Florida consumers refunded nearly $500K in refunds from price gouging, scams

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody says the state is working hard to protect Floridians from scams. Since the state of the emergency in Florida due to the coronavirus pandemic, Moody says her office has secured nearly $500,000 in refunds related to travel, leisure, and product purchases. The state has also issued 70 subpoenas for price gouging investigations and deactivated nearly 200 online posts offering items for outrageous prices. [Source: WPEC]

Hurricane season may start early as system forms over Bahamas

South Florida Hurricane Awareness Week continues this week, the National Weather Service tells us. And just in case the start of the hurricane season in a little over two weeks isn’t on your mind yet, Mother Nature is giving a hint. The National Hurricane Center is eyeing an area of low pressure near the Bahamas and expects it to develop this weekend to the northeast of the Bahamas. More from the Miami Herald, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and the Orlando Sentinel.

On-time rent payments fell in Florida at the beginning of May; landlords brace for worse if unemployment system not fixed soon

More Florida tenants failed to pay their May rent from May 1 to May 6 compared with last year, triggering concerns those numbers could worsen if unemployment benefits don’t start flowing faster. In Florida, 85.5% of tenants paid their rent in full or in part between May 1 and May 6, a 4.2 percentage point drop compared with the 89.7% who paid during that time in 2019. [Source: South Florida Sun-Sentinel]

CFO Jimmy Patronis welcomes Elon Musk and Tesla with open arms

From love letters on Twitter to an entire website serving as an invitation, Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis is rolling out the red carpet for Tesla CEO Elon Musk, hoping to draw the 48-year-old and his electric car company to Florida. Musk, who is also the CEO of Space X and Boring Company, has taken to Twitter in recent weeks to express his growing frustration over government shutdown orders. Particularly in Alameda County, California, where his factory was deemed a nonessential business and not allowed to re-open. [Source: Florida Politics]

Women’s prison in Florida becomes COVID-19 nightmare

Florida women’s prisons are already riddled with sexual and emotional abuse, often by male corrections officers. Now one in Homestead has become overrun with COVID-19. The cases mark a steady uptick in testing across the Florida prison system, where 723 inmates and 199 staff members have tested positive. [Source: Tampa Bay Times]

ALSO AROUND FLORIDA:

› Orlando Sentinel newsroom employees approve union [Orlando Sentinel]
The Orlando Sentinel newsroom is officially unionized after employees overwhelmingly approved the creation of the Orlando Sentinel Guild. In a union certification election delayed due to the coronavirus, eligible employees of the Orlando Sentinel, El Sentinel, GrowthSpotter and Pro Soccer USA voted 36-8, or 81%, to authorize the union. The result was announced Tuesday.

› ‘She was a force to be reckoned with.’ RIP Miami historian, activist Arva Moore Parks. [Miami Herald]
Arva Moore Parks, a towering Miami figure who gave shape to the city’s saga as a historian and who fought fiercely as a preservationist to save many of its most iconic landmarks, has died. Among the architectural and historic treasures that Parks helped save are the Biltmore Hotel and the Venetian Pool in Coral Gables, the Freedom Tower in downtown Miami and the Miami Marine Stadium.

› Service plazas along Florida’s Turnpike resume food service [Orlando Sentinel]
Service plazas along Florida’s Turnpike have resumed food services, but the three in South Florida are only offering takeout orders. The Florida Department of Transportation shut down food services at the eight service plazas in March to help combat spread of the coronavirus.

› Apollo Bank, Tampa-based credit union terminate merger plan amid coronavirus uncertainty [Miami Herald]
Apollo Bank and Tampa-based Suncoast Credit Union have mutually terminated a planned merger announced in December of 2019. The decision to withdraw the merger application with Suncoast’s regulator, the National Credit Union Administration, follows a series of coronavirus-related regulatory delays. An NCUA representative did not respond to a request for comment.

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› Tattoo artists in Florida ready to go back to work [WJXT]
Tattoo business owners reportedly generate nearly $2.6 million dollars and licenses and fees per year. Now, they are losing money every day and don’t understand why they aren’t open like other businesses that deal with the body, such as nail and hair salons that were allowed to reopen Monday in much of Florida.

› Lakeland photographer captures colors of Florida [News Chief]
Among the many picture books already published featuring natural Florida, Randy Johnson’s “The Colors of Florida: An Unusual Field Guide” takes a different approach. Johnson turned his lenses to focus on the delicate hues of life in the wild. Johnson arranged the pictures in the book by colors that unfurl on a spectrum as each page is turned. At the top of each page is a strip of color with a range of hues and Johnson said the collective colors of each picture, “the focal point,” fall within those hues. It’s an organizational set he said he hasn’t personally seen in other nature photo anthologies.

› Pensacola motor coach company heading to D.C. to rally for federal assistance [WEAR]
Good Time Tours is heading to Washington to D.C. but not for leisure. The Pensacola charter bus company is joining other buses for Motorcoaches Rolling for Awareness Wednesday morning. Good Time Tours general manager Jerri Smith said without federal assistance companies like theirs won't survive the COVID shutdowns.

› Hair Cuttery and sister companies ordered to pay $1.1 million to workers they stiffed [Miami Herald]
Being shut down by a pandemic forced Creative Hairdressers into bankruptcy, but a U.S. Bankruptcy Court let the company know that didn’t mean it didn’t owe employees pay for work already done. That’s approximately $1,149,965 to over 7,500 employees, the U.S. Department of Labor announced Monday night, or about $153.33 per employee.