Nearly 100K Citizens Policies Approved For Private Market
August 9, 2014
The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation announced Friday that nearly 100,000 policies have beenm approved to be shifted in October from the state-backed Citizens Property Insurance Corp. to private carriers.
The companies approved to acquire the Citizens policies are Heritage Property & Casualty Insurance Company, SafePoint Insurance Company, Tower Hill Preferred Insurance Company and Weston Insurance Company.
The majority of policies would be inland personal-lines accounts, with coastal properties accounting for 12,449 of the targeted policies. The number of policies that actually move won’t reach the total approved by OIR. Past takeout efforts have shown that private companies cherry-pick the least risky policies and that companies often go after many of the same policies.
Since the start of the year, the state office has approved 466,572 policies for takeout, including those announced Friday. So far, 118,434 have been removed. Citizens had 933,422 policies as of June 30.
On February 10, the agency went under the 1 million policy mark for the first time since August 2006. Last month, Citizens President and Chief Executive Officer Barry Gilway said he expects the number of Citizens policies to reach about 850,000 later this year, with the number flattening out around 650,000 policies before the end of 2017.
Wahoos Top The Generals 5-1
August 9, 2014
The Pensacola Blue Wahoos (19-29, 50-68) took game three of the series 5-1 over the Jackson Generals (21-26, 52-64). With their second straight victory, the Wahoos took a 2-1 series lead over the Generals. RHP Jon Moscot (W, 7-10) shined for the Wahoos, earning his seventh win of the season.
Moscot worked efficiently in the game; he pitched 7.0 innings on 85 pitches, 58 of which were strikes. The righty allowed only three hits, struck out four batters and didn’t surrender a walk all night. It was Moscot’s 14th quality start in 24 appearances this season with the Wahoos.
Seth Mejias-Brean got the Blue Wahoos on the board first for the fourth straight game with his third home run of the season in the second inning. Pensacola was aided by three unearned runs over the third and fourth innings to take a 4-0 lead. For the second straight night, the Wahoos were able to capitalize on Jackson’s miscues to gain an early advantage.
The Wahoos scored in their fourth straight inning when Mejias-Brean got his second RBI of the contest with a run scoring single to give Pensacola a 5-0 lead. The Generals didn’t strike until the Wahoos went to their bullpen in the eighth inning. Carlos Gonzalez allowed a run and exited the game with the bases loaded.
RHP Ben Klimesh (S, 1) came on and struck out Pat Kivlehan to end the threat in the eighth inning. Klimesh finished off the Generals in the ninth inning, earning his first save with Pensacola.
Ross Perez was held hitless tonight snapping his 13-game hitting streak, the second longest in team history. Despite going 0-for-4 at the plate, he won off the field by proposing to his girlfriend Smirna Flores before the game as part of a ceremonial first pitch. She said yes and the two shared a moment before the start of Friday night’s game.
RHP Stephen Landazuri (L, 6-4) took the loss for the Generals. The Generals’ right-hander went 5.0 innings and allowed 5 R/2ER on five hits. The Wahoos scored five runs, so use promo code WAHOOS on PapaJohns.com on Saturday for 50% off pizza.
The Blue Wahoos have tabbed RHP Robert Stephenson (5-8, 4.29) as their starting pitcher for game four on Saturday. The Generals will send RHP Victor Sanchez (6-4, 3.62) to the mound.
by Tommy Thrall
Showers, Thunderstorms Likely This Weekend
August 9, 2014
Here is your official North Escambia area forecast:
- Tonight Mostly cloudy in the evening becoming partly cloudy. Scattered showers and thunderstorms in the evening…then isolated showers and thunderstorms after midnight. Lows in the mid 70s. West winds around 5 mph. Chance of precipitation 30 percent.
- Sunday Mostly cloudy. Numerous showers and thunderstorms. Highs in the upper 80s. West winds 5 to 10 mph. Chance of precipitation 60 percent..
- Sunday Night Mostly cloudy. Scattered showers and thunderstorms in the evening…then isolated showers and thunderstorms after midnight. Lows in the mid 70s. Southwest winds 5 to 10 mph in the evening becoming light. Chance of precipitation 30 percent.
- Monday Mostly cloudy. Scattered showers and thunderstorms in the morning…then numerous showers and thunderstorms in the afternoon. Highs in the lower 90s. West winds 5 to 10 mph. Chance of precipitation 60 percent.
- Monday Night Mostly cloudy. Scattered showers and thunderstorms. Lows in the mid 70s. Southwest winds around 5 mph. Chance of precipitation 40 percent.
- Tuesday Mostly cloudy. Scattered showers and thunderstorms. Highs in the lower 90s. Chance of precipitation 50 percent.
- Tuesday Night A 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 75. Southwest wind 5 to 10 mph.
- Wednesday A 50 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Partly sunny, with a high near 91.
- Wednesday Night A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 73.
- Thursday A 40 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Partly sunny, with a high near 91.
- Thursday Night A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 73.
- Friday A 40 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Partly sunny, with a high near 90.
House, Senate Committees Approve New Districts
August 9, 2014
House and Senate committees approved revised congressional districts Friday, clearing the way for a set of votes that would bring a special legislative session to an end early next week.
The Senate Reapportionment Committee approved the plan on a bipartisan, 7-0 vote. Not long after that, the House Select Committee on Redistricting voted 8-5 along party lines to move the proposal to the floor in that chamber. The conflicting votes appeared to reflect differences between House and Senate Democrats on whether to join the Republican majority in backing the maps.
The three Senate Democrats who voted for the plan — Minority Leader Chris Smith of Fort Lauderdale, Audrey Gibson of Jacksonville and Bill Montford of Tallahassee — said their support was tentative.
“I do look forward to dealing with this map and others on the floor,” Smith said.
Meanwhile, House Democrats tried unsuccessfully to get Republicans to accept a different version of the map drawn by Sen. Darren Soto, D-Orlando. House Minority Leader Perry Thurston, D-Fort Lauderdale, didn’t directly answer when asked whether he was disappointed with his counterparts in the Senate.
“I love Senate Democrats,” he said, pausing for a moment. “This is where the rubber hits the road. This is where we ask the tough questions. It’s more of a congenial delegation over there. But we want to get down to the facts here. We want to address what’s really happening. Is this the best that we can do?”
The special session was sparked when Leon County Circuit Judge Terry Lewis threw out two congressional districts approved in 2012, saying they were drawn to help Republican candidates in defiance of the anti-gerrymandering Fair Districts standards approved by voters in 2010.
Lewis found that the GOP-dominated Legislature put more African-American voters than necessary into Congressional District 5, represented by Democratic Congresswoman Corrine Brown, to keep those Democratic-leaning voters out of surrounding districts. District 5 is meant to provide black voters with an opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice.
The judge also found fault with Congressional District 10, currently held by Republican Congressman Dan Webster, because of an appendage of white voters added to the Orlando-area district.
Republicans say their new map is based on an earlier version of the 2012 congressional plan that Lewis seemed to indicate was better than the bill that passed that year. But legislative leaders say the new plan is better than the initial 2012 proposal, making several districts more compact.
“On every measurement, we improved upon the map that (Lewis) spoke consistently of in a favorable light,” said House Redistricting Chairman Richard Corcoran, R-Land O’ Lakes.
In all, the map approved Friday would alter those two districts and five more. Because all congressional districts have to have roughly equal populations, any change to even one or two districts will generally ripple throughout the map.
The new legislative proposal would do little to change the partisan balance of the state’s congressional delegation, though it seems to make the seats held by Webster and fellow Republican Congressman John Mica more competitive.
Under the current map, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney carried Webster’s district by almost 7.7 percentage points in 2012; that would fall to 4.8 percentage points under the new map. Romney’s margin of victory in Mica’s seat would drop from 4.8 percentage points to almost 2.9 percentage points.
Soto’s plan would have pushed things even further. Webster’s district would have gone for Romney by 2.6 percentage points, while Democratic President Barack Obama would have narrowly won Mica’s seat by less than 0.4 percentage points. But Soto’s map only affected Districts 5, 7 and 10.
“We think the Soto map is less distraction, more competitiveness. And I think that’s really what the people of the state of Florida want,” Thurston said.
But Republicans and legislative lawyers blasted the proposal, saying it would endanger African-American voters’ opportunities to elect a candidate of their choice in Congressional District 5 by lowering the black voting-age population in the district to about 43.7 percent.
George Meros, a lawyer for the House in the redistricting trial, said the chances that black voters would get their candidate of choice elected in District 5 would be “a flip of the coin at the very best.”
Soto said he believes that estimate is too conservative and will bring his amendment back up on the floor of the Senate.
House Democrats were also considering joining a proposal by a pair of voting-rights organizations that were parties to the lawsuit challenging the congressional maps.
League of Women Voters of Florida President Deirdre Macnab and Common Cause Florida Chairman Peter Butzin issued a new letter Friday calling again on lawmakers to consider reorienting Brown’s district, which currently runs from Jacksonville to Orlando, by turning it into a district that runs from Jacksonville in the east to Gadsden County in the west.
“Of greatest concern is that (the proposed map) continues to use a minority-marginalizing relic of an era in which political gerrymandering was acceptable — now it is not,” the two wrote. “That is, CD 5 in (the map) packs an excessive number of African Americans into a district marked by hooks, tentacles and appendages as it snakes through and splits every county from Jacksonville down to Orlando.”
The groups’ idea has run into stiff opposition from the NAACP, which argues that an east-west CD 5 would not guarantee a victory by the candidate of choice for African-American voters and would strand thousands of voters in Central Florida in districts that would also be unlikely to approve black voters’ choices.
Beverlye Colson Neal, vice president of the Orange County branch of NAACP, said the proposal by the League of Women Voters would move Brown’s district into counties where census numbers have high numbers of African Americans due to the locations of jails, even though inmates are not on the voter rolls.
“You’ve got to look at the intent of (what) the district is meant to do,” Neal told the Senate committee. “I’ve lived in this district 50 years of my life. I know what it was like when we had a congressional rep who did not have the interest of the people that they served.”
by Brandon Larrabee, The News Service of Florida
Bicyclist Shot In The Leg
August 8, 2014
An Escambia County man was shot while riding his bicycle Thursday night off Fairfield Drive.
The Escambia County Sheriff’s Office said a black male was shot in the leg. He told deputies that he was riding his bike on Bobe Street when a vehicle passed him and someone fired a shot at him.
The victim was transported to an area hospital by ambulance and treated for non-life threatening injuries. Deputies said he was unable to provide any further suspect information.
Anyone with information on the shooting is asked to call Crime Stoppers at (850) 433-STOP or the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office at (850) 436-9620.
ECSO: Suspect Kidnapped Elderly Man During Cantonment Home Invasion
August 8, 2014
One person was been charged in connection with a home invasion during which an elderly man was kidnapped near Cantonment Wednesday afternoon.
Marcus Demond Stallworth, 22, was booked into the Escambia County Jail Thursday on charges of home invasion robbery, kidnapping, possession of a weapon by a convicted felon and battery.
The Escambia County Sheriff’s Office responded to a burglary in the 2000 block of Stacey Road. They discovered that a home invasion had occurred. The elderly male victim had been kidnapped and driven to his bank.
Stallworth allegedly withdrew money from the victim’s account using an ATM before driving the victim to a shoe store where he used the victim’s debit card to purchase shoes. Stallworth then ordered the victim to drive him home.
The elderly male suffered unspecified non-life threatening injuries, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
Stallworth remains in the Escambia County Jail with bond set at $325,000.
Escambia Man Convicted In 2011 Homicide
August 8, 2014
An Escambia County was convicted Thursday of a 2011 homicide.
Sergio Depree Moorer, 21, was convicted of the death of John Daniel Hall. Hall was found on August 21 in a wooded area near the Marcus Pointe apartment complex. Last seen alive the day before, Hall had been beaten and burned beyond recognition.
Hall’s vehicle was located four days later by the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office in the Oakstead Mobile Home Park on Massachusetts Avenue. Moorer was inside the vehicle and fled on foot as deputies arrived. After a short foot chase, he was taken into custody.
Moorer faces up to the death penalty when he is sentenced next week.
Molino Park’s Woodward Named Escambia Principal Of The Year
August 8, 2014
Molino Park Elementary School Principal Alice Woodward has been named as Escambia County’s Principal of the Year, according to Superintendent Malcolm Thomas. Janet Penrose of Belleview Middle School was named the Assistant Principal of the Year.
Principals are nominated by their peers for the awards, with Thomas making the final selection. Both will be recognized at the August regular meeting of the Escambia County School Board and will compete for state honors in the spring.
“Alice is an outstanding principal,” Thomas said. “She is greatly respected among the administrators in our district. She is that ’steady hand’ that guides Molino Park, and she’s very involved in the community. She is an excellent role model.”
The Florida Department of Education annually honors principals and assistant principals from each of the state’s 67 school districts for their exemplary contribution to students, schools, and communities. Award criteria also include innovative leadership, dedication to academic excellence, and increased student performance.
Pictured: Escambia County Principal of the Year Alice Woodward of Molino Park Elementary School. Courtesy photo for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.
NOAA Calls For Increased Chance Of Below Normal Hurricane Season
August 8, 2014
Forecasters with NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center raised the likelihood for a below-normal season in an update released Thursday to the Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook.
The update predicts a 70 percent chance of a below-normal season, a 25 percent chance of a near-normal season and only a five percent chance of an above-normal season. The probabilities in the initial outlook issued on May 22 were 50 percent, 40 percent and 10 percent, respectively.
“We are more confident that a below-normal season will occur because atmospheric and oceanic conditions that suppress cyclone formation have developed and will persist through the season,” said Gerry Bell, Ph.D., lead seasonal hurricane forecaster at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, a division of the National Weather Service.
“Nonetheless, tropical storms and hurricanes can strike the U.S. during below-normal seasons, as we have already seen this year when Arthur made landfall in North Carolina as a category-2 hurricane. We urge everyone to remain prepared and be on alert throughout the season.”
The primary factors influencing the increased chance of a below-normal season are:
- Overall atmospheric conditions are not favorable for storm development. This includes strong vertical wind shear, a weaker West African monsoon, and the combination of increased atmospheric stability and sinking motion. These conditions mean fewer tropical systems are spawned off the African coast, and those that do form are less likely to become hurricanes. These conditions are stronger than originally predicted in May and are expected to last mid-August through October, the peak months of the hurricane season;
- Overall oceanic conditions are not favorable for storm development. This includes below-average temperatures across the Tropical Atlantic, which are exceptionally cool relative to the remainder of the global Tropics. This cooling is even stronger than models predicted in May and is expected to persist through the hurricane season; and
- El Niño is still likely to develop and to suppress storm development by increasing vertical wind shear, stability and sinking motion in the atmosphere.
The updated hurricane season outlook, which includes the activity to-date of hurricanes Arthur and Bertha, predicts a 70 percent chance of the following ranges: 7 to 12 named storms (top winds of 39 mph or higher), including 3 to 6 hurricanes (top winds of 74 mph or higher), of which 0 to 2 could become major hurricanes (Category 3, 4, 5; winds of at least 111 mph).
These ranges are centered below the 30-year seasonal averages of 12 named storms, six hurricanes and three major hurricanes. The initial outlook in May predicted 8 to 13 named storms, 3 to 6 hurricanes and 1 to 2 major hurricanes.
The Atlantic hurricane region comprises the North Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. NOAA’s seasonal hurricane outlook is not a hurricane landfall forecast; it does not predict how many storms will hit land or where a storm will strike.
Redistricting Proposal Released As Special Session Convenes
August 8, 2014
Lawmakers returned to the Capitol on Thursday for a rare August special session, hoping to quickly redraw congressional districts before returning to the campaign trail in an election year.
As a sign of how quickly the process was moving, the chairmen of the House and Senate committees working to revise the map released a joint proposal Thursday, hoping to hold committee votes on Friday and gain approval from the full Legislature early next week.
Leon County Circuit Judge Terry Lewis, who ruled last month that two congressional districts were drawn in 2012 to help the Republican Party in violation of anti-gerrymandering rules passed by voters in 2010, has set an Aug. 15 deadline for lawmakers to give him a new plan.
The Republicans who run both legislative chambers said they would focus on correcting the two districts targeted by Lewis: Congressional District 5, represented by Democratic Congresswoman Corrine Brown, which sprawls across eight counties as it winds its way from Jacksonville to Orlando; and Congressional District 10, represented by Republican Congressman Dan Webster.
“The goal is to fix (district) 5, fix 10 and only those that are directly as a result of the fix to 5 and 10,” said Rep. Richard Corcoran, a Land O’ Lakes Republican who chairs the House committee charged with redrawing the lines.
Because all congressional districts must have roughly equal population, any change to one or two districts will ripple through other parts of the map.
Democrats said more should be done, arguing that the trial revealed efforts by political consultants to manipulate the 2012 redistricting process, which also could have tainted legislative maps passed at the same time. But House Minority Leader Perry Thurston, D-Fort Lauderdale, seemed to hedge when asked how far his party would go.
“We certainly want to see a broader rewrite, but we’re going to abide by whatever the judge ordered,” he said.
Under the plan revealed by Corcoran and Senate Redistricting Chairman Bill Galvano, R-Bradenton, Brown’s district would no longer include the city of Sanford — it would instead pick up more of Putnam and Marion counties.
All of Seminole County, which includes Sanford, would be included in Congressional District 7, now held by Republican Congressman John Mica, while the changes would force Republican Congressman Ron DeSantis’ District 6 to pick up more of Volusia County.
As for Webster’s district, it would lose an appendage of white voters in Orange County that Lewis found was included to help the incumbent. Webster would pick up parts of Polk and Osceola counties to offset the population loss. District 9, currently held by Democratic Congressman Alan Grayson, would shed parts of Osceola County, particularly the southern end, and Polk County while picking up the population Webster would give up.
Republican Congressman Tom Rooney’s District 17 would pick up the southern end of Osceola to make up for population that was shifted into Webster’s district.
The plan differs significantly from a proposal by two voting-rights groups that were among those challenging the current map in court. Those groups wanted Brown’s district to instead run from Jacksonville in the east to Gadsden County in the west.
“Slight alterations will not correct the constitutional defects Judge Lewis identified,” wrote Deirdre Macnab, the president of the League of Women Voters of Florida, and Peter Butzin, chairman of Common Cause Florida, in a letter Thursday to legislative leaders. “The snaking north-south configuration of CD 5 should be abandoned.”
But George Meros, an attorney for the House, ripped the east-west configuration in a presentation to the House and Senate redistricting committees Thursday afternoon, saying it would decrease the chance for African-American voters to elect a candidate of their choice and was even more bizarrely shaped than Brown’s current district.
“This to me looks like a surfboard that was attacked by Jaws in any number of different places,” he quipped.
It’s still not clear whether the revisions will disrupt the elections scheduled for November. Lewis has not decided whether to delay elections in the districts affected by the new lines. Elections supervisors have argued that holding a separate special vote in those districts after the general election could confuse voters and cause logistical problems.
“I don’t believe that a 2014 election, without changing current Florida law, changing current federal law, is doable,” Michael Ertel, the elections supervisor in Seminole County, told the joint committee meeting.
Sen. Darren Soto, D-Orlando, said he would propose an alternate map that affects only Congressional Districts 5, 7 and 10 and would allow the current maps to be used in the primary and the new maps to be used in the general election. But that plan is not expected to go far in the GOP-controlled Senate.
by Brandon Larrabee, The News Service of Florida