Don Gaetz

Backed by the president of the state Senate, a small Florida county is challenging the state’s tourism industry over how it can spend its hotel taxes. Okaloosa County, a coastal Panhandle community whose economy relies on tourists visiting its...

TALLAHASSEE – A week after delaying a vote, a House committee advanced an ethics reform on Tuesday that would make it harder for ex-lawmakers to score high-paying jobs thanks to their political contacts. The House State Affairs Committee OK'd the...

International Speedway Corp. is trying to win millions of dollars in tax breaks from the Florida Legislature this spring for an expansion of Daytona International Speedway. And the company found a perfect way to show off the racetrack: Free tickets to the...

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 — The Florida Legislature's much-ballyhooed marriage between campaign-finance and ethics reforms may be heading for a rocky patch. On Tuesday, the Senate moved away from the House on its campaign-finance bill (SB 1382) when the chamber's...

  TALLAHASSEE — Halfway through a legislative session that has seen a rebounding economy, replenished coffers and a spirit of cooperation between chambers and parties, the gravitational pull of politics is taking hold. Put 160 elected...

TALLAHASSEE – A decades-long battle between the optometrists and the ophthalmologists nicknamed the “eyeball wars” may be at an end. The Senate sent a measure to the governor Thursday that effectively ended a long battle between two...

TALLAHASSEE – The Florida legislative session is halfway over, both the House and Senate have drafted similar versions of their $74 billion-plus budgets, and so far Gov. Rick Scott’s corporate and manufacturing tax cuts are nowhere to be...

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 -- Halfway through a legislative session that has seen a rebounding economy, replenished coffers and a spirit of cooperation between chambers and parties, the gravitational pull of politics is taking hold. Put 160 elected officeholders...

TALLAHASSEE -- Gov. Rick Scott promised on the campaign trail that he would build "world-class universities" as part of his plan to jump-start the state's stagnant economy and bring new jobs to the Sunshine State. He pledged higher levels of state...

TALLAHASSEE -- Gov. Rick Scott was following a well-read playbook when he campaigned in 2010 to kick-start the economy in part with deep property-tax cuts. It just didn't come off as scripted. Capping out-of-control property-tax spikes was once a...