The House has moved ahead with its plans to expand the state’s corporate tax scholarship program, over the objections of the Senate. Lynn Hatter reports the lower chamber hopes by tying the expansion to another bill and watering it down, the Senate will be more likely to take it up.
The Florida Senate narrowly passed a bill Friday giving school districts sole control over selecting textbooks and curricula and taking that power away from the state education department. As Jessica Palombo reports, the local-control option has been available to school districts since last year, but none of them has chosen it so far.
The bipartisan bill to tweak Florida’s Stand Your Ground law appears stalled in the Florida Senate. And, as Sascha Cordner reports, several groups, including the so-called Dream Defenders, joined the measure’s author in calling for further discussion to changing the controversial law.
Lawmakers are talking over a measure that would allow certain groups to sell cigarettes to the general public without charging a sales tax. As Regan McCarthy reports, they’re not just blowing smoke.
The fact is that it’s very seldom that journalists see their work affect much of anything, including the outcome of a story. But that very situation happened recently to Florida Public Radio’s Stan Jastrzebski. A couple of weeks ago, Stan got a call from a source he’d used back in November and then pretty much forgotten about. And now, as the late Paul Harvey used to say, you’ll hear the “rest of the story.”