A month after St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman used emergency powers to create the “Fightning Chance Fund” (FCF), only two council members out of seven have donated more than $50 to the effort. Mayor Kriseman…
Hillsborough County Independent Oversight Committee (IOC) staff have developed a media plan that includes “key messages” for committee members and staff to advance to the public. Disturbingly, the media plan says that those key messages…
Last Wednesday, Hillsborough Sheriff Chad Chronister sought out and visited Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne for lunch at his house. Chronister’s initiative took place a month after he had Howard-Browne arrested for allegedly violating a county order…
“He wanted to become unreasonable, frankly, he was being a jerk about it, so he went to jail,” Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri told (video) county commissioners in a meeting on Tuesday about Pinellas Park…
A review of the mass e-mails sent out by the political campaign of Pinellas County commissioner Janet Long found that she committed six Florida campaign finance law violations during the county pandemic declared state of…
On March 19th, PSTA decided to waive bus fares on its network due to the Wuhan virus pandemic. Despite its service now being 100% free, records show that PSTA’s ridership still dropped by 43.2% from…
Twelve days in to St. Pete’s Fighting Chance Fund (FCF) program, Mayor Rick Kriseman had not made a donation to the fund. Kriseman called the fund recipients “the backbone of this city” when he announced…
In an e-mail Thursday morning announcing a City of Tampa pandemic relief program, Mayor Jane Castor wrote “We will get through this together. We are one city, one community, and One Tampa.” The city named…
Tampa International Airport (TPA) violated its own hiring procedure in at least two ways when it hired former Bay News 9 news anchor Veronica Cintron for $223,000 per year. Cintron’s husband is Preston Rudie, founder…
Hillsborough County Commissioner Mariella Smith wouldn’t take “no” for an answer. After the commission voted two weeks ago to not schedule a public hearing on a sales tax hike to fund transit, Smith wanted a…
It isn’t often that a position paying $223,000 per year opens up at the Hillsborough County Aviation Authority (HCAA), a public agency using public funds. Yet the HCAA didn’t post that highly paid opening for…
“Out of an abundance of caution” were the exact words used today in a Pinellas County Commission meeting, just as we had predicted on Friday. We called it! It was on Friday that the Tampa…
After our article Friday evening showing that the declared State of Local Emergency (SLE) expired, the Pinellas County Board of County Commissioners has scheduled a meeting for Monday April 13th at noon to address the…
Pinellas County’s Thursday press release stated that “Commission Chair Pat Gerard extended Pinellas County’s state of local emergency [SLE] another 7 days.” Chair Gerard cited as authority for her action county commission resolution 20-22. That…
“You had me at hello,” said no sane person ever to a telemarketer. Yet “telemarketing” is one of the types of businesses that Pinellas County government designated as an “essential service” on April 7th. However,…
On April 3rd, St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman announced the creation of the city’s “Fightning Chance Fund” (FCF) pursuant to the mayor’s emergency authority under section 2-426(i) of the City Code. The city says that…
OPINION The coronavirus outbreak has caused police agencies across the nation to rethink how they enforce laws. Thousands of officers from New York to Los Angeles are contracting the disease, many are dying, and every…
Irony meters all over Pinellas County are melting down, China Syndrome-style. The reason? After the politicians on the county commission voted on Wednesday to close down all “non-essential” businesses, the county website still says “NOW…
