St. Lucie's mayoral runoff on Tuesday pits incumbent Shannon Martin, who voted to build the city's plate-reader network, against Steven Giordano, who has vowed to tear it out — and who says the Police Department already aimed its surveillance at him, releasing video of a campaign-sign removal the homeowner says was done with her permission. The mayor's husband, a police internal-affairs lieutenant, is one of three officers on paid leave while FDLE investigates.
After nearly 11 hours of testimony Wednesday, Bunnell's City Commission voted unanimously to deny Project Butterfly, a 610-acre landfill its own planning board had approved in September — after a state economic-development law kept the project's details secret until shortly before that first vote. The denial fixes the secrecy. It does not fix the arithmetic: Flagler County is growing fast, growing counties produce waste, and waste that can't go here goes somewhere with less muscle to say no.
The Florida Department of Education announced Thursday that criminals accessed its student financial aid website and may have exposed personal information — including Social Security numbers — for up to 4.9 million people. The department learned of the breach on October 19. The public learned of it on October 29.
Pinellas County commissioners declined Tuesday to pull license plate readers off county roads, deferring the rules to the 2027 Legislature — while Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said he'd simply move the cameras if the county restricted its roads. The reason the cameras were on the agenda at all is an abuse file the sheriff's own audits didn't catch: one of his deputies searched a woman's plate about 300 times, and the agency started investigating only after a newspaper asked about the numbers.
Residents near the Mid-Florida Materials landfill say the sulfurous smell gives them headaches. Lake County, Mount Dora, and the county Water Authority say the stakes are higher: an unlined landfill beside a sink that drains straight into the Floridan Aquifer, and they're putting up a $1 million bond to move the fight into circuit court. But the map around the landfill tells a third story — a 550-acre jobs district that shares the sink's name, a tax base that has nearly tripled in a decade, and a question nobody in the fight is asking out loud: if the county wins, where does the debris go?
Citrus County commissioners voted 4-1 on Monday to authorize CoreCivic to negotiate with ICE about housing up to 119 immigration detainees at the county detention facility in Lecanto. The vote opens negotiations only — any actual agreement has to come back to the board for a later vote, and by then it will be a newly seated board deciding.
Citrus County's records manager sent 74 pages of health-insurance spreadsheets — Social Security numbers for about 1,300 county employees and family members — out in a public-records reply. He lost his job, and taxpayers will cover the $25,000 deductible. The uncomfortable part: the check that catches exactly this is standard, government-grade software. In one common case it already ships inside licenses governments pay for. In another, it's free, open-source, and never lets the data leave the building.
A grand jury said $10 million from a Medicaid settlement was misappropriated through Hope Florida into a political committee James Uthmeier controlled — and indicted no one. The courts have since ruled his way at nearly every step: the report expunged, the ad protected, the lawsuit dropped. The ad is still on television nine days before he faces voters, and the fight over the file is still running. Legal rulings settle motions. They don't settle what voters watched happen.
The same government whose enforcement doubled Florida framers' pay also wrote a rule cutting the legal farm wage floor — a rule its own Labor Department valued at $2.46 billion a year moved from workers to employers, and a federal court has now ruled illegal for undercutting American workers. The rule is being rewritten under a December 30 deadline. Who shows up for the rewrite decides what replaces it.
Immigration enforcement emptied the framing crews Florida builders built their business on. The framers who remain — the legal, skilled ones — now command $40 to $45 an hour, double the old rate. Builders call it being 'dead in the water.' Another way to read it: for the first time in a generation, the market is paying skilled American labor what it is actually worth. That was the point of the policy. This is it, working.
In late September, Brightline's parent companies filed Chapter 11 carrying $5.5 billion in debt — and the trains kept running, fuller than ever. The bankruptcy headlines and the company's own 'momentum' talk are each technically accurate. Neither tells you what actually happened: an ownership change in a courtroom, growth bought with discounted fares and borrowed money, and an expansion map that is one-third funded, one-third unfunded, one-third intention.
You never vote for just the name on the ballot — you vote for everyone that name will put in a chair. Palm Beach County just demonstrated it: the elected commission denied a data center expansion and paused new ones for a year; a county zoning office then approved nearly tripling the same site's data center space, administratively, with no vote and no hearing. This piece takes no side on the data center. It is about who decides.
Manatee County voters are being asked to tax themselves again to buy land before development does: an additional 0.16 mill and up to $75 million in bonds for the county's Environmental Lands Program. The 2020 round passed with over 70% and visibly bought land — and the county's own Inspector General says its books need work. The ballot, the track record, and the fine print, below.
No tease, here is the whole map. Florida has two Buc-ee's today, both on I-95. Three more have dates: Tallahassee in 2027, Fort Pierce in 2028, and Ocala in 2029, once the state finishes building its interchange. A sixth, at Port Charlotte on I-75, is on the company's books with no date yet. Every location, every date, and what is holding each one up — below.