Three years after Florida regulators attended a Miami Beach conference partially underwritten by utility companies they regulate, the state Commission on Ethics voted Friday to dismiss charges that the officials broke state law.

In a 7-1 vote that drew sharp rebuke from one of its newest members and was contrary to staff recommendations, the ethics commission decided it was pointless to pursue prosecution of the four current and former members of the Florida Public Service Commission. ...

The ethics commission member who voted against dismissing the allegations was outraged.

"They operated like we were in a Third World republic and they had their hands out for gifts," said Mike Carr, a Naples lawyer who joined the commission just last month. "They knew it was wrong when they did it."

The ruling is likely to do little to restore faith in the PSC, which has come under fire repeatedly in recent years on allegations that commissioners are too close to the utilities they regulate, such as Progress Energy, TECO, BellSouth and AT&T.

[The Company] said it "will be appealing most of the alleged pesticide use violations" in Florida, including allegations that it allowed workers to reenter fields too soon after pesticides had been applied.

In a move expected to delight some higher education advocates, Gov. Jeb Bush announced Friday he wasn't reappointing the longtime chairman and best-known defender of Florida's prepaid tuition plan.

Stanley Tate - the hard-charging, self-made Miami millionaire credited with founding the popular program 18 years ago - said he received notice from Bush's appointments director Friday afternoon. ...

The battle between Tate and university presidents has been particularly acute in the past three years, as public universities have convinced some key lawmakers that higher tuitions could help compensate for fewer state dollars per student.

Florida Republicans in the U.S. House steadfastly support Tom DeLay, their indicted leader, and have decided not to return substantial contributions they received from DeLay's political action committee.

While at least three Republicans from other states have returned such contributions or donated the money to hurricane relief, Reps. Clay Shaw of Fort Lauderdale, who received $30,000, Katherine Harris of Sarasota ($20,000) and nine other Florida Republicans say there is no reason to do that.

The 2006 election is beginning to look more like a money laundry than a carefully regulated campaign by high-minded individuals who want to serve the people of Florida. ...

Thanks to a 2005 change in state election laws, the political parties can now spend up to $250,000 on any statewide candidate, plus unlimited amounts for polling services, research services, campaign staff and professional consulting services (which is about everything but direct mail).

In 2004 the party was limited to $50,000 in cash plus the unlimited extras. It's clear we've gone from bad to worse, and we're still more than a year from Election Day. ...

Party officials admit they spend money on the candidates who help them raise money, even though state laws forbid the parties from earmarking specific contributions for certain candidates.

A glaring fault, leaders say at a TaxWatch forum, is lawmakers' failure to require degreed teachers.

Randal Perkins, a Republican Party contributor [(Perkins and his wife, AshBritt President Saily Perkins have made at least $123,000 in donations to state and federal candidates since 2001)] who runs a Pompano Beach-based firm that won a $500 million federal contract to clean up Hurricane Katrina debris in Mississippi, has turned to Gov. Jeb Bush several times with e-mails touting his company and seeking state business, documents released by the governor's office showed Thursday.

Three months ago, on July 20, Perkins wrote the governor, "It was great seeing you in Pensacola with Sen. [Mel] Martinez and Sen. [Bill] Nelson last week ... If it's possible I would like to meet with the new secretary of transportation to discuss disaster response ... I think that a little more planning prior to events can go a long way towards overall recovery efforts. Would it be possible [for] you to facilitate this meeting. Regards, Randy Perkins." ...

Bush wrote back the next morning: "Sure, Denver Stutler will be in touch."

Four minutes later, Stutler e-mailed Perkins to say that he would "be glad to meet."

In the past five years, the state of Florida has paid AshBritt more than $15 million for contracts involving hurricane debris removal, road engineering and citrus canker tree removal.

inconceivable that Gov. Jeb Bush and Education Commissioner John Winn would allow Florida to be dragged into the ridiculous fight over whether intelligent design -- the latest incarnation of the biblical view of creation -- should be taught in science classes.

But, sadly, Florida could be the next high-stakes battleground.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Gallagher already has said he would not oppose teaching intelligent design as part of the science curriculum. Indeed, one could argue Mr. Gallagher, the state's Chief Financial Officer, is living proof of evolution: He's managed to evolve from a pro-choice, moderate Republican to a pro-life candidate working hard to woo the Republican Party's hard right.

But at least Mr. Gallagher will talk about his position. His opponent, Attorney General Charlie Crist, won't take a stand. Remember, too, that both Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Crist served as the state's education commissioner before voters did away with that elected post. Democrats U.S. Rep. Jim Davis and state Sen. Rod Smith oppose including intelligent design in the science curriculum.

Harris' campaign has yet to release the fund-raising totals from the past three months. The deadline to file with the Federal Election Commission is Saturday. She expects to have raised nearly $1 million in her first fund-raising period since she announced her candidacy.

Nelson has filed his report that shows he raised a little more than $2 million during the past three months and has more than $6.5 million in his campaign account.

U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris' legendary fundraising prowess is faltering when she needs it most. ...

Harris dubbed the latest dust-up over her campaign "a little bit of a yawner."

"If they want to pile on, that's OK," Harris said. "We're in this race, we're excited. We know we'll be the nominee and, God willing, we'll be the next U.S. senator representing this state."

In the 2002 election, Harris raised more money nationally for Republican committees and candidates than anyone else besides President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, GOP strategists said at the time.

Scooping up record amounts of money heading into the fall, the field of Republicans and Democrats vying to succeed Gov. Jeb Bush are leaning heavily on industries and interest groups linked to their current jobs, new campaign finance reports show.

The state's top lawyer, Attorney General Charlie Crist, once again led the money-raising race thanks in large part to more than $200,000 from lawyers and law firms, according to an Orlando Sentinel analysis of fund-raising over the past three months.

His opponent for the Republican nomination, Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher, collected nearly the same amount among insurers, investors, bankers and financial-service companies, industries his office helps oversee.

Although they are far behind the Republicans in total fund-raising, the two Democratic contenders are taking a similar path to the bank.

Five-term U.S. Rep. Jim Davis of Tampa raised about as much money in and around Washington, D.C., as he did in Miami. Opponent Rod Smith, a state senator from Alachua County who chairs the Senate's Agriculture Committee, powered his campaign with plenty of checks from the agriculture industry.

The embattled Florida Democratic Party raised a near-record $1.2 million over the past three months, despite widespread reports of bungled bookkeeping under the watch of its former chairman.

The party was outpaced by the Republican Party of Florida, which reported raising $2.7 million for the quarter.

Democratic Party chief Karen Thurman said the figure is the second best nonelection year quarter the Democrats have had since 1996.

The Bush brothers have a habit of putting acolytes who run into political problems onto the public payroll. The latest example is Cheri Pierson Yecke, Florida's new chancellor of kindergarten-through-high-school education. ...

Ms. Yecke, a devotee of President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, starts out in that pattern. A Republican governor chose her to lead Minnesota's education department, but the Democratic Senate refused to confirm her. She briefly ran for Congress and put in time at a conservative think tank before Gov. Bush hired her.

Will Ms. Yecke do a bad job? Too soon to say. The Post reported this week that critics worry that she'll try to change Florida standards, which are up for review next year, to require schools to teach creationism or its surrogate, intelligent design. That would be the wrong fight for her to pick. Since she's a fan of vouchers and accountability, maybe she could influence the governor to impose some standards on the voucher mills he's created.

Many say Florida will be the next battleground for proponents of the creationism-in-disguise campaign flying under the banner of "intelligent design." Proponents contend that living beings are too complex to have evolved through the "accident" of evolution -- with the implication that life was sparked by the hand of the divine. They compare their crusade to other revolutions in science, like the discovery of gravity and the comprehension that the Earth moves around the sun. The reality is far different -- intelligent design meets few of the criteria required of a valid scientific theory.

Florida's rigorous science standards would normally prohibit suppositions from gaining space in textbooks or classrooms. However, Florida officials plan to review standards for science education next year, to ensure they meet the requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind act. Cheri Pierson Yecke, recently appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush as commissioner of K-12 education, will oversee those efforts.

Yecke's tenure in Minnesota, along with her writing and public statements, make it clear that she's an advocate for intelligent design. Neither she nor Bush are saying whether they intend to inject that conjecture into Florida classrooms -- raising concerns that intelligent design, or support for other unproven alternatives to evolution theory, will become part of Florida's science curriculum.

The results would be counterproductive for students hoping to pursue a higher education and career in research, medical or technological fields. Colleges usually factor in the quality of a state's school system when considering students for admission. Weakening scientific-education standards would put Florida students at a competitive disadvantage to those from more rigorous states -- and could deter high-tech employers considering a move to the Sunshine State.

Long before he became the center of an ongoing investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the FBI, former Department of Corrections official Allen Clark was well known to politicians.

Clark's relationships with Republican politicians range from gubernatorial campaigns to "get out the vote" efforts to attending parties with candidates on state-owned property.

Bush's sudden switch has weakened Florida's long-standing, united effort to protect the Sunshine State's fragile shores from the damage that offshore drilling could do to pristine beaches and the tourism that they generate. The governor's sarcastic retort to the suggestion that bipartisan leaders believe unity will help make Florida's case against drilling was unworthy of his office: "Sure they do. . . . I've talked to the fairy godmother about it."

More likely he has talked to political consultants who are looking into the future to position Bush for a presidential race in 2008, when his brother the president's second term will be up. Sure, there may be short-term political damage from Floridians who like the fact that they can't see oil rigs from their condos and don't have to step on tar balls when they walk the beach.

But Bush also knows that voters in lots of other states don't especially care whether Florida gets a pass on drilling - especially if it helps keep down the price of gas for their sport utility vehicles. Obviously he'll need widespread support for a national race, and this stand will firmly establish him as a non-tree-hugger for the conservative base. ...

With Bush's flip-flop, he's established the fact that the drilling line is negotiable; the only question remaining is the price for the next concession.

First came national controversy over the teaching of intelligent design. Then came the naming in August of a high-profile creationism supporter to the post of Florida's K-12 chancellor.

Reporters asked: Where does Jeb Bush stand on evolution? How about Education Commissioner John Winn?

They won't say. And in a statement released Tuesday, Winn still wouldn't say.

The statement followed a spate of stories in Florida newspapers this weekend, including some that quoted Bush saying, wrongly, that evolutionary theory is not part of Florida science standards.

Charlie Crist won the official endorsement of the Pinellas County Republican Party Monday night during the local GOP's monthly meeting. That, of course, was no great political shocker.

But then there was the matter of the check. The endorsement came with $50,000 from the Pinellas GOP.

In 1999, the politically connected parent of a disabled Broward County youngster threatened to sue state social service officials who refused to pay for the youngster's care. The report, by the Agency for Health Care Administration's inspector general, says that state authorities diverted about $200,000 in federal AIDS dollars to pay for the child's care.

The report raises several concerns. Among them: whether state social service administrators routinely pilfer money from one pot to cover shortfalls in another, and whether they play favorites when deciding whom to serve among a 15,000-name waiting list of disabled Floridians in need of care.

According to the report, at least two high-ranking state administrators told investigators that former AHCA Medicaid Bureau Chief Shelly Brantley -- and perhaps others in the agency -- approved the funding. One of the administrators told investigators that when he questioned Brantley about the propriety of the diversion, she responded: "Find a way to pay it. Do what you're told to do." ...

[T]wo high-ranking administrators told inspector general investigators that Brantley was involved in the decision to divert the money. It was not clear from the report what role Brantley had at the agency at the time, and her spokeswoman could not furnish a copy of Brantley's résumé to The Herald on Tuesday.

On Monday, Gov. Bush announced a $200 million plan to stop killing Lake Okeechobee and stop poisoning the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee rivers with water dumped from the lake. The words are nice. A bill that makes the plan state law would be better.

The plan Gov. Bush and others call "bold and aggressive" actually includes old projects such as reservoirs and filter marshes to hold and clean polluted water before it enters the lake and the rivers. New ideas include yet-to-be-made rules that would require farmers and homeowners in the lake's watershed to use low-phosphorus fertilizers by 2008, make developers hold and clean runoff in new projects, and ban the spreading of sewage sludge on farm fields by 2011. The governor also backed the idea of keeping lake levels lower all year — that would help grasses the lake needs to survive — and a 2007 deadline for limiting pollution in tributaries leading to the lake.

All the ideas are good, even if it took Gov. Bush more than six years to care about Lake Okeechobee. ...

One big problem with the governor's plan is putting the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Affairs in charge of changing and enforcing rules on fertilizers. The department also has the job of promoting farming, and can't even enforce laws governing use of pesticides. Another is that, as Gov. Bush noted, he will be gone in 15 months, and with him the Department of Environmental Protection secretary who is supposed to be in charge of the lake cleanup.

Bush's proposal comes with no dedicated source of money, but envisions the bulk of the money coming from future state legislatures.

[Jeb!] is an idealist. He is an idealist especially when it comes to privatization and school vouchers and changing the "old way of thinking." He is not doing all that stuff merely so that his buddies can get rich, even if sometimes it looks like it.

The worst government mandate proposed of late would require businesses to permit employees to bring guns onto company property.

Proposed state legislation would make it a crime for businesses to ban workers from keeping guns in their cars at work, a violation of an employer's property rights and an affront to the safety of workers.

Employers are well within their rights to forbid workers to bring firearms to work, even if they are kept in a car. Numerous court decisions have clearly established that it is an employer's responsibility to provide a safe workplace. The decision on how to do that should remain with them.

The push for the gun mandate comes from the National Rifle Association, which successfully changed the law in Oklahoma after 12 workers at a paper mill lost their jobs for having guns in their vehicles at work. The Oklahoma law is being challenged in federal court by several large employers.

When he made his announcement, Gov. Bush said the PSC has to be more ethics-conscious. Given the mingling of politics and special interests that goes on in the governor's office and some offices in the Capitol, he might sound hypocritical. ...

Of the three new members, the best is Katrina Tew. She has spent a decade working for the PSC, most recently as an aide to Commissioner Braulio Baez. Isilio Arriaga is an engineering consultant from Miami-Dade County. Matthew Carter is a staff lawyer for the Florida House of Representatives. It was disappointing that the governor passed over finalists with lots of relevant experience, including other PSC employees. Mr. Arriaga will finish a term that expires in January 2007. Ms. Tew and Mr. Carter will serve full four-year terms.

In Minnesota, Cheri Pierson Yecke was seen as too conservative, too polarizing, too eager to overhaul public education. But in the power corridors of Tallahassee, Yecke may be more status quo than firebrand.

That noise coming from the governor's office on the subject of offshore drilling sounds a lot like "flip-flop." Four years ago, Gov. Jeb Bush said "there will be no new drilling . . . off the coast of Florida under my watch." Now he is leading the effort to compromise the state's long-held position against such drilling.

"There's no flip-flopping," Bush said. "There are two approaches. One is to be politically correct and basically be ineffective, or to have a chance to influence events and to enhance our position."

The fact that Bush equates environmental protection to political correctness isn't surprising. But his suggestion that he is enhancing the state's position by helping an antienvironment congressman from California gut drilling protections in the eastern gulf is ludicrous. ...

When Bush doesn't get his way, he usually pouts and plots revenge. On offshore drilling, he's ready to give up. Maybe it has something to do with his brother in the White House, a former oil man and buddy to the petroleum industry. Apparently blood is even thicker than crude oil.

We rank last in the nation in per-student funding for college. We are near the bottom in funding for K-12 students. Between 1992 and 2002, Florida and Arkansas were the only states to reduce spending per student when taking inflation into account. We also are billions behind in building roads and other public improvements needed to handle growth.

Florida stitches together enough money every year to scrape by with no planning for the future. And when there has been a surplus, Jeb has aimed much of it at tax cuts that benefit the wealthy.

These are permanent tax cuts based on temporary upswings in the economy. It is horrific policy that will haunt Florida into the future.

The state already had one of the most regressive tax structures in the nation, meaning wealthy people pay a much smaller percent of their income in taxes here than other states.

Reducing their minimal burden even more was a silly priority given other needs. This will be a huge problem as state revenues are predicted to slump in the next few years.

Instead of boosting economic development, Bush's tax cuts have boomeranged. They have made the state a less desirable place for high-wage, educated workers. They want good schools more than a $23 savings on their property taxes.

Bush brags about creating lots of new jobs here. But most are low-wage jobs that drive up the cost of Medicaid, a program that is devouring the state budget. From 1998 to 2002, the average wage in Florida has declined when compared to wages nationally. ...

Something has to give, and, unfortunately, it has been our state. And for a solution to a crisis he helped create, Bush wants to slash education spending by dumping the class-size amendment. Wonderful.

Maybe it is time to start building Florida right instead of cheap.

Cheri Pierson Yecke began her job as one of the most powerful educators in the state last week with little fanfare, receiving her office keys and e-mail address and meeting in a two-day retreat with Department of Education staff.

But the reputation of Florida's new chancellor for kindergarten through 12th grade, second only to Education Commissioner John Winn, preceded her with more flourish — and fear from some.

Yecke, 50, who served most recently as Minnesota's top educator, is a conservative, a believer in creationism, a critic of teachers unions and a strong proponent of President Bush's education reform programs, some of which she helped write.

She was forced out as Minnesota's education commissioner last year by a Democrat-controlled Senate.

She then worked as a senior fellow at the conservative think tank Center of the American Experiment, where she wrote articles blaming childhood obesity on the "liberal media" and said "liberal criminal sentencing laws" make streets unsafe for kids.

Proctor, who also was appointed to the Tampa Sports Authority by W's brother, Jeb, arranges things. And when disaster strikes, Proctor is one of a handful of people who help organize presidential visits to the region affected.

who was raising money for Maddox, says he'll stay neutral in the primary race that is now down to Davis and state Sen. Rod Smith of Alachua.

Swann is a major player in party politics -- he's the father-in-law of former national party boss Terry McAuliffe and he was the campaign finance chairman of Bill McBride's unsuccessful governor's campaign in 2002.

Mathew Staver, the president and general counsel of the Longwood-based Liberty Counsel, said he was "very disturbed" with the Miers pick.

Staver said he wanted someone with a clear record of conservatism, ticking off a number of conservative federal judges with a long history of written opinions. And he said the Miers pick amounts to an admission by the president that conservative judges must hide their views if they want a seat on the nation's highest bench.

A phone call from the White House on the day of the nomination urging him to support Miers wasn't enough, he said.

"The problem is that the president's asking us to trust him," Staver said. "As much I support the president, he was wrong on whether there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."

Tom Gallagher and Charlie Crist have lengthy records of "pro-choice" comments to defend in their Republican primary for governor. But as Gallagher tries to shift his reputation from moderate to staunch social conservative, it should be no surprise why he seized on mandatory waiting periods for abortions as a key priority: Crist cast a decisive vote against a similar proposal in 1995.

"I generally don't like the government telling people what to do," . . . I believe in individual rights and freedom. That's why I'm a Republican," then-state Sen. Crist told the Times, explaining why he joined two Democrats in voting against the measure. The bill died in committee on a 3-3 vote.