Steve Bousquet, Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureau
Steve Bousquet is the Tampa Bay Times' Tallahassee bureau chief. He joined the Times in 2001 after 17 years at the Miami Herald, where he held a variety of positions including Tallahassee bureau chief, and he previously was a reporter at TV stations in Miami and Providence, R.I. He has a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Rhode Island and a master's in history from Florida State University.
Bousquet was a contributor to two editions of The Almanac of Florida Politics and to The Miami Herald Report: Democracy Held Hostage, an account of the 2000 presidential recount in Florida.
Phone: (850) 224-7263
Email: sbousquet@tampabay.com
Twitter: @SteveBousquet
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Judge approves plan to shuffle state Senate districts, affecting millions of Floridians
12/30/15 State RoundupTALLAHASSEE — A judge on Wednesday approved new state Senate districts that will recast Florida's political landscape, giving millions of people new representation and bolstering Democratic chances in 2016.
The decision by Circuit Judge George Reynolds in Tallahassee was another victory for the League of Women Voters and Common Cause, the same voting rights groups that successfully struck down the Legislature's drawing of congressional districts for violating anti-gerrymandering provisions in the Florida Constitution....
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Florida judges hire lobbyist — a former judge — to fight proposed term limits
12/30/15LegislatureTALLAHASSEE — Facing the threat of term limits, Florida's appellate court judges will beef up their presence in the Capitol by hiring a lobbyist with strong political connections and a controversial past.
The judges hired a former colleague, Paul Hawkes, who resigned an appellate judicial position in 2011 to avoid a trial and possible removal from office over his role in the construction of a lavish new courthouse for the 1st District Court of Appeal known as the Taj Mahal that was widely criticized for its opulence. ...
![Former First District Court of Appeals Judge Paul Hawkes, shown here in 2011 testifying before a subcommittee about the controversial costs of a new court house, has been hired as a lobbyist to fight against proposed term limits for appellate court judges. [COLIN HACKLEY | Times]](/resources/images/dti/2015/12/425314589_16499991.jpg)
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Judge approves voting rights' groups map of Senate districts
12/30/15 BlogA state judge on Wednesday approved an entirely new map of Florida's 40 Senate districts that was recommended by a coalition of voting rights groups.
The decision is yet another political and legal setback for the Republican-controlled Legislature and adds much more political uncertainty with the next session less than two weeks away and at the dawn of a presidential election year.
"This is another great result for our clients but also a great result for every voter in the state of Florida," said David King, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs. King said voters will elect senators and members of Congress from constitutional districts in the 2016 election, and added: "I'm confident that there are a substantial number of more competitive districts in this map."...
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Corcoran wants House GOP candidates to qualify by petition
12/30/15 BlogHouse Speaker-Designate Richard Corcoran will set up a committee of 15 GOP lawmakers who will help oversee members' campaigns in the upcoming cycle. As part of the effort, Corcoran is urging every candidate to reach the 2016 ballot by the alternate method of gathering signatures from voters, not paying the qualifying fee of nearly $1,800.
"Our goal is that by the time qualifying happens there will be more people in our conference qualifying by petition and going the grass roots than ever before," the Land O'Lakes lawmaker says. ...
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Bousquet: Gov. Rick Scott's $1B in tax cuts met with skepticism
12/28/15LegislatureA billion dollars. That's a lot of money.
That's Gov. Rick Scott's goal for cutting taxes in 2016. But with each passing day, it looks more obvious that Scott is headed for defeat because the Legislature is not sold on the idea.
It all comes down to one word: recurring.
Simply put, Scott wants most of $1 billion in tax relief to be recurring, or permanent, as in forever. That would take that tax money out of the treasury for good, because future lawmakers could not repeal a tax cut without being accused of raising taxes, and that's not going to happen....
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State launches probe of hospital's removal of patient who died
12/28/15 BlogFrom The News Service of Florida:
Gov. Rick Scott's Agency for Health Care Administration said Monday it has started an investigation into a Northwest Florida hospital after the high-profile death of a woman who had been forcibly removed from the facility.
AHCA issued a brief statement that said it will investigate whether Calhoun Liberty Hospital "violated any state or federal requirements surrounding last week's incident." The full text follows>...
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Gay marriage, redistricting mess voted top Florida stories of year
12/28/15 BlogThe top news story in Florida in 2015 was the legalization of same-sex marriage, according to an Associated Press poll of newspaper and broadcast editors statewide.
Gay marriage easily beat out the No. 2 story: the long-running battle over the flawed districts the Legislature drew for Congress and the state Senate that had to be redrawn because they violated a voter-approved anti-gerrymandering law. Here, from AP, are the other top stories of 2015, as voted by editors:...
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Voters told to update signatures in advance of Florida's presidential primary
12/26/15 State RoundupTALLAHASSEE — With a presidential primary right around the corner, many Florida voters are being told they must update their legal signatures to ensure that their absentee ballots will be counted.
Hundreds of thousands of voters have received letters from county elections supervisors urging them to fill out new voter registration forms or risk having their ballots rejected.
The practice of signature verification is becoming increasingly common as more Floridians vote by mail rather than at early voting sites or on election day. Now that the Legislature allows voting by mail for any reason, experts say it's inevitable that it will become the preferred way of casting ballots in Florida....
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State's high court removes judge from bench for misconduct
12/17/15 BlogThe Florida Supreme Court on Thursday ordered a circuit judge removed from the bench for misconduct, the most severe punishment the court can impose on a wayward jurist. The decision marks the latest in a series of cases in which Chief Judge Jorge Labarga and his colleagues said the recommended punishment by the Judicial Qualifications Commission was too lenient....
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Supreme Court will honor memory of Justice Leander Shaw Jr.
12/17/15 BlogTwo public events in Tallahassee, one next week and one next March, will honor the life of former Florida Chief Justice Leander Shaw Jr. who died on Monday at age 85 after a long illness.
The court announced that Shaw will lie in state in the rotunda of the Supreme Court building at 500 South Duval Street in Tallahassee on Monday, Dec. 21, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m....
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A baker's dozen of 'no party' counties: Charlotte follows trend
12/11/15 BlogCharlotte County in southwest Florida just became the 13th Florida county where the total number of registered voters rejecting both major parties now exceeds one of the two major parties.
Figures posted on Supervisor of Elections Paul Stamoulis' website show that "other" voters (mostly those with no party affiliation and a small number belonging to minor parties) now slightly outnumber Democrats. Like its neighboring counties to the south, Lee and Collier, Charlotte is solidly Republican turf where Gov. Rick Scott won handily in 2010 and 2014 and Mitt Romney ran well in 2012....
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Lucky lawbreakers gain pardons from Gov. Scott and Cabinet
12/09/15 BlogGov. Rick Scott and Cabinet members granted a half-dozen full pardons Wednesday to people who in some cases broke the law decades ago and whose petitions for mercy reached the state's top decision-makers in the holiday season. The four officials meet four times a year as the Board of Clemency to decide cases in which long ago lawbreakers seek mercy from the state....
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NRA's Marion Hammer taking aim at the little scrub jay -- again
12/09/15 BlogThe NRA's Marion Hammer always loves a good old fashioned political fight in the Legislature, and she's ready for another one, now that Democratic Rep. Mark Pafford of West Palm Beach, the House Democratic leader, wants to replace the mockingbird as the state bird with the scrub jay.
"I'm ready," Hammer said Wednesday....
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Panuccio says exit unrelated to his shaky Senate confirmation
12/09/15 BlogOne of Gov. Rick Scott's most trusted advisers, Jesse Panuccio, got a warm sendoff at the year's final Cabinet meeting Tuesday. As a memento, Scott gave the departing director of the Department of Economic Opportunity a U.S. flag that had flown over the state Capitol.
In a Times/Herald interview, Panuccio said his sudden resignation, announced Dec. 4, had nothing to do with the reality that his confirmation in the Senate was in trouble for the second year in a row. He would have lost his $141,000-a-year job if senators didn't confirm him in 2016....
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FDLE: Dramatic surge in Fla. gun sales after California killings
12/08/15 BlogThe Florida Department of Law Enforcement is seeing an historic increase in Florida gun sales, a trend the agency says is at least partly a reaction to the latest terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California.
FDLE Commissioner Rick Swearingen told Gov. Rick Scott and Cabinet members Tuesday that firearms sales typically show a spike around the holidays, but the latest surge began soon after the California massacre. FDLE's Firearm Purchase Program conducts criminal background checks of people who buy firearms at retail stores, and state law requires a three-day waiting period for all handgun purchases. ...
