Tag: Florida
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Childcare industry leaders are gathering in Northeast Florida this week to work on two long-running problems: making care more affordable and raising pay for the teachers who provide it. The conference is also meant to teach them how to win over the lawmakers who control the money. The Florida Association for the Education of Young…
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Lenders repossessed 5,794 U.S. homes in August 2026, up 22 percent from July and 42 percent from August 2025, according to ATTOM’s latest foreclosure report. Overall foreclosure filings—covering default notices, scheduled auctions, and completed repossessions—hit 40,277 properties. That was up 1 percent from the prior month and 13 percent from a year earlier, extending a…
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Florida ranks as the toughest state in the country for home sellers, and Tampa Bay sellers are feeling it as listings sit longer and offers get harder to come by. A recent ranking by Underwood Law Firm compared state housing markets using real estate data and placed Florida last for sellers. Texas and South Carolina…
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Students hoping to earn a Bright Futures scholarship as part of the Class of 2028 will need higher standardized test scores than their predecessors, under new benchmarks set by the Florida Department of Education. For the top-tier Academic Scholars award, graduating seniors in 2028 must post a 1350 on the SAT, up 20 points from…
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Florida’s minimum wage rose to $15 an hour on Wednesday, the last of the scheduled annual increases voters approved in a 2020 constitutional amendment. The wage climbed by $1 a year after the amendment took effect in 2021, and it will be adjusted annually for inflation from here. When voters passed the measure, the state…
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Florida’s taxpayers aren’t imagining it. Over the past year, a wave of state audits led by Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia has reviewed dozens of Florida jurisdictions and uncovered over $1.9 billion in excessive local spending that far outpaces population growth and inflation. The findings reveal a consistent pattern: local governments capturing property tax windfalls…
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Florida’s regulated electric monopolies have won nearly everything they have asked for in recent rate cases, and the state’s own consumer advocate is now taking the fight to the Florida Supreme Court. A Record Increase, Approved by Consensus Florida Power & Light asked regulators in February 2025 for a $9.819 billion increase and an 11.9…
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Starting Oct. 1, Florida landlords will finally have a real weapon against a rental fraud epidemic that has ballooned with the rise of artificial intelligence — even as advocacy groups push back against holding scammers criminally accountable. House Bill 1293, signed into law in June, makes it a third-degree felony to knowingly use forged financial…
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Florida ranks 10th in the country for grocery prices. That is not a rumor from the checkout line. It is the first-quarter 2026 grocery cost index compiled by the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center and mapped by Visual Capitalist. The national benchmark is 100. Florida sits at 105.7, or 5.7 percent above average. Hawaii…
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Florida’s minimum wage climbs to $15 an hour next week, with the tipped-worker floor rising to nearly $12. The increase is the last scheduled jump under the 2020 constitutional amendment. After that, annual inflation adjustments take over. Along Gulf Boulevard in Indian Rocks Beach, restaurant and shop owners say they have already spent years absorbing…
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Florida’s deadline to pull automated license plate readers from state highway rights-of-way arrives next week. Agencies that have not removed the devices by Sept. 30 face having the Florida Department of Transportation take them down. The Aug. 31 FDOT memo revoked existing permits for the cameras, including those operated by Flock Safety, and halted new…
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Florida Insurance Commissioner Mike Yaworsky has approved rate reductions for four private homeowners carriers covering more than 62,000 policies at renewal. The cuts run as high as 10.4 percent. Kin Insurance separately announced average reductions of more than 20 percent for customers in Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach counties. Those numbers would have sounded implausible…
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Starting October 1, Florida will enforce a second wave of 2026 session laws that do something simple and overdue: treat violence near schools, fake rental takeovers, stalking of victims, and the street sale of cheap high-risk drugs as crimes instead of paperwork problems. Most of the Legislature’s work already took effect July 1. This smaller…
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Florida’s minimum wage rises to $15 an hour on Wednesday, Sept. 30. The increase caps a run of $1 annual raises that began when the rate reached $10 in 2021. Restaurant owners, who employ many of the state’s lowest-paid workers, are already working out what it will mean for their businesses. Employers of tipped staff…
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Florida officials are weighing a new rule that would bar undocumented immigrants from enrolling in the state’s career and technical education programs, extending a policy shift that began earlier this year with new restrictions on undocumented students at public universities. The State Board of Education is scheduled to take up the proposal Wednesday. If adopted,…
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A new Self Financial comparison of the same 30 staple items at Walmart stores in every state puts Florida eighth most expensive in the country. The basket came to $134.35 here versus a national average of $132.57. Alaska led at $152.20, followed by Hawaii, Maine, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas. New Jersey was cheapest at $125.85.…
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Florida is moving to put guardrails on artificial intelligence in higher education, with the State Board of Education set to review a proposed statewide rule Wednesday that would require every Florida College System institution to adopt formal AI policies for students, staff and guests. The rule would direct each college’s Board of Trustees to set…
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For the third time since Governor Ron DeSantis signed Florida’s SAVE Act into law in April, advocacy groups are back in federal court trying to stop a law that hasn’t even taken effect yet. The latest suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, comes from the Southern Poverty Law…
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State regulators are moving forward on a proposal that could put Florida taxpayers on the hook for roughly $30 million to acquire nearly 28 acres of beachfront property at Mandalay Point, on the northern tip of Clearwater Beach, through the state’s Florida Forever land-buying program. The property, which sits across Dunedin Pass from Caladesi Island…
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Florida voters won’t just be picking a new governor this November. Three statewide Cabinet seats are on the ballot too, and the outcome will determine how much of Governor Ron DeSantis’s conservative agenda survives his departure from Tallahassee. All three offices are currently held by Republicans, and all three incumbents or incumbent-aligned nominees enter the…
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Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier wants corporations that design, train, and sell AI chatbots treated as more than spectators when those systems walk a user through a crime. Speaking Tuesday in Tampa with Florida Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Mark Glass, Uthmeier outlined draft legislation that would attach criminal consequences to companies that own, control,…
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Florida has recorded five lightning fatalities so far in 2026, the most of any state. That is not a surprise, and it is not a new “crisis.” It is the same pattern the National Weather Service has documented for years: people stay outside after thunder has already announced the danger. Between 2016 and 2025, lightning…
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Governor Ron DeSantis has declared September Florida Preparedness Month, a practical reminder that the state’s most dangerous stretch of hurricane season is here and that residents—not distant agencies—must take the first steps to protect themselves. September is the climatological peak of the Atlantic hurricane season. Over the last 60 years, the basin has produced at…
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The Florida Department of Transportation has ordered local police departments to rip out automated license plate readers installed along state highway rights-of-way, giving agencies just 30 days to comply. The move, spelled out in a memorandum issued Monday, revokes existing approvals for the devices and shuts the door on any future installations on state roads.…
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More than 2.5 million low-income Florida households now spend over 30 percent of their income on housing, and 1.4 million of those spend more than half, according to the Florida Housing Coalition’s newly released Home Matters 2026 report, presented this week at the group’s annual conference in Orlando. The numbers on entry-level homeownership are stark.…
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Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has filed suit against two of the nation’s largest pharmacy benefit managers, accusing them of striking a secret pricing deal that gutted reimbursements to local pharmacies and left Floridians with fewer places to get their prescriptions filled. The lawsuit, filed against Prime Therapeutics LLC and Express Scripts, Inc., alleges the…
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A new industry survey finds that more than a quarter of Florida dog owners let their pets ride loose in the car, even though nearly all of them say they know better — a gap that AAA is using National Dog Day to spotlight, without calling for any government mandate to close it. According to…
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Florida families now have a formal window to weigh in on a state proposal that would hand parents more control over their children’s vaccination decisions, as the Department of Health moves to strike four vaccines from the list required for school attendance. The public comment period opened Monday and runs through Sept. 14. Under the…
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Florida recorded the largest decline in Affordable Care Act marketplace enrollment in the country this year after enhanced federal subsidies expired, forcing many residents to confront the actual cost of coverage. About 440,000 Floridians left their ACA plans following the January end of the COVID-era premium assistance, according to figures first reported by the Associated…
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Florida’s tourism engine is sputtering for a second straight quarter, with a steep drop-off in Canadian visitors driving much of the slowdown, according to new data from Visit Florida, the state’s tourism marketing agency. By the numbers Florida drew an estimated 34.01 million visitors from April through June, down 0.7% from the same quarter last…
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Florida taxpayers footing the bill for public assistance programs may finally get some accountability in how that money is spent, after Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Monday that the state is working with the Trump administration on a plan to bar welfare benefits from covering non-essential purchases. The proposal would apply to Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT)…
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Florida is expanding a state program that helps families pay for children’s swimming lessons as officials confront a troubling rise in childhood drowning deaths. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation earlier this year expanding eligibility for Florida’s swimming lesson voucher program from children age 4 and younger to children ages 1 through 7. The program was…
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Florida voters will decide this November whether to expand the state’s homestead property tax exemption, a move that would deliver meaningful relief to homeowners who have spent years absorbing rising tax bills. But opponents of the measure, including some renters, are already arguing that any dollar taken from local government coffers is a dollar too…
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Florida’s push for property tax relief is running into a complication that advocates say lawmakers should have seen coming: an entire class of homeowners left standing outside the benefit, despite paying taxes like everyone else. As voters prepare to weigh in on a constitutional amendment that would restructure the state’s property tax system, the Federation…
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Florida drivers are being tracked by a rapidly expanding web of license plate reader cameras, and in most cases, they have no idea where the devices are or who’s watching the data. Flock Safety, the dominant vendor behind the technology, says it now partners with more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies across roughly 6,000 communities…
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While inflation keeps eating into household budgets, Florida is doing something increasingly rare among state governments: getting out of the way and letting families keep more of their own paychecks. The state’s monthlong back-to-school sales tax holiday began July 20 and runs through Aug. 20, exempting clothing, shoes, backpacks, school supplies and computers from sales…
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Homeowners associations across the country are drawing renewed scrutiny after a wave of cases in which residents faced foreclosure over relatively small unpaid debts, and Florida homeowners are among those most exposed, according to recent housing data. Cases in Georgia, Ohio, Maryland and North Carolina have highlighted the broad powers many associations possess to place…
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Florida’s Office of Insurance Regulation reports that home insurance premiums have decreased in 51 counties so far in 2026 as the state’s hurricane season continues. State lawmakers say insurance reform legislation passed in 2022 is now correcting the market. They point to three factors: fewer lawsuits filed by homeowners, a shrinking number of policies held…
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A Leon County judge is set to decide whether the ballot title and summary for a proposed Florida property tax amendment must be rewritten, after a group of former officials sued the state over the measure’s wording, raising the possibility of further delays to a tax relief plan already headed for the ballot. The lawsuit…
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Florida’s Division of Unclaimed Property is currently holding more than $2 billion in forgotten money and unclaimed property that belongs to residents and former residents statewide, according to the state’s Department of Financial Services. Officials estimate that roughly one in five Floridians has unclaimed funds tied to a forgotten financial account. The unclaimed property typically…
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The Federal Emergency Management Agency has approved nearly $55 million to support resilience and recovery projects across Florida, including funding earmarked for the Tampa Bay region. The award is part of a broader $584 million nationwide investment FEMA announced this month through its Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, its Public Assistance program, and its…
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A new Florida law changes who is responsible for paying commissions associated with collecting voter-approved school property taxes, ending a dispute that affected multiple school districts and prompted legal action in Sarasota County. The legislation, signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis, prevents county tax collectors from charging school districts commissions on voter-approved operating millage.…
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Florida students, parents, and educators will see several changes this school year as new state laws take effect and recent court decisions influence school policies statewide. The changes affect classroom instruction, school operations, student athletics, and employee rights. Among the most significant changes is a new law requiring later start times for many public schools.…
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Florida’s state legislature has passed more than 50 laws in the past five years limiting the authority of local governments over issues ranging from land development to public health and elections, according to a review by the nonprofit newsroom Suncoast Searchlight. The eight state lawmakers who represent Sarasota, Manatee, and DeSoto counties supported nearly every…
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