There are several editorials today suggesting that Zloch's removal of Judge Hoeveler was the "right thing to do. Fortunately, the Orlando Sentinel disagrees:
Big Sugar's success in judge-shopping is a big loss for the Everglades. Senior U.S. District Court Judge William Hoeveler knows more about the environmental intricacies of Florida's fabled Everglades than anyone else. . . . No wonder Big Sugar wanted him off their case.
The farming interests south of Lake Okeechobee sought Mr. Hoeveler's removal this spring after he publicly warned Gov. Jeb Bush and state lawmakers that they risked violating a federal consent order if they passed legislation delaying the restoration.
On Tuesday, the sugar interests largely responsible for ruining the Everglades prevailed. In a very narrow-minded opinion, Chief U.S. District Court Judge William Zloch randomly selected another judge to oversee the legal tangle. . . . Mr. Hoeveler properly spoke out in hopes of avoiding a repeat of the nasty litigation that is Big Sugar's hallmark. He wasn't deciding guilt or innocence when he spoke out. Mr. Hoeveler was commenting publicly on the details of a settled case. He was, in fact, concerned about the very future of the Everglades. And no law precludes that.
Of course neither the governor nor lawmakers listened to the judge. An Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board analysis found that Big Sugar lobbyists funneled about $13 million into the 2002 legislative elections. So when the industry sought to delay restoration efforts this year, lawmakers and the governor fawned obligingly. In a particularly galling display of chutzpah, U.S. Sugar then had the nerve to claim that Mr. Hoeveler, of all people, "maligned the integrity of the Legislature and the legislative process."
What a joke.
Perhaps Mr. Zloch was still fuming over a recent poll conducted by the Dade County Bar Association, which found that 25 percent of those surveyed think Mr. Zloch is unqualified to sit on the federal bench. By contrast, more than 95 percent of the respondents said Mr. Hoeveler was either qualified or exceptionally qualified. "A sour taste".
RATE HIKES -Florida phone companies have no excuse for pushing a massive residential rate hike that apparently violates a new law. After all, phone company lobbyists wrote the law, which was obediently passed by the Legislature and signed by the governor earlier this year. "A chance to fight the rate hikes".
MEDICAL CRISIS -The number of Floridians who don't have any kind of health insurance is approaching 3 million. A large -- and growing -- number of those people work, many at low-income jobs that don't offer health benefits. (The number of Floridians forced to work two or more part-time jobs continues to grow as well.) In some parts of the state, nearly 25 percent of the adult population under the age of 65 lacks health insurance. . . . Uninsured people are far less likely to have regular checkups. They're more likely to allow health problems, even serious ones, to go untreated. As a result, too many Floridians are one serious illness away from financial and personal catastrophe. And when that medical disaster hits, an uninsured person can go from a wage-earning, contributing member of society to a drain on public resources literally overnight.
There are recent, and troubling, trends that must be explored. The lack of adequate insurance coverage is a problem creeping upward into the middle class, striking mostly at small business owners and their employees who have seen premiums climbing out of reach. Still, this is not surprising -- and the task force shouldn't spend a lot of time going over this ground again. "Timely questions".
TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE -The Florida Department of Law Enforcement confirmed Wednesday that it is investigating Isenhour and Silver Archer Foundation, his "scholarship funding organization" that collected some $400,000 in tax credit money but may not have, as required by law, dispensed all of it in the form of private-school vouchers. The probe marks the first criminal investigation into the state's various voucher programs stemming from reports by The Palm Beach Post. "State launches criminal probe of vouchers". See also "Scholarship investigation widens".
FED JUDICIAL APPOINTMENT FORTHCOMING -[Dade] Chief Circuit Judge Cynthia Angelos is one of two candidates interviewing on Capitol Hill this morning for the vacant federal judge's position in Fort Pierce. . . . The other candidate interviewing in person is Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Peter Lopez.
Four more candidates will be interviewed by conference call. They are: Marcia Cooke, an assistant Miami-Dade County attorney and former inspector general for Gov. Jeb Bush; Broward County Circuit Judge Dorian Damoorgian; Guy Lewis, director of the Executive Office of the U.S. Attorney in Washington and former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida; and Broward County Circuit Judge Robert Rosenberg. "Chief circuit judge up for federal position". 6:10 AM
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