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Florida: DeSantis Hires Company to Train State Guard for Combat

By dianeravitch
November 29, 2023 //
14

Ron DeSantis clearly wants to have his own country, where he is el caudillo, the guy in charge of everything. Now that he has a supine supermajority in the Legislature and has named the majority on the Florida Supreme Court, what else does he need? His own army!

Never willing to say no to DeSantis, the Legislature appropriated millions for the governor to have a state guard (in addition to the National Guard, which is under federal control).

But that was not good enough for Ron. He wanted his Guard to be combat-ready. So he hired a private company to teach his Guard how to use weapons and explosives and to prepare for urban warfare.

The Orlando Sentinel reports:

The Florida company trains police and military members on tactical shooting, explosives and urban combat and is owned by a former Army green beret who supports the Republican governor’s presidential campaign. The governor, the State Guard and the Florida Department of Military Affairs, which oversees the agreement, didn’t respond to questions about the training services.

The state’s civilian force was initially sold as a unit that would help Florida’s overworked National Guard respond to emergencies within the state. Since then, its scope has been expanded to allow the state guard to respond to emergencies anywhere in the country, and some members have been granted the ability to make arrests and carry weapons….

In promotional videos, Stronghold SOF Solutions highlights training that teaches individuals how to use drones, explosives and precision shooting. The company, based in Destin with a training facility in Defuniak Springs, touts having trained various special forces units, including Army Rangers, and police officers. Its facilities include a shoot house, various firing ranges, an airfield and a targetry.

If DeSantis can’t be President, at least he will have his own combat-ready army.

Categories Democracy, DeSantis, Extremism, Florida

Florida: School Officials Removed for Allowing Trans Girl to Play Girls’ Volleyball

By dianeravitch
November 28, 2023 //
36

The Florida State Education Department applauded the superintendent of schools in Broward County for taking swift and stern action when he learned that a transgender girl was allowed to play on the girls’ volleyball team at Monarch High School. The superintendent received an anonymous tip about the student and reacted by removing the principal, the assistant principal, and members of the athletic staff.

When the word got out, students staged a protest by walking out.

Following the removal of a Broward County high school principal and four employees in response to “allegations of improper student participation in sports,” Florida education officials on Tuesday said they expect “serious consequences for those responsible” and accused them of violating state law.

The comments came hours after Broward County Public School officials confirmed the reassignments of the Monarch High School employees occurred because a transgender female athlete played volleyball at the high school during the fall season and after hundreds of students staged a peaceful walkout during school hours to protest the decision. The students, who gathered on the football field and walked to the parking lot on the north end of the school, shouted, “Let her play,” “Trans rights are human rights” and “Free Cecil now,” referring to Monarch principal James Cecil, who was among the employees reassigned. Kenneth May, the assistant principal; Dione Hester, the athletic director; Jessica Norton, the girls’ volleyball coach; and Alex Burgess, a temporary athletic coach, were also reassigned.

The reassignment of the five staff members is “ridiculous,” said Alexandra Almeida, a senior at Monarch, who participated in the walkout to support her friends. She hoped the walkout, which she heard about through social media Monday, would “bring more awareness to the situation so that people see what’s happening in our Florida schools.”

Safe Schools South Florida in a statement said it is “appalled” by the district’s decision. The organization works with LGBTQ students to promote inclusivity and diversity within the education system “The reassignment of faculty is a measure typically reserved for the gravest of infractions. In this case, it is not only an overreaction but also a glaring misjudgment,” the statement read. “Furthermore, the potential inadvertent outing of a minor, who may not have publicly disclosed their transgender status, is deeply troubling.”

But state officials, in response to a Miami Herald inquiry, said department officials “instructed the district to take immediate action” upon being notified of the issue “since this is a direct violation of Florida law.” During a brief news conference Tuesday, Broward County schools Superintendent Peter Licata said officials spoke to the Florida Department of Education on Monday.

“Under Governor DeSantis, boys will never be allowed to play girls’ sports. It’s that simple,” said Cailey Myers, communications director for the state Department of Education.

There was no mention of the win-loss record of the girls’ volleyball team.

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/education/article282411498.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Accountability, DeSantis, Florida, Gender, Students

Watch Dr. Marvin Dunn, the Brave Scholar of Black History in Florida

By dianeravitch
November 27, 2023 //
12

At the recent conference of the Network for Public Education, one of the truly outstanding speakers was Dr. Marvin Dunn, professor emeritus at Florida International University. Dr. Dunn has written several books about Black history in Florida, most notably A History of Florida Through Black Eyes. I read that book and realized that Dr. Dunn was the right recipient for NPE’s annual “David Award,” which goes to someone who spoke out and acted on behalf of justice against the powerful, regardless of the personal risks.

Dr. Dunn is not only an author but an active preservationist of Black history. To make sure that the massacre at Rosewood, Florida, would never be forgotten, he bought five acres there and regularly brings students and teachers to learn about it. He tells the story of visiting his land with his son; a “neighbor” tried to run them over in his truck. Dr. Dunn filed a complaint with the police, and the man was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Dr. Dunn asked to have the sentence reduced, and it was dropped to only one year. The audience was impressed by his generosity of spirit. However, Dr. Dunn tweeted several weeks later that the now-released felon hung a toy skeleton where Dr. Dunn could see it. You don’t need to study Critical Race Theory to know that Racism lives.

I think you will agree that his remarks are highly inspiring.

Categories DeSantis, Extremism, Florida, History, Injustice, Justice, Network for Public Education, Race, Racism, Research

Jason Garcia: DeSantis Planned Bigger Punishments for Disney

By dianeravitch
November 22, 2023 //
8

Jason Garcia is an investigative journalist who blogs his scoops at “Seeking Rents.” In this episode, he writes about Governor Ron DeSantis’s plan to heap more punishment on the Disney Corporatuon for daring to criticize DeSantis’s “Don’t Say Gay” law.

DeSantis went to war against the state’s biggest employer to demonstrate that no one should disagree with him. If there is one word that best describes Ron DeSantis, it is this one: VINDICTIVE.

Garcia writes:

Just before 9 p.m. on a Friday night late in this year’s session of the Florida Legislature, a Republican member of the House of Representatives suddenly introduced a measure taking aim at the theme-park industry.

The eleventh-hour amendment would have given state regulators the power to conduct ride inspections at Florida’s biggest theme parks — and stripped them of a longstanding carveout in state law that exempts a few industry giants from having to abide by the same ride-safety rules as smaller attractions.

The measure was filed by Rep. Lawrence McClure, a Republican from near Tampa. But records show McClure got the idea from someone else: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the soon-to-announce presidential candidate who was searching for ways to escalate a personal feud with the Walt Disney Co. that DeSantis has used to draw national attention to himself.

An email obtained in a public-records request request shows that an aide to DeSantis sent the precise language for the amendment to McClure’s office just a few hours before McClure filed it.

[To read the text of the amendment, open the post.]

Now, nothing ever come of this: McClure quietly withdrew the amendment less than 24 hours later. He presumably did so with the governor’s blessing, since DeSantis never said peep about it in public. (Both the Governor’s Office and McClure declined to answer any questions about this.)

But the episode reveals a few important points about DeSantis’ nearly two-year-long crusade against Disney, which began after the company criticized an anti-LBGTQ+ law that DeSantis signed in March 2022 and cut off campaign contributions to politicians in Florida.

First, it shows how DeSantis and his staff try to cover their tracks.

The DeSantis aide who sent the proposed amendment to McClure’s office didn’t say anything in the email that might betray what it was about. He provided the language in the form of a scanned image of a hard copy that had been highlighted by hand. And the attachment was identified only by what appears to be an automated filename assigned to it by the scanner.

It’s the sort of email someone might send when they’re trying to make sure it won’t get picked up in a future electronic keyword search — like the kind that gets conducted in response to a public-records request or as part of discovery during litigation.

This email only turned up in one of Seeking Rents’ public-records requests because the request sought all communications between certain staffers in the Governor’s Office and the Florida House of Representatives during the 2023 session — rather than only emails related to specific topics.

(Note that Disney, which is now suing DeSantis, recently accused some of the governor’s political appointees of dragging their feet on discovery.)

Second, the exchange is also another example of DeSantis’ willingness to burn millions in taxpayer money trying to squeeze Disney.

In addition to the proposed amendment, the email from the governor’s office also included a request for another $2.5 million in public money — including another $1 million to spend on lawyers, on top of the millions the Legislature has already given him.

Third, this illustrates the limit of how far DeSantis — or at least the Florida Legislature — is willing to go when it comes to punishing Disney.

Because the proposal the Governor’s Office sent McClure — the one that McClure immediately filed but then quickly withdrew — would have affected all of Florida’s big theme parks.

Yes, it would have taken away Disney’s exemption from ride inspections. But it also would have taken the same exemption away from Universal Orlando, SeaWorld Orlando, Busch Gardens Tampa Bay, and Legoland Florida, too.

That was apparently a bridge too far in Tallahassee.

In fact, just a few days later, DeSantis held his now-infamous news conference at Disney World where he threatened to build a state prison on the property. During that event, DeSantis told reporters he was working on a plan to strip Disney of its exemption from ride inspections.

But the governor made sure to note that only Disney would be affected.

“Under the proposed legislation, would Disney still be conducting its own inspection of rides, along with Universal, SeaWorld and Legoland” asked Mike DeForest, a reporter at WKMG, the CBS affiliate in Orlando.

“No, I don’t think so,” DeSantis responded. “I think what it’s going to be — and, you know, talk to the Legislature because I don’t even know that the draft is final on this particular thing — but I think what it is is that these inspections will be required for amusement parks within special districts. And, as you know, those [other] parks are not necessarily within special districts.”

And that reveals the fourth and most important truth about DeSantis’ war on Disney: He’s lying about the whole thing.

The governor has repeatedly claimed that he’s fighting for good-government reform — to eliminate Disney’s “corporate kingdom” and make the company “live under the same laws as everybody else.”

But all he’s really doing is attacking a company that criticized him, stopped giving him money, and became a convenient culture-war target for a politician desperate to out-Trump former President Donald Trump in the race for the Republican nomination for president.

Ron DeSantis has gleefully gone after Disney in a variety of ways — from seizing Disney World’s government district to asserting control over the giant resort’s monorail. And Republican leaders in the Florida Legislature have willingly enabled it all.

But this governor and Legislature apparently draw the line at anything that might also disturb other big donors — like Universal Orlando.

It may not surprise you to learn that Universal and its parent company, Comcast Corp., have spent roughly $5 million on campaign contributions just in the five years since DeSantis was elected governor, according to campaign-finance records. Universal has also showered more than $1 million in free park tickets, hotel rooms, meals and other entertainment on Florida politicians.

That includes roughly $900,000 in cash and $400,000 in freebies for the Republican Party of Florida — which DeSantis campaign strategists once described as “interchangeable” with DeSantis’ own political operation. It also includes nearly $50,000 just to McClure and his own political committee.

This is why, by the way, Florida politicians have for years turned a blind eye as Universal abuses a tax break that was supposed to help Florida’s poorest urban communities.

Please open the link to finish reading about DeSantis’s unethical war against Florida’s largest employer.

We now know for sure, writes Garcia, that DeSantis had only one goal here: Claiming a pound of flesh from Mickey Mouse.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Cruelty, DeSantis, Economy, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Florida, Freedom of Speech, Funding

Florida: Why a Librarian Quit

By dianeravitch
November 21, 2023 //
24

The Washington Post published this story of a librarian in Florida who “couldn’t take it anymore.” The book bans and censorship imposed by Governor Ron DeSantis and his compliant Legislature violated her professional ethics. Her job became impossible.

Governor DeSantis insists that no book is banned in his state. Maybe he should interview a school librarian.

Florida is the state where freedom to read goes to die.

KISSIMMEE, Fla. — It was her last Monday morning in the library, and when Tania Galiñanes walked into her office and saw another box, she told herself that this would be the last one.

Inside were books. She didn’t know how many, or what they were, only that she would need to review each one by hand for age-appropriate material and sexual content as defined by Florida law, just as she’d been doing for months now with the 11,600 books on the shelves outside her door at Tohopekaliga High School.

Last box, and then after this week, she would no longer be a librarian at all.

She heard the first-period bell ring, 7:15 a.m. She’d wanted to get to the box right away, but now she saw one of the school administrators at her door, asking whether she’d heard about the latest education mandate in Florida.

“What’s the name of this thing?” he said. “Freedom Week?”

She exhaled loudly. “Freedom Week.”

“Oh, good,” he said. “You know about this.”

Yes, Tania knew about it. It was one more thing the state had asked of them, a mandatory recitation of parts of the Declaration of Independence “to reaffirm the American ideals of individual liberty,” along with something else she had heard from the district. “They asked us to please not celebrate Banned Books Week,” Tania said.

She was tired. Her husband was always reminding her: Tania, you have no sense of self-preservation. She had thought about pushing back against the district, had imagined putting up posters all over the walls from the American Library Association celebrating “freedom to read,” a final act before her last day on Friday. But even if she did put up the posters, who would be there to see them once she left? The library would be closed after this week, until they found someone to take her place.

Tania had planned to spend the rest of her career in the Osceola County School District. She was 51. She could have stayed for years at Tohopekaliga, a school she loved that had only just opened in 2018. The library was clean and new. The shelves were organized. The chairs had wheels that moved soundlessly across the carpet. The floor plan was open, designed by architects who had promised “the 21st century media center.”

That was before the school board meeting on April 5, 2022, when Tania watched parents read aloud from books they described as a danger to kids. It was before she received a phone call from the district, the day after that, instructing her to remove four books from her shelves. It was before a member of the conservative group Moms for Liberty told her on Facebook, a few days later, that she shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near students.

It had been 18 months since then. Nine months since she had taken Florida’s new training for librarians, a mandatory hour-long video, and heard the state say that books in the library must not contain sexual content that could be “harmful to minors” and that violating this statute would result in a third-degree felony. “A crime,” the training had said. “Districts should err on the side of caution.” It had been seven months since she began collecting Florida’s laws and statutes in a purple folder on her desk, highlighting the sections that made her mad, and also the ones that could get her fired. Six months since she broke out in hives, since eczema crept up the side of her face, since she started having trouble sleeping and got a prescription for an anti-anxiety medication. Five months since she stood in her house crying and her husband said it wasn’t worth it anymore. He could work two jobs if he had to. “You need to quit,” he’d told her. Six weeks since the start of another school year. Five weeks since she had given her notice.

And sometime in the middle of all that, as she showed up every weekday at 7 a.m. and tried to focus on the job she had signed up for, which was, she thought, to help students discover a book to love, Tania could feel something shifting inside her 21st-century media center. The relationships between students and books, and parents and libraries, and teachers and the books they taught, and librarians and the job they did — all of it was changing in a place she thought had been designed to stay the same.

A library was a room with shelves and books. A library was a place to read.

On her desk was a purple folder containing the laws and regulations imposed on librarians by the Legislature.

Inside, there were printouts of 79 pages of Florida law and statute that told her how to think about what students should and should not read. One law made it easier for people to challenge books they believed contained sexual conduct or age-inappropriate material. Another defined that term, “sexual conduct,” in layer upon layer of clinical specificity.

When she had decided to become a librarian almost 10 years ago, it was for a simple reason: She loved to read. Now she watched as the work she did at a high school in Central Florida became part of a national debate. There were fights going on over democracy and fascism. There were parents and school board members arguing on social media and in meetings. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) wasn’t just passing laws but using them to run for president. To Tania, the pure act of reading was becoming more and more political, and as a result, she had to spend much of her time reviewing the books on her shelves — not to suggest one to a student but to ask herself whether the content was too mature for the teenagers at her school. Then she had moved on to the books in each teacher’s classroom, because as of this year, the state considered those books to be part of the library, too.

All of this took time. The librarian’s job was expanding even as she felt it was shrinking to a series of rote tasks: She would copy a book’s ISBN number into a peer-review database. She would decide whether to mark it with the thumb-size red sticker, provided to her by the district, that read “M” for “mature.” If a book wasn’t listed in a database, she would review it by hand, and then she would start again with the next book. In those hours, the job became a series of keystrokes, and she began to feel more like a censor than a librarian.

It wasn’t just Tania doing this. It was more than 1,400 librarians in all of Florida’s 67 counties, each district interpreting the law in its own way. In the panhandle, Escambia County had instructed its schools to close parts of their libraries entirely until every book on every shelf had been reviewed for sexual content. In Charlotte County, near Fort Myers, schools were told to remove any books with LGBTQ characters from elementary and middle school libraries.

This reign of terror has spread from Florida to other red states. Students can see whatever they want on their cell phones. But what they read must be scrutinized and censored, and librarians must abandon their professional ethics.

Categories DeSantis, Florida, Freedom to Read, Librarians, Libraries, Lies, Literacy, Literature

Fortune: DeSantis’ War on Disney Is Stupid and Vengeful

By dianeravitch
November 20, 2023 //
13

Back in the day, Republicans believed in deregulating business and keeping them free of government pressures, demands, and mandates.

Not so in Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis wreaked his vengeance on Disney by ousting the board that controlled Disney’s self-governing district and putting his own hand-picked team in charge. About 10% of employees have quit, complaining of low morale. The hand-picked pal of DeSantis, Glen Gilzean, who runs the Governor’s board, claims that morale has never been higher. Gilzean was formerly CEO of the Central Florida Urban League. He’s paid $400,000 a year to run the district board.

DeSantis controls the Legislature, the state’s Supreme Court, the State Board of Education, the state board of higher education, the state board of K-12 education, and now the Disney district. He has unilaterally removed elected district prosecutors whom he thought were too liberal. He has intervened into local school board elections and backed his preferred candidates.

Fortune magazine took a close look at the Disney empire in Florida, now controlled by an angry little Governor.

Fortune wrote:

Disney on Tuesday released a study showing its economic impact in Florida at $40.3 billion as it battles Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his appointees over their takeover of the district that governs the entertainment company’s massive resort in central Florida.

Disney accounted for 263,000 jobs in Florida, more than three times the actual workforce at Walt Disney World, according to the study conducted by Oxford Economics and commissioned by Disney, covering fiscal year 2022. Besides direct employment and spending, the study attributed the company’s multibillion-dollar impact to indirect influences, such as supply chain and employees’ spending.

The jobs include Disney employees as well as jobs supported by visitor spending off Disney World property. In central Florida, Disney directly accounts for one in 8 jobs, and for every direct job at Disney World, another 1.7 jobs are supported across Florida, Oxford Economics said.

The time period in the study is before the takeover earlier this year of Disney World’s governing district by DeSantis and his appointees after Disney publicly opposed a state law banning classroom lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity in early grades. The law was championed by DeSantis, who is running for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.

Disney officials in the past year have said the company plans to invest an additional $17 billion over the next decade in central Florida, including potentially adding another 13,000 jobs. However, the company has shown a willingness to pull back investing in the Sunshine State. Earlier this year, Disney scrapped plans to relocate 2,000 employees from Southern California to work in digital technology, finance and product development, an investment estimated at $1 billion.

Disney World already has four theme parks, more than 25 hotels, two water parks and a shopping and dining district on 25,000 acres (10,117 hectares) outside Orlando, Florida.

Disney is battling DeSantis and his appointees in federal and state courts over the takeover of what was formally called the Reedy Creek Improvement District but was renamed the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District after DeSantis appointees gained control. The district was created by the Florida Legislature in 1967 to handle municipal services like firefighting, road repairs and waste hauling, and it was controlled by Disney supporters until earlier this year.

Before control of the district changed hands from Disney allies to DeSantis appointees, the Disney supporters on its board signed agreements with Disney shifting control over design and construction at Disney World to the company. The new DeSantis appointees said the “eleventh-hour deals” neutered their powers, and the district sued the company in state court in Orlando to have the contracts voided. Disney has filed counterclaims, which include asking the state court to declare the agreements valid and enforceable.

Disney also has sued DeSantis, a state agency and DeSantis appointees on the district’s board in federal court in Tallahassee, saying the company’s free speech rights were violated when the governor and Republican lawmakers targeted it for expressing opposition to the law dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” by its critics.

What kind of Governor goes to war with the biggest employer in his state? What kind of Governor takes control of that employer’s domain? Is DeSantis a socialist?

Categories DeSantis, Disruption, Economy, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Florida

Florida: DeSantis Cronies Win Lucrative Disney Contracts

By dianeravitch
November 20, 2023 //
8

A quick recap: Governor Ron DeSantis declared war on “woke” in Florida, and the Legislature obligingly passed laws criminalizing the teaching of certain topics, like anything to do with gays, Black history, or attention to diversity, equity and inclusion. The Disney Corporation, the biggest employer in the state, spoke out against the law known popularly as “Don’t Say Gay,” because some of its employees at Disney World in Orlando were gay. DeSantis was outraged that Disney defied his will, so he persuaded the Legislature to dissolve the Reedy Creek District, which was controlled by Disney and provided services to DisneyWorld and contiguous communities. In the future, Disney World would be controlled by a special board appointed by DeSantis. The members of the new board were friends and allies of DeSantis. Disney is suing to regain control of its district, but in the meanwhile DeSantis’s board is dispensing contracts to loyal friends of the Governor.

Scott Maxwell of the Orlando Sentinel reported:

Some winners have emerged in Gov. Ron DeSantis’ ongoing battle with Disney: political insiders who scored lucrative six-figure jobs and contracts as the culture war fight unfolded.

DeSantis vowed to bring a new era of accountability, but more than eight months into a state takeover, the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District’s new administration is facing mounting scrutiny and scathing employee exit surveys.

“You do see a pattern here that people who are politically connected are getting work,” said Richard Foglesong, a Rollins College professor and author of the book “Married to the Mouse” on Disney World’s origins. “Maybe that shouldn’t be shocking. Is that insiderism? I guess you could call it that.”

Glen Gilzean, a close DeSantis ally, landed a $400,000-a-year job leading the district, which provides government services to Disney World. His candidacy was helped by Michael Sasso, a DeSantis-appointed board member who also was the best man in Gilzean’s wedding over the summer.

The DeSantis-appointed board chose Gilzean overseveral other candidates, including William Sturgeon, a former city manager of St. Cloud, a city with a population of more than 60,000.
“It was political,” Sturgeon said. “The place is falling apart. My professional opinion is they have too many state-orientated people in there, and state and municipal government are two different things.”

Sturgeon said he likes Gilzean, but the district needs a leader with a background in local government. Before landing the job at the district, Gilzean served as CEO of the Central Florida Urban League, a civil rights and advocacy organization.
Another applicant, Winter Park City Manager Randy Knight, said he had a brief conversation with the tourism oversight district’s board chair before submitting his resume, but he never heard back.

As administrator, Gilzean selected Paula Hoisington, chairwoman of the Central Florida Urban League’s board, to serve as his chief of staff at the tourism oversight district. Public records show she started at an annual salary of $195,000 and was recently promoted to deputy district administrator, getting a $55,000-a-year raise.
Ronald Haag, a legislative aide to former state GOP Rep. Fred Hawkins, was brought in to serve as Gilzean’s executive assistant.

Hawkins, R-St. Cloud, sponsored the legislation overhauling Disney’s special district. He’s since left the Legislature, landing a job to lead South Florida State College despite having no experience in higher education.

The district also hired Brandy Brown, who worked as director of strategic initiatives in DeSantis’ office. Public records show, though, that she only worked briefly as the tourism oversight district’s director of external affairs before leaving. The district did not respond to questions about her departure.

The governor’s office defended the new administration and dismissed the characterization that political favoritism has permeated the district, which since 1967 was effectively controlled by Disney.

DeSantis has said the arrangement allowed Disney to enjoy a “special privilege” that no other theme park operator enjoyed in Florida.

The Governor pushed to seize state control of what had been called the Reedy Creek Improvement District after Disney criticized what critics call the “don’t say gay” law that bans discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in public schools.

“CFTOD [Central Florida Tourism Oversight District] appointing those they believe are qualified for certain positions isn’t cronyism,” Jeremy Redfern, a DeSantis spokesman, said in an email. “Cronyism is a local government that served as a Corporate Kingdom for over 50 years. The ‘criticism’ from the cronies indicates that the District is doing the right thing.”

No-bid contract under fire

The district’s purchasing decisions have also raised questions.

Most recently, the district backpedaled on a $242,500 no-bid contract awarded to a DeSantis’ appointee to help upgrade the 911 network. That work went to Freddie Figgers, who served alongside Gilzean on the Florida Commission on Ethics.

Facing scrutiny after media reports, the district canceled that contract at Figgers’ request. District officials, though, say the deal met exceptions for competitive bidding outlined in their purchasing policy.

The district also agreed to pay conservative George Mason University law professor Donald J. Kochan $110,000 to help produce a report and make recommendations to the Florida Legislature.
The district’s purchasing rules include competitive bidding exceptions for consultants and experts hired to prepare reports for the legislature.

Conservative all-star legal team

Two politically connected law firms stand to make millions in legal fees from the district as part of the state’s court battle with Disney. One is a boutique Washington, D.C., firm favored by DeSantis in his culture war legal battles, and another is an upstart firm launched by a retired Supreme Court justice.

The DeSantis-aligned board hired Washington-based Cooper & Kirk, agreeing to pay its lawyers $795 an hour. One of the partners in that law firm is Adam Laxalt, a longtime friend of DeSantis who was hired to lead the Never Back Down super PAC supporting the governor’s presidential campaign.

Lawson Huck Gonzalez, which was founded by three legal heavyweights earlier this year, bills $495 an hour. The firm’s founders include Alan Lawson, a retired Florida Supreme Court justice; Paul Huck Jr., once called the “godfather of the Federalist Society in Miami”; and Jason Gonzalez, who’s advised DeSantis on judicial picks.

In another column following the one just posted, Maxwell wrote about new revelations of no-bid contracts at the new DeSantis entity.

He wrote:

Two weeks ago, we learned members of the governor’s new Disney district awarded a $240,000 contract to a a political insider without letting other companies even bid on the job.

The fact that this no-bid contract went to one of the state’s top ethics officials was vintage Florida.

But it turns out that was the tip of the insider-dealing iceberg at the former Reedy Creek district.

As the Sentinel revealed Sunday, another political pal scored a no-bid deal under even more suspect conditions when the district’s board chairman helped award a $495-an-hour legal contract to a lawyer who helped the chairman get his powerful post overseeing Disney in the first place.

Yes, back when Martin Garcia wanted to impress the state Senate, which confirms all of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ appointments to the Disney board, Garcia listed plugged-in GOP attorney Jason Gonzalez as a reference. Then, after Garcia got the job, he voted to give Gonzalez’s law firm a $495-an-hour contract without letting other firms even apply.

Seems the most magical thing about this new Disney board is how it made any premise of ethical government disappear.

And there’s more. As the Sentinel’s Skyler Swisher reported, a former board member who helped district director Glen Gilzean score his $400,000-a-year job was also the best man at Gilzean’s wedding.

This looks less like a public agency and more like a fraternity of political profiteers — the Florida chapter of Tappa Tappa Trough, where the only thing being chugged is tax dollars.

The editorial board of The Orlando Sentinel called on members of the Legislature to stand up to DeSantis and limit his power to damage DisneyWorld. The editorialists fear that DeSantis might return from his failed presidential campaign and impose his rage on DisneyWorld. To prevent this, the Legislature must act.

It’s time for lawmakers to break the spell DeSantis has cast, and rewrite the law to curb his power and restore some semblance of ethics, accountability and trust to the district’s operations. After this editorial was published, we learned that Sen. Linda Stewart is working on legislation to undo the attack on local control. Other lawmakers should stand with her. If they don’t, Central Florida’s economy could be so devastated that not even wishing on a star will save it.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, DeSantis, Ethics, Extremism, Florida, For-Profit

Florida: Republicans Scheme to Destroy Teachers’ Unions

By dianeravitch
November 19, 2023 //
20

Republicans don’t like teachers’ unions. They don’t like them for many reasons. The unions get a seat at the table when it’s time to bargain over wages, health care, pensions, and working conditions. They are the collective voice of working people. Republicans don’t want working people to have power.

Unions also are skewed toward Democrats, so killing unions hurts the Democrats.

The Florida legislature passed a law declaring that unions would be decertified if their membership was below 60% of the relevant workforce. The law is aimed at the teachers’ unions. The 60% cutoff is intended to block unions; in a normal democratic election, the winner needs to get 50% plus one, not 60%.

The Miami Herald reported:

Florida’s largest teachers union, United Teachers of Dade, will head down the path toward decertification if it cannot prove that hundreds more teachers began paying dues over the last week — an unprecedented situation that threatens to leave about 30,000 Miami-Dade public school teachers and personnel vulnerable to possible labor contract changes.

On Friday, to meet the requirements of a new state law that requires at least 60% of union members pay dues, Miami-Dade Public Schools was gauging how many eligible employees were union-paying members within UTD. The last tally — conducted on Nov. 10 — put that number at just 58.4%.

It was unclear Friday whether the 60% threshold would be met, and union leaders and district administrators were uncertain exactly what the future would hold if they fell short.

During a news conference Thursday night, Karla Herndandez-Mats was unable to detail what the potential ramifications could be as a result of submitting the audit. “We don’t know what it means, because we don’t know what the numbers will be tomorrow,” she said.

The potential collapse of the state’s largest teachers union could minimize the collective voice of educators in a state that has increasingly been hostile to teachers unions, and undercut them locally when they find themselves in need of collective representation.

Teachers unions have often been at the forefront of criticism toward the governor and Republicans over education policies. If the unions are decertified, it would mark the first wave of change from a law that went into effect July 1 and was criticized by union leaders and Democrats as a “union-busting” effort to silence critics.

Decertification would leave the union unable to bargain for things such as pay and protections in the classroom. Without that ability, Hernandez-Mats said, there would be “detrimental” effects and a “mass exodus of teachers” who are tired of political attacks. (The union successfully bargained for its members to receive pay raises ranging from 7% to 10% this school year.)

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article281987848.html#storylink=cpy

Categories DeSantis, Florida, Teacher Pay, Teachers, Unions

Florida: How Koch Industries Closed a Mill, Laid off 500+ Workers, and Got in Line for a Tax Break

By dianeravitch
November 12, 2023 //
6

Some stories are too outrageous to be true, and yet they are. This is one of them, as reported by Jason Garcia on his blog “Seeking Rents.”

Koch Industries owns a major pulp mill in Taylor County, Florida, where one of five people lives in poverty. Koch recently announced that it was shutting down the mill and laying off all of its 500+ workers. At the same time, the closed mill might receive a large tax break because some of its machinery was damaged by a hurricane. This is not helpful to the workers who will be unemployed but will be a nice gift to Koch Industries, a multi-billion dollar conglomerate. Always annoying to see our tax dollars flow to needy billionaires, instead of laid-off workers.

Garcia, a journalist who exposes corporate corruption, writes:

In mid-September, just three weeks after Hurricane Idalia tore through Taylor County in North Florida, the tiny community suffered a second disaster.

The company that operates a large pulp-and-fiber mill in the area — a 69-year-old factory known locally as the “Foley mill” that has long been one of the region’s most important employers — announced that it would shut the facility down and lay off all 500-plus people who work there.

It’s a devastating blow to Taylor County, a timber-dependent community with a shrinking population of fewer than 22,000 people where one-in-five families live in poverty. A report by the University of Florida estimates the Foley mill closure will lead to the loss of approximately 2,000 jobs in total, including the truckers and loggers who supply the mill with slash pine.

And now Florida might hand a farewell tax break to the fleeing company — which is part of Koch Industries, the global conglomerate led by billionaire Republican donor Charles Koch.

The potential tax break for Koch Industries is included in a roughly $420 million hurricane aid package that Florida’s Republican-controlled state Legislature is expected to approve this week, during a four-day special session in Tallahassee.

The same tax-break legislation meant to ease the damage wrought by Hurricane Idalia showers benefits on another multi-billionaire.

Garcia writes:

The problem is that most of the timberland in this particular area is owned by one person: Billionaire investor Thomas Peterffy, one of the 100 wealthiest people in the world, according to Forbes.

It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that Peterffy owns Florida’s Big Bend. He purchased more than 500,000 acres in the region about eight years ago — an enormous tract of land that was believed the largest contiguous piece of undeveloped property in private hands east of the Mississippi River.

Property records show that Peterffy owns about 380,000 acres in Taylor County alone, through his company, Four Rivers Land & Timber. That’s more than half the land in the entire county. And virtually all of it is in timber production.

And while there’s little doubt that Peterffy’s timber lands were hit hard by Hurricane Idalia, a land baron worth an estimated $25.3 billion probably doesn’t need help from taxpayers to deal with it.

To be clear: I’m not suggesting that Florida lawmakers drew up these tax breaks specifically to help Koch Industries or Thomas Peterffy — both of whom have been big donors to DeSantis during his time as governor.

But it is reasonable to ask, as Garcia does, why tax breaks are being doled out to billionaires who don’t need the money, while there are so many people in Taylor County who do.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Economy, Education Reform, Ethics, Florida

Florida: Students Protest DeSantis Ban on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Activism

By dianeravitch
November 9, 2023 //
8

As a buildup to his Presidentisl campaign, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis launched legal stacks in “woke,” which meant banning programs to study or promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The Board of Governors of the University of Florida met to enact the new directives, and UF students showed up to protest the state’s efforts to quash DEI, as well as “social and political activism.” They rightly saw these restrictions as interference with their right to speak freely.

Annie Martin of the Orlando Sentinel wrote:

Dozens of students and others attended a meeting of the board that governs the state university system on Thursday in Orlando, hoping to speak against proposals that would ban funding for diversity, equity and inclusion programs, as well as “political or social activism.”


The crowd at the meeting of the Florida Board of Governors, which oversees the state university system, spilled out of the chambers into a hallway and overflow room at the University of Central Florida.


Many were there to speak on proposed rule changes prompted by a new state law prohibiting universities from funding diversity, equity and inclusion programs.


But the panel set a 15-minute time limit for public comment, which Chair Brian Lamb said was customary. About a dozen people spoke before the allotted time expired. After the board cut off the public comment period, people waiting outside the meeting room started chanting, “Let us speak!”

The board granted initial approval to the proposal, which is expected to come back for a final vote at the board’s next meeting in January.


DeSantis described diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives as “an attempt to impose orthodoxy on the university,” during a signing ceremony for the bill earlier this year.


“This has basically been used as a veneer to impose an ideological agenda, and that is wrong,” he said.
The law was part of a broader push by Gov. Ron DeSantis to overhaul higher education in Florida.

The most sweeping changes have taken place at New College of Florida, the state’s small liberal arts college, where DeSantis replaced trustees with conservative activists, who appointed former House Speaker Richard Corcoran as president and have sought to transform the campus into a conservative stronghold.

At the same meeting, the Board of Governors appointed a new trustee for the board of New College:

The Board of Governors for Florida’s state university system on Thursday appointed Don Patterson to the New College Board of Trustees.

Patterson, a Sarasota resident, was the co-founder and chief operating officer of Ascend Wireless Networks and is a graduate of Liberty University, a private evangelical Christian college in Virginia.

DeSantis tightens his grip on the once progressive New College.

Categories Censorship, DeSantis, Extremism, Florida, Higher Education, Students
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