A review of the Pinellas Sheriff’s program for post-hurricane reentry found multiple security weaknesses, including allowing entry of people with arrest warrants while denying entry to most law-abiding Pinellas County residents. The sheriff also contradicted his own agency’s…
Pinellas Circuit Judge Cynthia Newton yesterday denied two defense motions to dismiss the main counts in former county commissioner Norm Roche’s labor lawsuit against Pinellas County. The case involves Roche’s sudden “unhiring” by County Administrator Mark Woodard after he had…
At today’s PSTA board meeting, Oldsmar mayor and PSTA Board member Doug Bevis said that reallocating miles from some bus routes to other routes means “we are cutting”, even when the total number of miles remain the same. However, Bevis began his…
When a Guardian reporter probed how public agencies respond to citizens reporting a crime, a St. Petersburg Police Department (SPPD) employee erroneously told the reporter that you have to live in the city in order to report a…
In an official filing with the State of Florida, the Hillsborough-based transit advocacy group Connect Tampa Bay, Inc. (CTB) voluntarily dissolved itself on April 26th. This came 11 days after a Guardian reporter wrote Hillsborough county…
At the annual Hands Across The Sand event in Treasure Island, FL, the Suncoast Sierra Club used a helicopter to take aerial photographs. However, helicopters are powered by aviation fuel, which the Sierra Club labels a “dirty fuel”. A battery-powered aerial…
Let’s say you apply for a job, and the employer offers you that job. You accept, are fingerprinted and photographed, are assigned an employee number, sent a welcome package and told to show up for work. Would…
PSTA has not cut bus service since the defeat of Greenlight Pinellas, despite a written promise to do so. PSTA’s top leadership did not respond to multiple requests for comment on these findings.
— by Tom Rask and Jim Bleyer– By firing more than 100 workers with no notice Tuesday in its acquisition of the Tampa Tribune, the Tampa Bay Times violated federal law. The Times could be…
