Pinellas considers special taxing districts for poor neighborhoods

Encouraged by nascent plans for a special taxing district south of downtown St. Petersburg, the Pinellas County Commission is considering using the same method of stoking development in four other low-income areas of the county.

East Tarpon Springs, North Greenwood, High Point, parts of Lealman, and neighborhoods south and west of downtown St. Petersburg have all been identified in a county report as trouble spots. Poverty rates are high in these areas, foreclosures are rampant, and what's potentially more troubling: these low-income neighborhoods are growing....

Pinellas commissioners vote to make East Lake library self-funding

Pinellas County commissioners voted on Tuesday to make the East Lake Community Library self-funding, ending a years-long situation in which residents paid more in library taxes than their library got back.

Under the new ordinance, the library will be funded by a local taxing district, using the boundaries of the East Lake Tarpon Special Fire Control District. Instead of paying the nearly half mill countywide library tax, residents within that district will see their taxes fall to a quarter mill, or 25 cents for every $1,000 of assessed, nonexempt property value....

Peter Nehr withdraws from Pinellas Commission race

On second thought, former state Rep. Peter Nehr will not be running for the Pinellas County Commission after all....

Weighing appeal, Pinellas term limits plaintiffs ask for financial help

CLEARWATER — Ringed by reporters outside a courtroom in early May, H. Patrick Wheeler left little doubt that if he lost a lawsuit he brought against four Pinellas County commissioners, he would appeal. He was almost sure it wouldn't come to that.

But a day after a circuit judge sided with the commissioners, ruling that they are not bound by the term limits that voters approved in 1996, Wheeler and his two fellow plaintiffs sounded considerably less certain. In a letter the plaintiffs' attorney, John Shahan, sent to reporters on Friday afternoon, the group put out a public call for financial aid: ...

Looking for the Pinellas term limits ruling? It's here

After getting plenty of phone calls and emails this morning from people looking for the Pinellas term limits ruling, I thought I'd put it online.

Here's a link to the pdf.

And a link to my story in today's paper about the judge's order....

Pinellas County commissioners not bound by term limits, judge rules

Pinellas County commissioners are not bound by term limits approved by voters more than a decade ago, a Circuit Court judge ruled Thursday.

The ruling represents a major victory for the four commissioners named in a lawsuit that sought to remove them from office. All four — Susan Latvala, John Morroni, Karen Seel, and Ken Welch — have been on the commission for more than 12 years, winning re-election multiple times and cementing themselves as institutions in the districts they represent....

Tampa Bay tea party groups say they were targeted by IRS

Long before President Barack Obama told Americans they had the right to be angry over the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups, those groups in the Tampa Bay area already were.

Karen Jaroch, who co-founded the Tampa chapter of Glenn Beck's 9-12 group, remembers the hoops her group had to jump through when it applied to become tax-exempt in 2010. First came the standard 17-page application and the $850 filing fee, she said, but months later she got a letter from the IRS demanding detailed information about the group's activities. The agency wanted copies of the 9-12 group's educational literature, a breakdown of how members would spend their time and the names of political candidates the group would support....

Pinellas GOP describes no votes on Medicaid in heroic terms

To hear the Pinellas delegation tell it, the list of their accomplishments from the 2013 legislative session is long, but they'd prefer to be remembered for what they didn't do: expand Medicaid to cover a million uninsured Floridians.

At a meeting of the Pinellas GOP last night, members of the state Senate and House said they came under intense pressure, including targeted radio and TV ads, to accept the $51 billion the federal government offered the state to expand health insurance coverage. (They did, however, manage to keep their own healthcare costs down, as the Times reported today.) And in glowing terms, they described how each of them said "no," even though the governor and Republicans in the Senate were pushing for a different answer....