TALLAHASSEE News media organizations and open-government advocates are upping the pressure on Gov. Rick Scott and the Florida Cabinet by filing a lawsuit that alleges the handling of the forced resignation of the state's top law-enforcement officer violated the Sunshine Law and calling for an independent investigation.

The two separate moves came ahead of a meeting today in Tampa, where Scott, Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater and Attorney General Pam Bondi are set to discuss new steps for hiring and reviewing agency heads.

Filed by the Associated Press, the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors, Citizens for Sunshine and St. Petersburg attorney Matthew Weidner, the lawsuit focuses on conversations between Scott's staff and aides for other Cabinet members concerning the ouster in December of former Florida Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Gerald Bailey. The staff discussions were a way for Scott to work around the state's open-meetings laws, the suit contends.

"The governor violated the Sunshine Law by using conduits to engage in polling, discussions, communications and other exchanges with other members of the Cabinet regarding his unilateral decision to force the resignation of the FDLE commissioner and appoint a replacement without any notice to the public, without any opportunity for the public to attend, and without any minutes being taken," says the lawsuit, filed late Tuesday.

In a "frequently asked questions" document sent to the news media and a series of follow-ups, the Scott administration has outlined some of the discussions between the governor's staff and the offices of the other Cabinet members. Scott's office has denied that the discussions about Bailey violated state law.

"It has been a longstanding convention for governor's staff to provide information to Cabinet staff," said one answer. "This was the same process the Cabinet staff followed in respect to Gerald Bailey."

The groups suing Scott and the Cabinet say those kinds of statements show the need for the courts to also issue an injunction barring similar conversations in the future.

"Plaintiffs would suffer irreparable injury if defendants continue the longstanding practice of violating the Sunshine Law by allowing Cabinet aides to engage in polling, discussions and communications about appointments,'' the lawsuit says.

Meanwhile, the Tallahassee-based First Amendment Foundation wrote a letter to Bondi asking for a special prosecutor to look into whether the Sunshine Law was violated.

"Only a prosecutor with the authority to subpoena witnesses and documents can adequately investigate this matter," wrote Barbara Petersen, the foundation's president, in a letter dated Wednesday. "However, that prosecutor must be perceived as entirely objective. A prosecutor outside of Leon County one who does not reside and work in the same town as those under investigation should be appointed. Otherwise, public confidence in the investigation itself will be compromised."

Continued here:
Scott, Cabinet sued over FDLE scandal

Sarasota attorney Andrea Mogensen.

SARASOTA - A Sarasota attorney known for her litigation of area open government cases will take the lead in a lawsuit filed Tuesday against Gov. Rick Scott and the Florida Cabinet.

Andrea Mogensen represents the nonprofit Citizens for Sunshine in the lawsuit filed Tuesday, which claims that Scott violated the state's Sunshine Law in communicating with Cabinet members about a controversial change in leadership at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

Also joining the suit were the Associated Press, the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors and St. Petersburg attorney Matthew Weidner, who has called for an investigation of the replacement of FDLE Commissioner Gerald Bailey.

Disagreements over how Bailey left his position in December have grown to involve other members of the state Cabinet and attracted statewide media attention. The case, filed in the 2nd Judicial Circuit Court in Leon County, seeks a ruling that the Florida Cabinet is subject to the Sunshine Law and a prohibition on polling members about appointments and communicating decisions to them before meetings.

Mogensen often represents Citizens for Sunshine, which has advocated for open government across the state. Most often the group files cases in and around Sarasota and Manatee counties. Citizens for Sunshine became a plaintiff in the case because it involved citizen access to government decision-making.

That's the purpose of the group government transparency, Mogensen said. The group hoped the case would expose to the public a pervasive evasion of the Sunshine Law in the state's executive branch, she said.

Bailey resigned in December and has publicly contradicted Scott's version of events. Scott and other members of the Cabinet unanimously confirmed his replacement, Rick Swearingen, in January. Since then, Scott and Cabinet members have been criticized over the details of Bailey's ouster.

Scott said that the commissioner resigned, only to have Bailey contradict him in statements to the Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times Tallahassee bureau, saying I did not voluntarily do anything.

Since then, Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater and Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam have voiced displeasure with how the matter was handled. Attorney General Pam Bondi said she thought Scott's staff may have acted without the governor's knowledge.

Continued here:
Sarasota attorney involved in Scott Sunshine suit

TALLAHASSEE Floridas top elected officials Thursday agreed to begin considering an overhaul of the way state agency heads are hired, evaluated and fired, but they didnt immediately accept Gov. Rick Scotts suggestions for making the reforms.

Scott, Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam held a Cabinet meeting in Tampa before they opened the annual Florida State Fair.

The discussion was brought on by the Dec. 16 ouster of longtime Florida Department of Law Enforcement director Gerald Bailey. As FDLE head, Bailey was in a handful of state jobs that the governor with the Cabinet must agree to replace.

They approved Baileys successor, former Capitol Police director Rick Swearingen, but did so because Scott said at Januarys Cabinet meeting that Bailey was stepping down.

Bailey since has created a firestorm by saying he was forced out, ordered by the governors staff to retire or resign.

He has also alleged, among other things, that the governors staff asked him to state falsely that acting Orange County Clerk of Court Colleen Reilly was under investigation for a high-profile prison break that embarrassed the states corrections department.

The maelstrom surrounding Scott and the Cabinet, all of them Republicans, includes a lawsuit filed by news organizations and government openness advocates that the states open meetings law was broken by Scott staff members acting as back-channel conduits.

Scott repeated his contention Thursday that there are no lifetime jobs in state government, but said that in hindsight, I could have handled it better. The buck stops here.

His public perception has not suffered, according to a Mason-Dixon poll released Thursday, showing his approval and disapproval ratings at 45-45, consistent with past poll results.

Besieged by reporters after the meeting, Scott repeated many of the same answers hes been giving, including referring to a question and answer page on his website.

Read the original post:
Scott: I could have better handled Bailey situation

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BTOpenreach has informed Internet Service Providers (ISP) that they intend to remove their Basic Install product for Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) based fibre broadband lines on 1st January 2016 and, a year after that, theyll also stop support (replacement) for consumers who suffer faulty VDSL modems.

The plan caused somewhat of a snafu when it was first proposed last year (here), not least because the original proposal suggested removing the install service only a few short months prior to stopping replacement support for faulty modems (i.e. still inside the 12 month contract period).

However, under the amended dates, Openreach has wisely adjusted the timescales so that support for swapping faulty Openreach VDSL/FTTC modems will only come to an end 12 months after the service is withdrawn (i.e. in keeping with the contract). Still, its hard luck if you have an OR modem that breaks down after 2nd Jan 2017 because youll have to buy a replacement yourself.

Openreachs Change

The amended dates from Openreach for the withdrawal of the VDSL supply and support area as below:

Removal of Basic Install with Openreach Modem variants is put back to 1st January 2016

No longer swapping Openreach modems on failure from 1st January 2017

Admittedly the market impact of this wont be significant, at least not among the biggest ISPs, because most have already swapped to the PCP-Only (Self-Installation) method, which means they supply their own VDSL modems or routers with an integrated VDSL modem and no Openreach engineer needs to enter your home. But some smaller ISPs do still offer the Basic Install service and may be less pleased.

Its worth pointing out that Openreach can still supply their own VDSL modems alongside the other Managed Install option, which could present some annoyance as this may create complications with the replacement of faulty hardware. Openreach have given a rough indication that they may eventually remove the OR modem option from this service too, although at present theyre still monitoring the feedback from ISPs.

A little more detail about the reasoning for all this can be found on Openreachs CPE Enablement page.

Excerpt from:
BT Openreach to Stop Replacing Faulty FTTC Modems from Jan 2017

South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill has praised the work of departing Cabinet minister Jennifer Rankine.

After two years heading up the education and child development portfolios, Ms Rankine said she would move to the backbench to allow her to spend more time with her family.

The Premier said Ms Rankine could feel proud of her career as part of the Labor Government.

"She has had a fine record of promoting the interests of children in particular, first as parliamentary secretary assisting the minister for health, introducing the home visiting scheme and doing wonderful things in both the housing and disability portfolios," he said.

Ms Rankine said public scrutiny over child abuse cases involving government agency Families SA had nothing to do with her decision.

"I think I've been able to restore a lot of confidence in parents that if something does go wrong that it'll be handled properly," she said.

"Anyone that knows my character knows that when there's something difficult to be done I don't shy away from that."

Opposition Leader Steven Marshall said Ms Rankine was stepping down because she did not want to find out what a Royal Commission into child protection determined.

"Forgive me for being cynical," he said.

Mr Weatherill said Ms Rankine had been one of his Government's best communicators and those skills would be missed in Cabinet.

Read more:
Jennifer Rankine Cabinet resignation: SA Premier praises minister's 'fine record'

John Key.

The Finance Minister has been a vital and much-needed driving force in the backrooms of the Beehive where ministers and departmental officials thrash out the policy detail so that National's reforms actually work in the way intended.

In particular, Mr English pushed hard for meaningful welfare reform.

His other major target is state housing.

The latter is a fundamental component of what remains of last century's welfare state.

It is a safety net.

It is a Labour Party icon that has somehow survived National's attempts to dismantle it.

Mr English has long wanted to replace it with a more market-oriented system which, in theory, should be more responsive, more flexible and thus more cost-efficient when it comes to meeting the needs of both tenants and landlords than the current provider, Housing New Zealand, which enjoys a state-sanctioned near monopoly.

But constructing such a market seems to be proving to be far more difficult than envisaged.

It has taken four years to reach the point where the Prime Minister could release broad details of the plan.

Continue reading here:
Housing reform Cabinet papers embarrassingly candid

When was the last time you took a good look inside the cabinets under your kitchen sink?

Its not an area of the kitchen that gets a lot of attention, since its usually out of sight and out of mind. That was the case for us for several years since we moved into our house.

Have you ever had a leak in your garbage disposal or in the pvc pipes?

If you have, then you probably know what that does to the bottom board of the cabinet. It gets all nasty and warped and just generally gross looking.

It was always one of those things where we said, yeah, we need to replace that board someday! But it just seemed like it would be more effort than it was worth.

Turns out thats not true.

It was really a pretty simple job to fix it, and it was such a breath of fresh air to be able to put our cleaning products under the sink without having them fall all over each other (thats how bad ours was warped).

So if your kitchen is in the need for some TLC under the sink, youre in luck. Ill show you how I fixed ours up.

I know my wife was awful grateful to have a clean and functional under sink cabinet again.

Heres what youll need:

Go here to see the original:
How to Replace Water Damaged Cabinet Bottom | The Domestic ...

Posted January 29, 2015 08:35 am | Op-Ed

By Martin Dyckman

Is the Florida Cabinet worth its keep, or is it simply worthless? That venerable question has been brought front and center again by the Gerald Bailey kerfuffle.

In the aftermath of his resignation as commissioner of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Cabinet Attorney General Pam Bondi, Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater and Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam resembled to a remarkable degree the three monkeys who see, speak and hear no evil.

When Gov. Rick Scott told them Bailey had retired voluntarily as commissioner of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, they didnt seem the least bit curious about why he left without a days notice or even a goodbye.

Then they were shocked shocked! when Bailey told the media that Scott had put a gun to his head by claiming he had the Cabinets votes to fire him. Bailey got only a couple of hours to clean out his desk. All that was missing from his summary humiliation was an armed guard marching him to the door.

But if Scott is telling the truth for once, we have a clue about why the Cabinet may have been so incurious and so quiet.

Scott claims his aide informed their aides that he wanted Bailey out.

If so, and they didnt pass the word on, there are three aides who should be looking for new jobs.

If the aides did tell their bosses, that makes Atwater, Bondi and Putnam silent partners in what smells like a rotten deal.

More here:
C omments ( to add a comment go here )

Gov. Rick Scott has proposed a series of changes in handling of appointments and job reviews of Cabinet-level agency heads in the wake of the fiasco last month in which his office forced the ouster of a top state police executive without the advance knowledge of the three Cabinet members. Scott's office maintains that all three Cabinet members' staff members knew of Scott's desire for changes at FDLE and that staffers "raised no objection."

Scott's proposal essentially is a reworked version of a plan put forward last week by Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam. It will be discussed at the next Cabinet meeting set for Feb. 5 at the Florida State Fairgrounds in Tampa. The governor's office confirmed Wednesday that the meeting will be held in Tampa as scheduled.

Scott's one-page proposal would reduce the job security of those officials by creating a new "annual Cabinet leadership review" that would allow for an agency head's "removal for any reason by an appropriate vote."

Under the Scott proposal, he or any Cabinet member could annually make a motion for "affirmation or removal" of Cabinet agency heads, which include the commissioner of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, state insurance commissioner, banking regulator, tax collector and executive director of highway safety, among others.

The proposal states in part: "Prior to the end of each fiscal year, the performance and tenure of each executive director, director or commissioner appointed and serving under the direction and supervision of the governor and Cabinet shall be reviewed." The proposal also would give Scott the authority to appoint an interim replacement at the head of an agency "in the event of a vacancy," which Scott did last month when he alone selected FDLE's Capitol police director, Rick Swearingen, as an interim replacement for the ousted FDLE Commissioner Gerald Bailey.

Scott also is proposing a nationwide search for qualified candidates for those offices. Earlier this month, Scott's office solicited a resume from a Louisiana state official, Ron Henderson, as a potential replacement for Kevin McCarty, who has headed the Office of Insurance Regulation since 2003.

Read the original here:
Gov. Scott proposes Cabinet changes in wake of FDLE fiasco