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FLORIDA POLITICS
Since 2002, daily Florida political news and commentary

 

UPDATE: Every morning we review and individually digest Florida political news articles, editorials and punditry. Our sister site, FLA Politics was selected by Campaigns & Elections as one of only ten state blogs in the nation
"every political insider should be reading right now."

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Welcome To Florida Politics

Thanks for visiting. On a semi-daily basis we scan Florida's major daily newspapers for significant Florida political news and punditry. We also review the editorial pages and political columnists/pundits for Florida political commentary. The papers we review include: the Miami Herald, Sun-Sentinel, Palm Beach Post, Naples News, Sarasota Herald Tribune, St Pete Times, Tampa Tribune, Orlando Sentinel, the Daytona Beach News-Journal, Tallahassee Democrat, and, occasionally, the Florida Times Union; we also review the political news blogs associated with these newspapers.

For each story, column, article or editorial we deem significant, we post at least the headline and link to the piece; the linked headline always appears in quotes. We quote the headline for two reasons: first, to allow researchers looking for the cited piece to find it (if the link has expired) by searching for the original title/headline via a commercial research service. Second, quotation of the original headline permits readers to appreciate the spin from the original piece, as opposed to our spin.

Not that we don't provide spin; we do, and plenty of it. Our perspective appears in post headlines, the subtitles within the post (in bold), and the excerpts from the linked stories we select to quote; we also occasionally provide other links and commentary about certain stories. While our bias should be immediately apparent to any reader, we nevertheless attempt to link to every article, column or editorial about Florida politics in every major online Florida newspaper.

 

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The Blog for Thursday, January 06, 2005

Paperless Investigation

    More on the White firing (see yesterday's "The 'Values' Crowd")":
    A sexual harassment scandal prompted Gov. Jeb Bush to fire the head of the agency for elder services.
    "State leader fired after claims". More specifically,
    Bush fired White after at least three women employees alleged he asked them for oral sex.
    "Sex claims lead to official's dismissal". Some background:
    White took over the troubled agency after Gema Hernandez, a Democrat and an outspoken critic of how contracts were handled, was forced out by Bush in 2002 [more specifically, as Bill Cotterell reminds us, "she was forced out because she ran afoul of politically well-connected companies that do business with senior-service agencies".]

    A Republican from Ohio who was a prominent figure in Florida's hurricane recovery efforts, White was criticized by agency employees and others, including Hernandez, for not being aggressive enough in protecting the state's nearly 3 million elders.
    "Elder Affairs chief fired over sexual harassment claims". Unfortunately,
    Details of the harassment allegations were not revealed. Citing an exemption to state public records law, the governor's office said the complaints would not be released.
    "Elder Affairs Secretary Dismissed"Apparently it was a paperless "investigation", if you can believe that:
    Faraj, the governor's communications director, said additional details will not be released to protect the victims. She said details of the investigation were not written down and that state public records law does not require the release of records when an alleged victim chooses not to make a complaint of employment discrimination.
    However,Barbara Petersen of the First Amendment Foundation, a nonprofit group founded by Florida news media, said the law Faraj cited applies to employment discrimination, not sexual harassment. State agencies have routinely released reports of investigations of sexual harassment."Sex claims lead to official's dismissal".

4:57 AM

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