10 big issues as Florida Legislature reaches 60-day session halftime

The Florida Legislature’s 60-day session reached its halfway point Wednesday. From the budget to redistriicting to health care to taxes, take a look at snapshots of 10 big issues in the session:

— BUDGET: Flush with cash from federal stimulus money and higher-than-expected state tax collections, lawmakers appear headed toward passing a record budget for the fiscal year that will start July 1. The Senate last week rolled out a $108.6 billion proposal, while the House proposed a $105.3 billion spending plan. See the full list at the  News Service of Florida.

Florida Trend Exclusive

Banking profile: The customers nobody wanted

When Ryan James took the reins as CEO of Surety Bank, a small community bank in DeLand, in 2009, he planned to focus on marketing and growth. The Great Recession upended all that. Regulators charged off 20% of the bank’s capital because of what it said were bad loans. What followed was a three-year tussle between federal regulators and James, then 30 years old and the youngest bank CEO in Florida. [Source: Florda Trend]

Florida saw an influx of newcomers in 2021 but are they permanent?

Extraordinary events have forever pushed and pulled and pressured U.S. population shifts from gold lust to the citrus rush to the restless return of WWII soldiers to revolutions in foreign lands and civil war on southern soil. Now there is COVID-19, which has turned a years-long trickle to Florida from the northeast into a deluge. More than 547,000 people exchanged out-of-state driver’s licenses last year for ones with Sunshine State addresses. That’s a 40% increase from 2020 and nearly 20% greater than the five-year average between 2017 and 2021. [Source: Palm Beach Post]

Opnion: Florida’s ports could strengthen supply chain

With a pandemic hitting hard at manufacturing facilities and shipping lines, consumers are learning hard lessons about the details — and vulnerabilities — of the nation’s supply chain. But key Florida leaders also see opportunities to take this short-term crisis and translate it into long-term gain for the Sunshine State. If Florida does this right, the benefits could outlive COVID-based kinks in the flow of merchandise, providing a permanent boost in the quest to diversify the state’s economy. [Source: Orlando Sentinel]

Astra now targeting Thursday afternoon for first Florida launch

The mission, Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa 41), is Astra's first for NASA. It features a payload of four miniature satellites known as CubeSats. Three of the small payloads were designed and developed by universities, while the remaining one was developed by NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. Besides being Astra's first NASA mission, it will also be the first satellite deployment for the company and it's first launch from Cape Canaveral. [Source: Florida Today]

ALSO AROUND FLORIDA:

› First Brightline train arrives in Orlando [Spectrum News 13]
The City Beautiful won’t see passengers get to board Brightline trains until 2023, but this week, Orlando did receive its first train that will bring passengers down to Miami and back. The Bright Blue 2 train with four passenger coaches and two locomotives completed its 3,000-mile journey from Sacramento, California, to Orlando on Monday.

› Gainesville backs off plan to shift free parking spots to pay-by-app as businesses object [Gainesville Sun]
A few weeks ago, after Gainesville began enforcing paid downtown parking, there was a huge decline in the number of cars parked in spaces outside of the The Patio: Pizza and Provisions, said one of the owners, Dennis Santos. “And it was very impressive, but not a good impressive,” he said Tuesday. “The streets were just kind of empty. It really was bad for about two weeks in February."

› MacDill AirFest returns to Tampa in March after a 4-year hiatus [Tampa Bay Times]
The gates to MacDill Air Force Base will fly open on March 26 and 27 when the Tampa Bay AirFest returns with the U.S. Navy Blue Angels as headliners. In recent years, the event had been cut down to happening every two years because of budget cuts. But it was canceled in 2020 due to the pandemic. So the popular event hasn’t happened since 2018.

› Is Amazon’s first Florida supermarket really opening in West Boca? [South Florida Sun-Sentinel]
Officials have been tight-lipped about the new Amazon Fresh store under construction in West Boca — but it’s become obvious what it is at this point. The store, situated at the Uptown Boca shopping plaza off Glades Road near State Road 7, may be missing the sign with its name. But the building already features the identical architecture and colors as other Amazon Fresh locations across the country — down to the green-and-black paneling over a portion of the overhang.

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› SeaWorld adds five new pools to help save more of Florida's starving, cold manatees [Florida Today]
As cold, starving manatees languish in the Indian River Lagoon, SeaWorld has been the only critical care facility that can take them in. But the Orlando theme park is running out of pool space for the threatened species. So this week, they're building five new 40-by-20-foot rehab aluminum-sided pools, which will allow them to take in another 20 sea cows beyond the current capacity of 30 manatees.

› Progressive stops renewing some home policies in Florida as lawmakers target roof claims [Tampa Bay Times]
Progressive Insurance is shedding roughly 56,000 policies on Florida homes with roofs older than 15 years, putting the squeeze on homeowners who are already finding it difficult or expensive to insure their houses. It’s the latest sign of trouble in Florida’s turbulent property insurance market.

› $12.2 million in Jacksonville Transportation Authority facility, ferry improvements nearly complete [Florida Times-Union]
The Jacksonville Transportation Authority has four major infrastructure and improvement projects in various stages of completion budgeted at a combined total of approximately $12.2 million. The projects range from renovations, repairs and upgrades to JTA's Myrtle Avenue Operations Campus in downtown Jacksonville to the St. Johns River Ferry facilities at the Mayport and Fort George slips. Although not glamorous, the work is deemed essential to meet the city's current and future mass transit needs.

› Massive machine begins trip from Port Manatee to Texas [Business Observer]
The Air Products facility in Port Manatee hosted a moving party of sorts Feb. 4. That’s when a Liquefied Natural Gas Heat Exchanger assembled in its facility officially hit the road, heading to Sabine Pass in Port Arthur, Texas. It’s one of three identical exchangers Air Products is providing, with the next one scheduled to leave Port Manatee in March.