Florida lawmakers reach deal on budget
State lawmakers struck a deal Tuesday on a $68 billion, no-new-taxes budget that slashes funding to schools and hospitals, eliminates thousands of jobs, provides a few business tax breaks and funds some hometown projects in one of the leanest years in decades. Some key points:
- Florida families get a three-day back-to-school sales tax holiday
- Hospitals lose the most, as they will absorb a 12 percent rate reduction
- Nursing homes will face a cut of 6.5 percent
- For the fifth year in a row, state workers will receive no pay increases. They will actually lose 3 percent of their salaries as they are required to contribute to their pensions for the first time.
- Lawmakers agreed to budget $21.3 million in library grants
- Legislators reserved $2.2 billion in cash for emergencies and to preserve the state's bond rating
Senate Budget Committee Chairman J.D. Alexander, R-Lake Wales, said the final budget should be available to lawmakers late Tuesday afternoon, which would allow for a smooth adjournment Friday afternoon. The state Constitution requires that the two-inch-thick budget document be available for 72 hours of review before the final up-or-down vote Friday.
[Source: Times/Herald]
Play Money, Part 3: Not Everybody's a Star
Florida Trend's investigation into the business of sports continues.
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» The Money and the Game
Pros in different sports have different mentalities when it comes to saving, spending and investing, their financial advisers say. Story.
April 2011 the warmest on record for West Palm Beach and Miami; could be for whole state
Palm Beach:
The average monthly temperature for April at the Palm Beach International Airport was 80.2 degrees Farenheit. This is 6.4 degrees above the normal average of 73.8 degrees and now ranks as the warmest April on record. The previous record for warmest April was 1912 when the average temperature was 78.0 degrees.
Miami:
The average monthly temperature for April at the Miami International Airport was 80.1 degrees Farenheit. This is 4.4 degrees above the normal average of 75.7 degrees and ranks as the warmest April on record. The previous record for warmest April was a tie between 1908 and 1970 when the average temperatures were 79.0 degrees.
Tampa Bay:
April was one of the hottest on record. April started out hot and ended hotter. After a month of consistently high temperatures, several cities in Tampa Bay came close to setting record high temperatures for the month. So much for a nice spring. St. Petersburg had its second-hottest April on record with an average temperature of 77 degrees. The record, set in 1945, is 77.1. Tampa had its fourth-hottest month at 76.3 degrees, while Brooksville had its sixth-warmest at 74.4 degrees. Tampa's normal temperature is 71.5; St. Petersburg's is 72.3.
[Sources: NOAA and the St. Petersburg Times]
Corporate culture at CompUSA offers clues to CEO's ouster
CompUSA chief executive Gilbert Fiorentino will have a final chance Tuesday to try to save his job after an internal whistleblower investigation prompted his ouster.
News of the investigation marked a dramatic fall from grace for the man who started TigerDirect as a catalogue retailer and built it into a subsidiary of a public company, eventually acquiring the CompUSA name to fuel a retail expansion. The final decision on his firing will be made after Tuesday's meeting of the Systemax Executive Committee, the parent company of TigerDirect and CompUSA. "I always knew that one day he would piss off the wrong person and they would turn him in," said William "Cully" Waggoner, a former employee who was fired in 2009 after five years with the company, but won a court settlement challenging the action. "He was making a lot of money for the company and I think people looked the other way for a long time."
[Source: Miami Herald]
US increasingly using new media to reach Cuba
The Office of Cuba Broadcasting in Miami has added several "ghost" websites to its portfolio, allowing people in Cuba to view the U.S. government's Marti networks online without being detected by their government.
The Cuban government controls the island's local media and limits access to outside sources. Radio Marti provides news from inside Cuba, particularly about dissidents and other issues the government there does not cover, as well as global news, and can be heard in a number of places around the island. But the government there often jams TV Marti.
[Source: Sarasota Herald Tribune]
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