Florida Governor Rick Scott Is Punishing a Prosecutor for Opposing the Death Penalty

The top prosecutor in Orlando, Florida, took to a podium outside the Orange County courthouse last week to outline a new policy: Her office would no longer seek the death penalty in any capital case.

The prosecutor, State Attorney Aramis Ayala, told assembled reporters that seeking the death penalty is “not in the best interests of this community or in the interest of justice.” After considerable research, she said, she had concluded that capital punishment offers no empirical benefits to society: It is not a deterrent, it neither enhances public safety nor protects law enforcement officers from violence, and it costs millions more — in litigation and housing — to kill a defendant than it does to confine them behind bars for life.

Conservatives Have a Plan for Climate Change: Pretend It Doesn't Exist

Within a few decades, the seawaters around southern Florida are expected to rise by as much as two feet. Local officials anticipate billions or trillions of dollars of damage to infrastructure. By some estimates, Miami has more to lose from climate change than any other city in the world. But state leaders have a plan to deal with the problem: don’t talk about it.

The Florida Center for Investigative Reporting revealed Sunday that under Governor Rick Scott, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection has barred its employees from using the terms “climate change” and “global warming” in reports, emails, and other official communications. Although the DEP denies such a policy exists, former employees from various offices around the state said it was communicated verbally after Scott took office and installed a new director at the agency.

Florida Officials Were Barred From Using The Term 'Climate Change' Once Rick Scott Took Power

Officials responsible for making sure Florida is prepared to respond to the earth's changing climate are barred from using the terms "global warming" and "climate change" in official communications, emails and reports, according to new findings from the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting.

"We were told that we were not allowed to discuss anything that was not a true fact," said Kristina Trotta, a former Florida Department of Environmental Protection employee.

Rick Scott Plans To Resume Voter Purge Effort In Florida

MIAMI, Aug 5 (Reuters) - Florida Governor Rick Scott is planning a new effort to purge non-U.S. citizens from the state's voter rolls, a move that last year prompted a series of legal challenges and claims from critics his administration was trying to intimidate minority voters.

Voter protection groups identified a number of errors in the state's attempt to identify people who are not American citizens on Florida's voter lists months ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November 2012.

Florida Unemployment System's 'Initial Skills Review' Laid Bare

The Florida government insists that the controversial state Initial Skills Review required when applying for unemployment insurance is not a test.

In 2011, Gov. Rick Scott (R) signed a law slashing the duration of jobless aid and making Florida the first state to require unemployment claimants to answer a series of basic math and reading questions. Answering a certain number of questions correctly isn't necessary to be eligible for benefits, but claimants have to get through it.

Florida Early Voting Fiasco: Voters Wait For Hours At Polls As Rick Scott Refuses To Budge

WASHINGTON -- Once again, Florida and its problems at the polls are at the center of an election.

Early voting is supposed to make it easier for people to carry out their constitutional right. Tuesdays are notoriously inconvenient to take off work, so many states have given voters the option of turning out on weekends or other weekdays in the run-up to Election Day.

But in Florida this year, it has been a nightmare for voters, who have faced record wait times, long lines in the sun and a Republican governor, Rick Scott, who has refused to budge and extend early voting hours.

Rick Scott Signals Florida Will Not Implement Two Health Care Law Provisions

WASHINGTON, July 1 (Reuters) - Florida will not implement two provisions of the U.S. healthcare law involving an expansion of Medicaid for the poor and creation of a private insurance exchange, Governor Rick Scott said on Sunday.

Two other states with Republican governors, Wisconsin and Louisiana, opted out of the two provisions last week in the wake of the Supreme Court decision upholding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Florida Voter Purge Will Continue, Defying Federal Warning

Florida will defy a federal warning to stop purging people the state suspects aren't U.S. citizens from voter registration rolls.

Despite a Justice Department letter, objections from county elections officials and evidence that a disproportionate number are voters of color, Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner's office planned to continue scrubbing the election rolls, a spokesman said Friday. Gov. Rick Scott (R) ordered the search for potentially ineligible voters.

“We have an obligation to make sure the voter rolls are accurate and we are going to continue forward and do everything that we can legally do to make sure that ineligible voters cannot vote,” said Chris Cate, a spokesman for Detzner. “We are firmly committed to doing the right thing and preventing ineligible voters from being able to cast a ballot. We are not going to give up our efforts to make sure the voter rolls are accurate."

Governor Rick Scott Vetoes Funds For Rape Crisis Centers During Sexual Assault Awareness Month

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) shocked the Florida Council Against Sexual Violence this week when he vetoed $1.5 million in funding for 30 rape crisis centers in the middle of Sexual Assault Awareness Month. State lawmakers allotted the money to offset an increase in need and a lack of sufficient funding for victim services.

A spokesperson for Scott said he vetoed that particular line item in the state budget because the state already funds sexual violence programs, and nobody was able to make it clear to him why rape crisis centers needed the new funding.

"Governor Scott approved funding for many projects that have statewide impact and do not duplicate programs already funded by the state," Lane Wright, Scott's press secretary, told HuffPost. "This new funding of $1.5 million would have been duplicative, since, as a state, we already fund sexual violence programs. There was no information suggesting any needs in this area weren’t already being met. The state already provides about $6.5 million for rape prevention and sexual assault services. That is in addition to the funds available for domestic violence programs -- $29 million to be specific. Many victims of sexual violence seek refuge at domestic violence shelters."

Jennifer Dritt, the executive director of the Florida Council, said she was "stunned" and "confused" by Scott's move and that she questions his reasoning for slashing the funds.

Rick Scott's Welfare Drug Test Saves No Money: Judge

Republican lawmakers in several states have expressed interest in copying Florida's law that drug tests welfare recipients in an attempt to save money. But the federal judge who halted the scheme Monday on constitutional grounds ridiculed a conservative think tank's estimate of the law's savings.

"Though the State offers, as evidence of the cost savings, a pamphlet from the Foundation for Government Accountability," U.S. District Judge Mary Scriven wrote in her order, "the data contained in the pamphlet is not competent expert opinion, nor is it offered as such, nor could it be reasonably construed as such."

The Sept. 14 pamphlet said the new law, which took effect in July, had already saved the state nearly $1 million. While only nine people actually flunked the test in the program's first two months, 565 went through every step of the application process but were denied benefits because they declined to take the test. If each such "drug-related denial" saved the state $1,600 in welfare costs for that applicant, that comes to roughly $923,000 in annual savings, according to the Foundation's arithmetic.

But there's no reason to assume each person who declined to take the test did so in fear of a positive result, Scriven wrote. Since the law required applicants to pay for their own tests, what if some of them couldn't afford the $30 cost? What if some of them considered it a violation of their rights?

Rick Scott Pays $360 a Year for State Health Insurance

Florida's anti-Obamacare governor and his tea party allies in the legislature pay less for state-funded health insurance than janitors, cops, or teachers.

Last year, political neophyte Rick Scott spent $73 million of his own money to bring the tea party's anti-government, pro-privatization agenda to the Florida governor's office. Today, the former executive pays just $30 a month for health care—and lets taxpayers cover the rest.

The governor, a proud bearer of the Republican Party's deregulation standard, has spent his first half-year in office decrying government waste: He's laid off thousands of Sunshine State employees, slashed their benefits, turned down (most of) the federal government's health care dollars, and put extra financial pressure on Florida retirees and Medicaid recipients. But Scott and his dependents pay one-fifth what a janitor in the state Capitol pays for health insurance... and less than 3 percent of what a retired state trooper pays for life-saving coverage.