Jack Latvala

TALLAHASSEE – In warp-speed fashion, the Florida Senate’s budget committee unanimously passed a $74.3 billion spending plan Wednesday that gives teachers pay-raises, pumps millions of dollars into university construction, and is loaded down...

TALLAHASSEE – While advancing some grandiose ethics and elections reforms this year, Florida lawmakers also want to give themselves some wiggle-room under the last major shakeup to Tallahassee’s political culture – the ban on gifts...

A top senator said Thursday that he will introduce legislation to eliminate a nearly 30-year-old tax break for insurance companies and use the estimated $220 million in savings to roll back the annual car registration fees paid by the state's drivers. &#...

TALLAHASSEE — Normally, Republicans rule the roost when it comes to collecting campaign-coin in the Capitol. But an Orlando Sentinel analysis of the campaign-finance data reveals that the Florida Democratic Party, candidates for statewide office,...

TALLAHASSEE – Florida lawmakers are advancing a sweeping package of reforms of state economic-incentives that would require more rapid and detailed disclosure of the tax-breaks companies have received to fill jobs and closer scrutiny of their...

TALLAHASSEE – Fueled by cases of legislators cashing in on their public offices, Florida Senate Ethics Chairman Jack Latvala has pushed for months to expand an ethics reform bill to place tighter lobbying prohibitions on lawmakers when they leave...

TALLAHASSEE – A Senate panel advanced its own campaign-finance bill (SB 1382) Monday in an attempt to provide more transparency to fundraising and crack down on lawmakers' perceived abuses of political slush funds. The House and Senate are playing...

TALLAHASSEE — The Senate just unanimously passed major ethics reform as its first bill of the 2013 session. There was no debate, other than a closing statement by Ethics and Elections Chairman Jack Latvala, R-Clearwater. “This is solid...

TALLAHASSEE – You have to forgive Florida's reform-minded lawmakers if they don't want to preclude all their current colleagues from cashing in as lobbyists. This week, the Senate amended its sweeping ethics reform bill (SB 2) to allow current...

TALLAHASSEE -- The Senate just unanimously passed major ethics reform as its first bill of the 2013 session. The Senate had no debate on the matter, other than a closing statement by Ethics and Elections Chairman Jack Latvala, R-...

TALLAHASSEE — A sweeping ethics reform that cracks down on political slush funds, revolving-door lobbying, and Florida's weak ethics enforcement unanimously cleared its last Senate committee stop Tuesday. Senate President Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, has...

TALLAHASSEE — Beating back Democratic amendments, a House panel on Monday gave the first affirmative vote for a campaign-finance reform that would outlaw some third-party slush funds and raise campaign contribution limits to candidates to $10,000....