Carnival cruise ship in Gulf of Mexico to be towed after engine fire

A Carnival cruise ship in the Gulf of Mexico with 3,000 passengers onboard will be towed to port after an engine fire Sunday morning left it drifting, a cruise line official said,

The fire occurs in the engine room of the Carnival Triumph, which is owned by the Miami-based company.

The fire left the ship with no propulsion, the cruise line says, CNN is reporting.

There were no injuries reported. Passengers and crew have food, water and electricity from generators. Another Carnival ship, the Elation, is transferring more food and drinks onto the Triumph

The cruise ship was in waters off the Yucatan Peninsula, heading back to Galveston, Tx., when the fire occurred, said Astevia Gonzalez from the Carnival Cruises family support team.

The ship's automatic fire extinguishing system kicked in and soon contained the blaze.

The fire still left the ship passengers and 1,000 crew members drifting about 150 miles off the Mexican coast, the cruise line said in a statement.

"The ship's technical crew has determined the vessel will need to be towed to port," Carnival said around 7:30 p.m. ET Sunday, CNN said. "A tugboat is en route to the ship's location and will tow the vessel to Progreso, Mexico, which is the closest port."

According to Gonzalez, the ship is expected to arrive in port Wednesday.

After they are towed to Progreso, those aboard the Carnival Triumph will be flown back to the United States at no cost to them, the cruise line said.

They will also get a full refund, credit that can be used toward a future trip and reimbursement for all expenses — except casino and gift shop purchases — for their current trip.

The vessel's next two departures, scheduled for Monday and Saturday, have been canceled. Those slated to be on those trips will get full refunds and discounts toward future cruises, the cruise line said.

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Unscreened by state, firms cash in on Florida kids

First of two parts

When Yolanda Axson wasn’t watching, a pot of hot water spilled into a crib at her daycare in Orlando, scalding a 4-month-old boy.

She served probation for felony child neglect and then, barred from child care, found a less-regulated line of work. She started a company to earn tax dollars tutoring poor kids in Florida’s failing schools.

When state officials saw Axson’s name on an application for the government tutoring program, they didn’t hesitate. They stamped their approval, and her business, Busy BEE Services, went to work tutoring Florida’s neediest children.

The cost to taxpayers per student? At least $60 an hour.

Axson’s case points to a larger problem with mandated tutoring in Florida: The program pays public money to people with criminal records, and to cheaters and profiteers who operate virtually unchecked by state regulators.

In a three-month investigation, The Tampa Bay Times examined invoice records from 59 school districts, conducted dozens of interviews and reviewed thousands of pages of complaint reports, audits and other documents, and found:

•  Florida school districts spent at least $7 million last year on tutoring companies run by people with criminal records. Among those who have headed state-approved tutoring firms are a rapist, thieves and drug users.

•  In more than 40 cases across the state, tutoring companies have faked student sign-up sheets or billed for tutoring that never happened. Companies that overcharged for tutoring earned more than $10 million last year alone.

•  The program is riddled with conflicts of interest. In one county last year, more than 100 teachers moonlighted as tutors of their own students, flouting state ethics rules by positioning themselves to steer kids toward their secondary employers.

•  Dozens of tutoring firms have broken federal rules by luring impoverished kids to sign up with promises of bicycles, gift cards and computers. Others have sent school administrators on golf outings or sponsored retreats for district officials who administer tutoring contracts.

Despite uncovering millions of dollars in potential fraud and documenting flagrant violations, school districts almost never forward cases to law enforcement.

Florida’s Department of Education doesn’t screen backgrounds of the people who profit from subsidized tutoring, and it seldom cracks down on companies accused of improper billing, illegal marketing and low-quality tutoring.

After nearly a decade, Florida last year won a waiver from the federal law that requires private tutoring. The state was set to shut down the program when lobbyists for the tutoring industry stepped in. They convinced state lawmakers to keep the money flowing.

Florida has spent $192 million on private-tutoring firms in the past two years. The companies are paid at a dramatically higher rate than conventional public schools. In the 2009-10 school year, the most recent period for which numbers are available, the state spent $9,981 per student — about $11 an hour. Florida spent $58 an hour, more than five times as much, on tutoring.

Tutoring companies, many of which meet high standards and offer quality instruction, say they provide a needed service. But researchers disagree over whether government-funded tutoring is worth the money. Studies are inconclusive or contradictory.

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Red light camera opponents find questionable champion in Rep. Campbell

Opponents of red-light cameras could have found a better advocate for their cause than state Rep. Daphne Campbell, D-Miami, who is sponsoring a bill to outlaw the practice.

A Honda minivan registered to her husband, Hubert, has five red-light camera violations, according to records obtained by the Herald/Times from American Traffic Solutions, or ATS, a Scottsdale, Ariz. vendor that provides the cameras for most cities and counties in Florida.

Two of the tickets, a May 10, 2010, violation in North Miami and a July 16, 2010, violation in Hallandale Beach, remain uncollected.

A ticket costs $158. If unpaid, a traffic citation is issued and may result in the termination of the vehicle registration and suspension of the owner’s driver’s license.

ATS provided a photo of the Honda Odyssey minivan at one of the violations. It has a Campbell campaign sticker on it. Two videos show the minivan making reckless turns on red, one left and the other right.

When reached Friday night, Campbell explained she was filing the bill for her constituents.

“My constituents complained and the people are hurting,” Campbell said. “I promised them when I went to Tallahassee that I would repeal the red-light cameras.”

Asked about the five tickets, Campbell said she didn’t know about them. Or at least four of them. She said she did know about a ticket she received in the mail for an Oct. 22 Miami Gardens violation.

But she said she had no clue about the others.

“Something is definitely wrong,” Campbell said. “You are the one who just told me about it. This is news to me.”

Despite the video footage of the minivan blowing through the red lights, Campbell wasn’t buying it.

“It’s a lie,” she said. “That camera is a made up story. You can do anything with the computer now.”

ATS spokesman Charles Territo said it was unlikely Campbell wouldn’t have gotten notice of the tickets, and he vouched for the accuracy of his company’s records and the photographic evidence.

“I don’t know how she wouldn’t know, unless her husband didn’t tell her,” Territo said. “Someone there knows about them because three have been paid.”

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Stranded python hunters rescued from Broward Everglades

Two python hunters were rescued Thursday afternoon by Broward Sheriff Fire Rescue after they became stranded and disoriented in the Everglades.

According to Broward Sheriff Fire Rescue spokesman Mike Jachles, a call came in shortly before 4 p.m. that the hunters, 22 and 25 years old and from Tennessee, were stranded 15 miles west of U.S. 27 near the Broward-Palm Beach County line.

“It doesn’t seem like they were familiar with the area,” Jachles said. “They underestimated the conditions. We had temperature in the 80s. “

The men, suffering from exhaustion and dehydration, complained of lightheadedness and weakness when air rescue located them. They were taken two miles from where they were found and treated by firefighters and paramedics.

“Fortunately our helicopter and rescue crews got to them before it would have gotten much worse,” Jachles said.

The victims, thought to be staying in their car, refused to be taken to a hospital for further treatment.

Jachles could not confirm that they were taking part in the ongoing “Python Challenge,” which began last month and offers cash prizes to hunters who kill the most, and longest, Burmese pythons, which have infested the Everglades in recent years.

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Judge angered after learning mentally ill Miami man was placed in assisted living facility, and escaped

After Cristobal Abreu was arrested for stabbing a Hialeah SWAT officer with a large BBQ fork in December 2009, doctors deemed his mind too ravaged by mental illness to stand trial.

For years, he bounced around mental health facilities.

Then a stay at a Miami Gardens assisted living facility, where funds for his medications ran out and his mental state deteriorated, ended last month when the 72-year-old Abreu was shipped without a judge’s permission to Jackson North Medical Center.

Then last week, a Jackson case worker — again, without permission from the court — sent him to an ALF in Little Havana. He promptly escaped.

“I’m free! I’m free,” Abreu yelled as he shuffled away from the San Martin de Porras facility Tuesday, according to lawyers and court personnel who aired the episode over two days in court this week.

Abreu’s ping-ponging treatment has drawn the ire of Circuit Judge Ellen Sue Venzer, who has now ordered hospital and state-contracted mental health administrators to court Friday to explain what happened.

“The system is broken,” Venzer said angrily in court this week, adding: “What would have happened if Mr. Abreu had decompensated and gone out and hurt somebody else in our community?”

Abreu’s escape was short-lived: police quickly detained him, committing him back to Jackson Memorial Hospital for an involuntary psychiatric evaluation.

The unusual episode underscores what mental health advocates in Miami-Dade’s criminal justice system say has been a reoccurring problem: “incompetent” defendants are often shuffled between facilities without the knowledge of the court tasked with supervising them.

ALFs mostly house the elderly and others with mental health issues or disabilities. It is not unusual for incompetent defendants, usually non-violent ones, to be placed at an ALF in a residential neighborhood.

“The people in the social services arena have to recognize that a court-order is sacrosanct,” Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said Wednesday. “I really understand the judge’s ire. She has the absolute right to be livid with everyone in the system.”

Subpoenaed to appear before the judge on Friday: Representatives from Jackson, the South Florida Behavioral Network, which contracts with the state to manage cases of the mentally ill defendants, and New Horizons Community Mental Health Center, which monitored Abreu’s case.

A lawyer for the Florida Department of Children and Families will also appear.

“It sounds like all these different agencies are treating these individuals like hot potatoes,” Venzer said in court Wednesday.

Abreu was initially arrested in December 2009 for attempted murder and aggravated battery of a law enforcement officer. The attempted charge was later dropped; the SWAT officer was not hurt because the knife pierced his shield.

During a jailhouse interview with a psychologist, the incoherent Abreu admitted that he sometimes hears voices and see visions of “flowers [and] gold diamonds.”

The court determined that Abreu was “incompetent” to proceed to trial, meaning he could not assist his lawyer in defending the accusations.

After stays in several other facilities, Abreu wound up at the Graceful Gardens ALF, 18101 NW 47th Ct., in November.

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6 Miami-Dade cops fired or suspended for loafing

A Miami-Dade police sergeant and two officers have been fired, and three others have been suspended, capping a two-year investigation into accusations that they ignored emergency calls, filed false police reports and lied about calls they handled, Miami-Dade police spokeswoman Nancy Perez said Tuesday.

The Miami-Dade Internal Affairs Bureau launched the investigation into the Kendall District police squad in 2010. The discharged officers are fighting to get their jobs back.

The officers — who worked the 2-to-10 p.m. shift — were followed, captured on video and tracked with GPS devices. More than 130 violations of department policy were documented.

Fired were Sgt. Jennifer Gonzalez and officers Dario Socarras and Jose Huerta. The other three — officers Jeffrey Price, Fabian Owens and Ivan Tomas — were suspended without pay in September and are back on the job.

Gonzalez was caught shopping, loading purchases into her patrol car and visiting her parents — all while on duty — according to CBS 4’s Jim Defede, who first reported the investigation and its outcome. Socarras ignored emergency calls, including a robbery, instead having a romantic rendezvous with his girlfriend at the Dadeland Mall.

A video captures him making out with the woman while in uniform. He also ignored a call involving a 5-year-old boy who was unconscious and locked inside a car, telling dispatchers he was on his way when, in fact, he was having a cup of coffee with Gonzalez and Huerta, who also ignored the emergency call.

The child was tended to by paramedics.

Price, Owens and Tomas were given suspensions of from five to 20 hours without pay. They, too, ignored a number of emergency calls.

Although police internal affairs investigations of individual officers are not uncommon in an agency as large as the Miami-Dade Police Department, a probe of an entire squad is unusual.

The boundaries of the Kendall District are Bird Road to the north, Coral Reef Drive to the south, Biscayne Bay on the east and Florida’s Turnpike on the west.

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Jury: Man deserves execution for slaying of elderly Little Havana woman

A Miami man should be executed for the savage stabbing of an elderly Little Havana woman in December 2000, a jury decided Monday night.

By a 7-5 vote, jurors recommended that Victor Guzman be executed for the slaying of 80-year-old Severina Dolores Fernandez. In September, the same jury convicted Guzman of first-degree murder.

Using a DNA match, police linked Guzman, 39, to the slaying of Fernandez, discovered naked and stabbed 58 times in her Little Havana apartment.

Ultimately, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Dennis Murphy will sentence Guzman at a later date.

Prosecutors urged the death penalty for Guzman because of the “heinous, atrocious and cruel” nature of the crime, plus an earlier sexual attack on a 12-year-old girl. His defense lawyers asked for life in prison, saying Guzman was an alcoholic who had a stormy upbringing in his native Peru.

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Route of Barefoot Mailman – from Pompano Beach to South Beach – is revisited

Fred Kimball slipped off his worn sneakers and beige socks and picked up the 20-pound backpack he had already carried for some 35 miles.

He set out for the beach, wanting to feel the sand between his toes – just as he imagined the mailmen of the late 1800s did on the final leg of their grueling route from Palm Beach to Miami Beach.

Honoring the “through rain, hail, sleet or snow” creed of mail carriers is what the annual Barefoot Mailman Historic Hiking Trail is all about. The trek — from Pompano Beach to South Beach — honors the mailmen who walked 66 miles to deliver mail before a new post office opened and new roads were built.

Keeping alive the memory of the herculean effort is what has kept Kimball coming back to the annual event for decades.

“They had a lot of obstacles,” said Kimball, 57, who walked alongside Peter Lewis, 78, who has done the walk for 38 years. “This is just a little taste of it.”

The 49th annual walk, which is led by the Boy Scouts of America, South Florida Council, attracted more than 500 scouts and adults – ranging in agefrom 12 to 78.

“It honors a very unique period of South Florida history,” said Stephen Blair, who has coordinated the hike for about seven years.

For the young scouts, it’s also a test of endurance.

“The boys learn how to be more self-sufficient, they learn teamwork and it teaches them about goal achievement, as well as basic scouting skills,” Blair said.

The walk began at 5:30 a.m. Saturday at the east end of Atlantic Boulevard in Pompano Beach.

The group walked all day, camped overnight at Haulover Park and then gathered at Lummus Park on South Beach Sunday before taking off for the last stretch.

Some of the younger Cub scouts joined in for the second day of the walk.

Robert Goodin, 15, sat barefoot “giving his feet a rest,” as they waited to get to the finish line. A member of Troop 457 out of Palmetto Bay, Robert said the walk was tough, especially where the sand was soft.

“It’s definitely challenge,” said the teenager, who weighs about 100 pounds – and carried about 40 pounds of gear.

In the days of the barefoot mailman, letter carriers faced challenges like snakes and alligators; inlets where they needed dinghies to get across; and they had to live off the land.

The scouts faced challenges like blisters and sunburns. They also had to carry all their food and sleeping gear.

Blair said only a few dropped out.

One was Garry Alan Taylor Sr. Taylor started out with his son and grandson to make the trek as three generations, but had to stop after about 12 miles because of circulation issues.

But Garry Alan Taylor Jr. and his 12-year-old son Garry Alan Taylor III completed the walk together.

“He did great,” Garry Alan Taylor Jr. said of his son, who came as part of Troop 247 out of Palm Springs North. “He was in front of me the whole time.”

The first South Florida hike, led by scoutmaster John Sherwood, was held in 1964, and covered 50 miles. It was later reduced to nearly 36 miles.

Sherwood began the hike after he read Theodore Pratt’s book The Barefoot Mailman, which described the real barefoot mailmen’s 66-mile route.

Each walker carries a letter, which is then placed in a mailbag.

The letter, which is sent back to the walker, tells the story of James Hamilton, who was one men who walked the route.

Hamilton’s route took him about three days; he usually lived on oysters, turtle eggs and oranges.

On Oct. 11, 1887, Hamilton’s mail pouch and clothing were found, but not his body. They mystery was never solved.

Legend has it that he took off his clothes and left the mailbag behind to swim across to get his boat, which floated to the other side.

But no one knows what really happened to Hamilton.

So in his memory — and the other men who braved the treacherous route — the walk began.

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Gov. Rick Scott pushes “Finish in Four” tuition plan to save college students money

TALLAHASSEE --
Gov. Rick Scott’s push to keep tuition low includes a new twist submitted with his budget for the coming fiscal year, which begins July 1. The governor’s idea: tuition should be the same when students graduate as when they start.

Scott has offered legislation that would hold tuition steady for four years for students entering a state university this fall or afterward. The governor did not highlight the bill during his press conference unveiling his proposed budget, but the proposal is in the package he’s sending to the Legislature.

And it sticks closely to something that Scott has pounded on now for months: his belief that an era of nearly annual tuition increases need to end.

“When I talk to universities, they know that we’ve got to hold the line on tuition, we’ve got to watch how we’re spending the money,” he said Thursday.

A summary packet about the budget handed out by the governor’s office makes the case for “Finish in Four,” which alludes to the hopes that the tuition guarantee will encourage students to finish their degree in four years to take advantage of the tuition freeze. Universities could also designate some degrees that they believe take longer than four years for a lengthier guarantee.

“The unpredictability of tuition increases makes it difficult for students and families to plan for the cost of higher education,” the packet reads.

Scott has also pushed state colleges to lower the cost of four-year degrees with a “challenge” to offer at least one degree at $10,000. Every college offering four-year degrees has agreed to be a part of that challenge, but not all have come up with how they will do it.

Sen. Bill Galvano, the Bradenton Republican who chairs the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Education, said Friday that he wasn’t ready to take a position on the proposal. But when asked what an objection to the plan might be, he pointed to “unique challenges that students face that may make it impractical in certain circumstances” to finish in four years.

For example, jobs or other responsibilities could lengthen some students’ time at school — which would make them ineligible for the guarantee after four years.

Georgia recently experimented with a “Fixed for Four” program beginning in 2006, but abandoned it beginning with the 2009 freshman class, blaming it on budget cuts.

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At University of Miami, Justice Sonia Sotomayor gets real

From her days as a young girl in the Bronx being raised by her mother after the death of her father to becoming the first Hispanic on the highest judicial body in the country, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor told the story of her journey before a captivated audience at the University of Miami on Friday night.

Sotomayor spoke with University of Miami President Donna E. Shalala at the BankUnited Center to University of Miami students, Coral Gables residents and perhaps a future Supreme Court justice about the inspiration behind her recently published memoir My Beloved World.

“Love and passion, that is the only way you do something well,” Sotomayor said. “Do a few things, but do them well.”

Sotomayor, 58, spoke of the many things that inspired her to share her story with the world, one of which was in responses to questions she hadn’t expected during her confirmation process, such as how children cope when a parent dies, especially if they don’t have a mother like hers.

“I began to understand that I couldn’t talk to every child in the country,” Sotomayor said. “I could give them the answers in a book.”

One child she did embrace and speak with on Friday evening was a young girl in the audience named Madeline. Madeline, who was introduced by Shalala, and Sotomayor turned out to have one thing in common: a love for Nancy Drew.

Sotomayor credits the lessons she learned from the fictional tales of a young girl detective as one of the motivations for her successful career.

“When she [Nancy Drew] was trying to solve people’s problems,” Sotomayor told Madeline, “she was trying to help people.”

“I think too many young lawyers forget that the law is the noblest profession you can enter,” Sotomayor said. “What you do is helping people.”

When asked what other profession she would have ever considered going into, Sotomayor said there was not one. “This fish found her pond, and she ain’t changing it,” Sotomayor said.

Shalala questioned Sotomayor about her life as a diabetic, which her memoir speaks of at great length.

“If you have diabetes and want to live a full life, you figure out how to have both things,” Sotomayor said.

She was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes at 8 and she credits living with the chronic illness with teaching her discipline. “Every moment of every day I am self-monitoring inside,” Sotomayor said.

That constant discipline, she said, teaches you to do things like monitoring diet, something she feels everybody should do.

With many students in the audience, she was asked about her scariest experience in law school.

“Being there,” Sotomayor chuckled. “If you think you are smart in college, you realize how dumb you are.”

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Under fire, Miami-Dade nursing home closing its pediatric unit

A Miami Gardens nursing home linked to the deaths of two youngsters is closing its 60-bed children’s unit, the epicenter of a bitter dispute over Florida’s system of care for profoundly sick and disabled children.

About a week ago, Golden Glades Nursing & Rehabilitation Center informed state health administrators of its plan to shut down the harshly criticized pediatric unit. The facility was housing about 30 children late last year, although the number had since dropped to 19, said Lori Weems, a lawyer for Golden Glades’ owners.

“We have been aware of the facility’s plan to close the pediatric wing for a few weeks. Various staff from the agency have been assisting them and our nurse care coordinators are working with families,” said Michelle Dahnke, spokeswoman for the state’s Agency for Health Care Administration (ACHA). “Ultimately the transition location for the child will be determined by the parent and we want to ensure they are fully informed.”

Florida’s decision to house hundreds of profoundly disabled children in institutions designed for elders has drawn fire of late, both from children’s advocates and the U.S. Justice Department, which has accused the state of cutting in-home care for frail children so deeply that parents often have no choice but to institutionalize their loved ones.

Golden Glades is one of six nursing homes in the state licensed to care for children. Its problems, highlighted in a series of Miami Herald stories, included two deaths and a series of state and federal fines totaling over $300,000.

The home, which changed ownership last June, has sought to streamline the transfer of children by donating a special bed with protective netting to the family of one child, allowing the boy to return home to his parents. The child, who suffered from frequent spasms and movements, requires the netting to prevent him from falling out of bed or injuring himself against metal railing.

“That child,” Weems said, “is getting to go home.”

The nursing home also is “raising private funds to construct a wheelchair ramp” — which was, like the special bed, not covered by Medicaid — “so that a wheelchair-bound child whose parents very much want to care for him can go home,” Weems said. Medicaid is the state’s insurer for needy and disabled people.

For several days, Weems said, social workers and administrators at the home have been working with ACHA to provide options to the parents or other caregivers of the children who had been living there. They arranged tours of group homes, medical foster homes and other nursing homes, and offered to help find services for families that wanted to bring their children home.

The state Department of Children & Families had several foster kids who were living at the nursing home, said Joe Follick, a spokesman for the agency. As of Monday, three of the DCF kids remained at Golden Glades; one was moved to a medical foster home Wednesday, another is scheduled to move to a medical foster home “shortly,” and a third will be moved under the oversight of a sister department, the Agency for Persons with Disabilities.

“We have been diligently working to find a different home for them, and every child in a skilled nursing facility,” Follick said.

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Suspicious note on rental car at MIA leads to evacuation

A floor of the Miami International Airport rental car center was evacuated Wednesday after a report of a threatening note left on a rental car.

Police spokesman Javier Baez said the note was found on a Hertz rental car at the Miami Intermodal Center, 3900 NW 25th St. Service on Metrorail’s Orange Line, which goes to the airport, was temporarily suspended, according to Miami Herald news partner CBS 4.

The note was determined to be a hoax after the vehicle was inspected, police said.

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South Miami police supplier hires chief's son

The Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics said last week that the South Miami Police Department can continue to purchase equipment from Lou’s Police Distributors, a company that recently hired the police chief’s son.

“The son has no direct or indirect financial ownership in the company and will not be involved in the local contract, or profit from it,” the commission on ethics said in a press release.

Chief Orlando Martinez de Castro had asked for the opinion.

The opinion comes at time when a majority of the commission wants Martinez de Castro out of a job. The chief has a case pending with the commission on ethics, after investigators reported finding evidence there were a few transactions involving the police department and his wife’s business. Also, Mayor Philip Stoddard has been accusing the chief of breaking state rules when he signed off on a $9,998 gun repair expense that used state forfeiture funds to pay for gun repairs at Lou’s Police Distributors.

Stoddard said that the police department broke Florida rules of use, because the purchase was an operating expense and it was not part of an “extraordinary” program.

Meanwhile, the chief’s eldest son, Christopher Martinez de Castro, is the new vice president of international sales at Lou’s Police Distributors, which has been a South Miami supplier for about two years, has contracts with many departments in Miami-Dade County and also sells weapons and tactical equipment in Central and South America.

“It’s an entirely different department. Where the city will piggyback on a bigger contract to get a better deal, I work with clients from around the world,” the chief’s son said. “I have nothing to do with sales to South Miami – absolutely nothing. It is just being brought up because they [commissioners] want to attack him.”

Stoddard and his supporters have been poring over public records related to the chief’s use of public funds. Most recently, Stoddard threatened to file a lawsuit against the city, after Maj. Ana Baixauli refused to release records related to ongoing criminal investigations, which are exempt from the state’s public records law.

Commissioners have accused the chief of abusing his position to target those who oppose him, after two commissioners’ friends were arrested — including Commissioner Bob Welsh’s friend who was a homeless Canadian undocumented migrant with a criminal record.

Commissioner Walter Harris said Martinez de Castro has continued to show a special interest in cases involving politicians’ friends and family. The chief has said that his officers have only been doing their job when the politicians’ friends and family have broken the law, because “any special treatment” would mean breaking the law.

On Jan. 5, Harris’ wife, Eda Sagi Harris, who has been active in South Miami politics for years, damaged a parked silver Honda Odyssey while backing out of a parking space at the Dadeland Station Mall garage in Southeast Miami-Dade. She was driving the commissioner’s blue Toyota Corolla and told police that she “scratched” the car but left the scene, because she didn’t “hit it.”

Several cars from Miami-Dade police and South Miami police showed up at her home, after surveillance video identified her. Miami-Dade police cited her for “leaving the scene of an accident,” which is a misdemeanor. The police reports referred to the incident as a hit-and-run and estimated the “minor” damage at $500.

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Lauderhill police investigating homicide; searching for suspect

Lauderhill police Monday night were investigating an apparent homicide.

Details were sketchy, but police said just before 9 p.m. a woman was shot and killed on the 2800 block of Northwest 55th Avenue.

The victim was dead at the scene.

K-9 units were in the area searching for a possible suspect and a public information officer is now at the scene.

This story will be updated as more details are available.

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Free-market conservative leads Gov. Rick Scott’s jobs agency

TALLAHASSEE --
The Department of Economic Opportunity is one of the most critical agencies in Gov. Rick Scott’s administration, and it has run through four directors — two permanent, two interim — since it launched 16 months ago.

After the fleeting tenures of three bureaucrats and a banker, Scott’s handpicked director, Jesse Panuccio, began his term as the agency’s fifth director three weeks ago.

Panuccio, a 32-year-old attorney, is an outside-the-box choice for jobs chief. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 2006 and has been on Scott’s legal team since 2011, becoming the governor’s chief litigant last year.

After defending some of Scott’s most controversial laws in the courtroom, Panuccio faces the crucial task of executing the governor’s job-creation strategy from the state’s official boardroom.

“I chose Jesse for three reasons,” Scott said in a statement. “He is a problem solver, he is a skilled manager of people and he is experienced at holding people and organizations accountable.”

After graduating from Harvard Law, Panuccio clerked for a federal judge and then joined a boutique law firm in Washington, D.C. The New Jersey native said he took the Florida Bar Exam after spending much of his childhood vacationing in the Sunshine State, and was drawn to Scott’s campaign message in 2010. He left Washington and joined the governor’s transition team as deputy general counsel in January 2011.

Throughout Panuccio’s brief professional career, he has fought legal battles in support of conservative causes ranging from gun rights to traditional marriage to state’s rights. His new position will require a full embrace of Scott’s conservative job-creation agenda: less regulation, taxation and litigation.

“My overall view is that the economy, the free market flourishes when government gets out of the way,” he said.

The Department of Economic Opportunity, or DEO, is 1,600-person agency responsible for overseeing many of the state’s economic development initiatives. Created by Scott in 2011, DEO runs Florida’s unemployment compensation system, collaborates job training efforts with regional workforce boards and oversees business incentives programs. As the $140,000-a-year director, Panuccio leads efforts to coordinate local and regional job-creation efforts, and implement an overarching economic development vision for the future.

He shares Scott’s small-government approach to creating jobs, and embraces using taxpayer incentives to draw companies to Florida.

“I do think incentives, especially in a recessionary period like this, are a targeted way of reducing taxation and enhancing the business climate for competitive projects,” he said. “It is a reality right now that we’re competing with other states and other countries for these companies.”

So far, Scott’s approach on jobs has had mixed results. Florida’s economy has improved in the last two years with a rapid decline in unemployment, but job growth is considerably slower than the national pace and wages continue to lag.

Meanwhile, DEO has come under fire — and a federal probe — for restricting access to unemployment compensation benefits, making Florida one of the least generous states in the nation for those who are eligible for aid.

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Miami city manager will be out recovering from knee surgery in early February

Who is going to fill in for Miami City Manager Johnny Martinez while he is recovering from knee surgery in early February?

The honors will go to Assistant City Manager Luis Cabrera, according to a Friday afternoon memo from Mayor Tomás Regalado.

Under the city charter, the mayor is responsible for appointing an acting city manager. But the commission has the power to override Regalado’s pick.

“Anyone who is up in that chair needs to be ratified by this commission,” Commissioner Frank Carollo said at a meeting Thursday.

That could present a challenge. There are no commission meetings between now and Martinez’s surgery.

At Thursday’s meeting, Martinez said he had spoken to Regalado, and recommended rotating the job among Cabrera, Assistant City Manager Alice Bravo and Chief Financial Officer Janice Larned.

Regalado wasn’t in the commission chambers during the discussion.

Carollo, using the language in the city charter. raised questions about Regalado naming “a qualified officer” to the post.

“This is the city of Miami,” Carollo said, referencing criticism that high-level employees have been hired without meeting the minimum qualifications for the job.

City Attorney Julie O. Bru said commissioners could convene a special meeting if they had any qualms.

It wasn’t clear if any planned to raise objections.

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Appeals court again upholds power of Miami’s Civilian Investigative Panel

An appeals court has struck down a police officer’s challenge to the validity of Miami’s Civilian Investigative Panel — the second time the panel has withstood a legal challenge from police officers in the past five years.

Police Lt. Freddy D’Agastino and the Fraternal Order of Police filed a lawsuit arguing that the civilian panel, which reviews citizen complaints against officers and makes recommendations to the police chief, had no legal authority to investigate officers.

But in a ruling on Wednesday, the Third District Court of Appeal found that the panel neither conflicts with state or local law, nor intrudes on the police department’s power to discipline its officers. The CIP does not have the authority to discipline officers, though it does have the power to subpoena records and witnesses in its own investigations.

The appeals court also upheld the panel’s authority in 2008, when then-Police Chief John Timoney sought to prevent the panel from investigating him.

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Florida Legislature now rethinking mental health spending

In light of the tragic shootings in Connecticut and Colorado, Florida legislators are taking a hard look at the state’s mental health system, which ranks 49th among states and the District of Columbia when it comes to funding.

“That’s $39 per person per year,” said Bob Sharpe, president and CEO of the Florida Council for Community Mental Health, one of 10 panelists addressing the House Healthy Families Subcommittee Thursday as an “ongoing conversation” to address the system’s woes. That figure, experts said, was lower than per capita funding for mental health in the 1950s.

The violence at Sandy Hook Elementary School is just one reason for action, said the subcommittee’s chair, state Rep. Gayle Harrell, R.-Stuart. “Any time you have a tragedy it certainly focuses public attention on an issue,” Harrell said. “We want to make sure that we don’t just do this however when there’s a tragedy.”

Legislators need to look at the continuum of care “from prevention to identification to intervention to treatment,” Harrell said, if any improvements can occur in a system where issues range from school safety to finding places for mentally impaired nursing home patients.

The lack of funding for prevention in the community, particularly in schools, has been a key issue both at Thursday’s subcommittee meeting and at a Senate meeting Wednesday chaired by Sen. Eleanor Sobel, D-Hollywood.

That’s because the bulk of the state’s $723 million mental health budget is used for treatment, said Rob Siedlecki, assistant secretary for Mental Health and Substance Abuse.

Harrell’s committee asked each panelist to come up with policy rather than funding solutions for mental health issues in the state.

“If we can set up a system in place and look at our system and really change it so that it is much more responsive to prevention, to the needs of the community then you can avoid some of those tragedies perhaps,” Harrell said. “When a tragedy fades and the memory of it fades, you don’t want to let this issue fade. “

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Miami conclave to help map the next 50 years for Southeast Florida

On a Google map, the long stretch of Florida coastline from deep South Miami-Dade County to Sebastian Inlet appears a seamless mass of urban development jammed between a thin border of sand on one side and wetlands and farmland on the other.

But zoom in and it’s soon sliced up by lines both real and imaginary: roadways, highways, railways, waterways and the boundaries of numerous, and often overlapping, governmental jurisdictions.

Now this vast area, at once connected and disconnected, is the subject of one of the most ambitious planning efforts ever undertaken in Florida. Called Seven50, it aims to chart a coordinated, integrated future for the development of Southeast Florida’s seven counties for a couple of generations, through the year 2060.

On Thursday, the big moveable feast of thinkers, planners, economists, government officials and business leaders that is Seven50 will convene in downtown Miami for the effort’s second public summit since its launch in Delray Beach last June.

It may sound like “wonky stuff,’’ said Seven50 lead consultant Victor Dover, a Coral Gables-based planner. But he said Seven50’s scores of participants are convinced that agreeing to coordinated plans across jurisdictional lines is critical if the region is to prosper and meet a long list of common challenges. They range from transportation logjams to the prospect of rising seas and U.S. and international competitors trying to grab our share of international investment, tourism, cargo and trade.

And that competition is serious and well-organized, Dover said. In Texas, for instance, 13 counties and 100 cities between Houston and Galveston have banded together in a similar planning alliance, and so have cities and states along the Great Lakes.

The advantage Southeast Florida has, Seven50 planners say, is that old real-estate cliche: Location, location, location.

But it risks throwing its advantage away unless it better links up its airports and seaports, installs more and better-connected mass transit, and develops strategies to improve education and retain and attract the kind of skilled, educated young people considered key to economic prosperity in today’s economy.

“Planning at this scale is profoundly American, from Jefferson to the creation of Washington, D.C., and if we don’t do it, we’re going to get blown away by the competition,’’ said Andres Duany, a renown Miami-based planner who will give the keynote address at the downtown gathering. “They’re gunning for us.’’

The free, full day of sessions at Miami Dade College’s Wolfson campus is designed to gather public input and share a still-in-development snapshot of the region as planners build what they describe as a massive data warehouse covering everything from demographics to housing, economics and transportation networks. Key discussion areas will be transportation, education and the daunting implications of climate change.

Because Southeast Florida will be among the first regions to experience rising sea levels, across-the-board planning on how to adapt will be essential. That could include difficult options like steering investment for new public infrastructure away from vulnerable areas, or protecting the region’s underground water supply from saltwater intrusion by raising freshwater levels in drainage canals, which could produce more seasonal flooding in some areas.

Some 200 public agencies, advocates, business groups and academic institutions, including the region’s principal universities, have signed up for the effort. Any resulting plans are purely voluntary, and no town or agency is obligated to adopt any ideas it doesn’t like, planners stress.

Still, the process hit a roadblock in the northernmost county, Indian River. The county commission and the Vero Beach city council voted to drop out after Tea Party-linked activists raised a public ruckus over their participation. The activists contend Seven50 is part of Agenda 21, a 20-year-old, nonbinding United Nations resolution that called for environmentally sustainable urban development, which they describe as a conspiracy to evict people from their homes and force them into dense urban housing.

Seven50 planners had to post a response on their website explaining they intend no such thing. Since then, the Stuart city council voted to join Seven50. Other Indian River agencies remain as participants.

The two-year planning effort, led by a consortium established by the South Florida Regional Planning Council and the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council, is funded by a $4.25 million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The federal agency is encouraging local governments to engage in long-range planning under the sustainability label, which covers a range of strategies to foster development of pedestrian-friendly urban zones that put jobs close to homes and save energy by providing alternatives to auto transportation.

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Miami police: Fight over child ends in fatal crash

A fatal car crash in Allapattah began, Miami police said Tuesday, as a fight between two women over a child, with one woman grabbing the child and jumping into the speeding vehicle that might have caused the collision.

The night began with a 15-month-old girl, who was living with her father and his girlfriend, neither of whom police identified.

The mother of the child, Mylife Rivera-Vasquez, 20, of Homestead, persuaded the girlfriend on Monday to meet her at Northwest 17th Avenue and 28th Street so she could see her daughter, Miami police said.

As the girlfriend waited in that area with the girl about 8 p.m., Rivera-Vasquez and several other people arrived, police said, and punched the girlfriend several times.

During the melee, Rivera-Vasquez grabbed her daughter and got into a Lincoln Town Car that drove away.

The Town Car sped south on Northwest 21st Avenue, police said, and the girlfriend appeared to have followed in another car.

But as it approached Northwest 20th Street, the Town Car crashed into a Chevrolet Tahoe.

The Tahoe had been westbound on Northwest 20th Street. Police said the Town Car failed to yield the right of way.

Two of the three people in the Town Car — the driver and the 15-month-old — were thrown from the vehicle, police said. All three were taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Ryder Trauma Center.

The driver, Kristofer Daniel Astorga, 22, died shortly after arriving at the hospital, police said.

Rivera-Vasquez and her child, Juliet Rivera, were both in critical condition, police said.

Lt. Ignatius Carroll, spokesman for Miami Fire-Rescue, told Miami Herald news partner WFOR CBS 4 that the little girl hadn’t been secured in a child car seat.

The Tahoe’s driver was in good condition at Jackson, and a passenger in that car was treated at the scene for minor injuries. Neither was identified Tuesday.

On Tuesday, police said Rivera-Vasquez had been charged with two counts of simple battery.

El Nuevo Herald Staff Writer Melissa Sanchez contributed to this report.

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