We shoppers irk local merchants when, despite layoffs, bankruptcies and shortage of government revenue accompanying the sharpest economic slowdown in recent memory, many of us continue to buy things on the Internet. ...more

March 15, 2009

Tampa's firefighters will receive a 2.5 percent cost-of-living raise this year as well as an additional 3.5 percent step plan increase for those who qualify. ...more

March 6, 2009

With the state confronting at least a $2.3 billion budget shortfall, little is being spared lawmakers' ax. In the ongoing special session in Tallahassee, legislators have targeted programs serving the elderly, schoolchildren, the disabled and hospital patients. Environmental protections, higher education and many other efforts are on the chopping block. ...more

January 10, 2009

Back in the 1990s, former Gov. Lawton Chiles compared Florida to an 18-wheeler running on a Model T engine. He was referring to the state's antiquated tax system developed before World War II when the state was the least-populated in the South. ...more

July 27, 2008

"Politics," the late American newspaper editor and writer Charles Dudley Warner once quipped, "makes strange bedfellows." ...more

June 15, 2008

Gov. Charlie Crist's 2007-08 fiscal year budget was lean, and that foreshadowed tough financial times for local governments that depend on state money. ...more

June 12, 2008

The Tampa Bay area's transportation authority appeared Friday on Florida TaxWatch's list of "budget turkeys," raising the specter of a possible funding veto for a second straight year. ...more

May 31, 2008

Pasco's lawmakers lassoed more than $28 million this year in state funding for countywide capital improvements. ...more

May 31, 2008

Our communities have a critical shortage of teachers, especially in math and science. More than 2,000 qualified math and science teachers are needed in our K-12 schools just in the 2008-09 school year. ...more

May 22, 2008

SEBRING — Ross Lewis will graduate in a few weeks, then he is headed off to Tuskegee University in Alabama to study political science, and someday become a lawyer. He's not sure where he would be without the Boys and Girls Club, though. A statewide study recently found that young people who attend Boys and Girls Clubs show higher graduation rates, greater achievement on Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, lower rates of absenteeism and lower rates of criminal offenses. Ross, who has spent his afternoons at the Boys and Girls Club in Sebring for as long as he can remember, said he thinks the study is right on the money. ...more

May 21, 2008