Northview Track And Field Athletes Qualify For State Finals
April 27, 2018
Several Northview High School track and field athletes qualified for the upcoming 1A state meet May 3-6.
They are:
Brandon Spencer 100 and 200m
Crystal Douglas and Nene Findley 100m
Girls 4×100m Crystal Douglas, Nene Findley, Myisha Syria, Celeste North, Lexi Broadhead
Boys 4×100m Quay Thomas, Joseph Wright, Tim Bush, Jarius Moorer, Brandon Spencer
Boys High Jump Tim Bush
Photo for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.
Rally Calls For Restoring Voting Rights For Felons
April 27, 2018
A day after a stinging defeat handed down by an appeals court, ministers and civil rights leaders — including national talk-show host Al Sharpton — rallied Thursday at the state Capitol to rev up support for a proposed constitutional amendment on the November ballot that would automatically restore voting rights for most Florida felons.
A march from Bethel Missionary Baptist Church to the steps of the Old Capitol, planned weeks ago, followed a late-night ruling Wednesday from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a bitterly fought challenge to the state’s vote-restoration system.
The appellate court handed Gov. Rick Scott and the other members of the Board of Executive Clemency a decisive victory by blocking a federal judge’s order that would have required the state to overhaul Florida’s process of restoring the right to vote to felons by Thursday.
In a series of rulings, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker found the state’s vote-restoration process violated First Amendment rights and Fourteenth Amendment equal-protection rights of felons. Last month, he gave Scott and the board until Thursday to revamp what the judge called a “fatally flawed” process and rejected a request by Attorney General Pam Bondi to put his order on hold.
But in its 2-1 decision Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the Atlanta-based appellate court not only granted the state’s request to put Walker’s decision on hold but also indicated the district judge’s invalidation of the vote-restoration process likely would not stand.
Thursday’s march and rally, featuring Sharpton and civil-rights lawyer Benjamin Crump, were organized around what was expected to be the release of the state’s new vote-restoration process as ordered by Walker.
Instead, the 11th Circuit’s decision stirred up already impassioned supporters of the proposed constitutional amendment as they gathered on the steps of the Old Capitol.
“I think that we are absolutely fired up. I intend to spend a lot of time here, and I know that others with national prominence will. More importantly, local citizens are energized. Many would have felt that there was hope if the appellate court had not ruled. But by ruling on the eve of this rally, they gave us the impetus to really build a movement,” Sharpton told The News Service of Florida and other reporters following the noon rally.
The proposed amendment, backed by the political committee “Floridians for a Fair Democracy” and largely bankrolled by the American Civil Liberties Union, would automatically restore the right to vote for felons who have served their sentences, completed probation and paid restitution. Murderers and sex offenders would not be eligible.
Home to an estimated 1.6 million convicted felons, Florida is one of a handful of states that do not automatically restore voting rights to felons who have completed their sentences. An estimated 600,000 felons could have their voting rights restored if voters approve the measure, which will appear on the November ballot as Amendment 4.
Although a majority of the convicted felons in Florida who have lost their right to vote are white, blacks are disproportionately represented among the felon population.
So it’s no surprise that felon disenfranchisement sparks intensely emotional responses from African-Americans like those who gathered in downtown Tallahassee under sunny skies Thursday. Many people at the rally began weathering civil-rights storms decades ago.
For some, Florida’s labyrinthine vote-restoration process is viewed as a modern form of lynching and is a vestige of Jim Crow-era laws designed to keep blacks from casting ballots.
And disenfranchisement also prevents felons who’ve completed their sentences from serving on juries, said Crump, a lawyer who represented the family of Trayvon Martin, a black teen whose shooting death in 2012 in Seminole County drew international attention.
Drawing cheers from the crowd of more 150, Crump said he discovered early in his career that in many courthouses, “the only thing black is you, your client and the judge’s robe.”
The “legalization of discrimination is real, and it’s affecting us in ways we cannot even imagine,” he said.
Felons who are unable to vote are effectively shut out of society, the lawyer added.
“They’re like the walking dead. They just ain’t got the death certificate,” he said.
Florida’s current vote-restoration process began early in 2011, shortly after Scott and Bondi took office. The Republican officials played key roles in changing the process to effectively make it harder for felons to get their rights restored.
Scott’s office has adamantly backed the process, saying the governor is standing with crime victims.
Under the process, felons must wait five or seven years after their sentences are complete to apply to have rights restored. After applications are filed, the process can take years to complete.
Since the changes went into effect in 2011, Scott — whose support is required for any type of clemency to be granted — and the board have restored the rights of 3,005 of the more than 30,000 convicted felons who’ve applied, according to the Florida Commission on Offender Review. There’s currently a backlog of 10,085 pending applications, according to the commission.
In contrast, more than 155,000 ex-felons had their right to vote automatically restored during the four years of former Gov. Charlie Crist’s tenure, according to court documents.
Florida will be “ground zero” to “turn around this affront on voting rights” for felons during the 2018 election season, Sharpton predicted.
“We are going to turn on the light in the Sunshine State,” he said. “There is no more critical issue in this land.”
Mark McMillan, a convicted felon who leads the Tallahassee-based Divine Revelations Ministries with his wife, told the News Service he had his rights restored automatically in New York and Texas for his decades-old out-of-state convictions.
But the restoration didn’t apply in Florida, McMillan, 49, learned.
“I moved back here about six years ago, and my rights were gone,” said McMillan, whose community-based outreach includes a focus on felons.
He applied to have his rights restored four years ago but was told by the clemency board that it would be up to 10 years before he would get a hearing.
“I can’t vote, and my charges are from almost 20 years ago,” McMillan said.
by Dara Kam, The News Service of Florida
Judge Rejects State Rule Allowing More Methadone Center Applications
April 27, 2018
Pointing to an arbitrary process that “ignores substance in favor of blind luck,” an administrative law judge Thursday rejected a state emergency rule drawn up to help license more methadone-treatment centers across Florida.
Judge R. Bruce McKibben, in a 44-page order, hammered a process in which the Department of Children and Families accepted applications for the licenses on a first-come, first-served basis. The News Service of Florida reported in December that the process led to applicants camping out at the department’s headquarters to be first in line.
The process led to only a handful of providers getting applications accepted, while others were shut out — resulting in the legal challenge.
“The system for accepting applications on a first-come, first-served basis is arbitrary,” McKibben wrote. “It is illogical to assume that the first applications filed, containing scant information, are equal or superior to later filed applications. This scheme contravenes the basic expectation of law for reasoned agency decision making.”
The Department of Children and Families issued the emergency rule last year as officials looked to increase the number of methadone clinics in the state as part of a $27 million federal grant aimed at curbing opioid addiction and overdoses. In all, the department on Oct. 2 accepted 49 applications for clinics in 48 counties, with the successful applicants then able to seek licensure, according to McKibben’s order.
But 20 of the applications were approved for one provider, Psychological Addiction Services, LLC, while another 19 were approved for Colonial Management Group, L.P., and eight were approved for Relax Mental Health Care. Two other applicants each received one approval.
Dacco Behavioral Health, Inc., Operation Par, Inc., and Aspire Health Partners, Inc., challenged the emergency rule, with other organizations also intervening in the case.
McKibben’s order focused heavily on what he described as the first-in-line “scheme” as being arbitrary. He said the department acknowledged that “if the first person in line had filed applications for all 49 new clinics, all the other applicants would have been denied the right to seek licensure.”
“The department felt that allowing applications to be submitted via email would potentially crash its email system, so email submission was not allowed,” he wrote. “The applications received first by the department were to be approved, notwithstanding any substantive shortcomings or comparative failings of those applications as compared to applications received later. No other criteria were considered; first was deemed best. What is fair about approving competing applications based on who filed first rather than on substantive differences in the services being proposed?”
McKibben also wrote that the process could slow down the opening of clinics because of the logistics and expense involved in opening multiple facilities.
“It is more likely that a single entity receiving approval for multiple new clinics might ‘bank’ the approvals, expending time and money for only a few at a time, at best,” he wrote. “If so, that could result in far fewer new clinics coming on line than the 49 projected by the department under the emergency rule. As the applications contained no requirement to provide financial information, it is impossible for the department to determine whether the approved entities, which received multiple approvals, could successfully — and timely — complete their projects. There is no specific time frame for which a granted applicant must commence operations once approved.”
by Jim Saunders, The News Service of Florida
Wahoos Lose To Jacksonville
April 27, 2018
For the second night in a row, the Wahoos offense produced plenty runs to win. However, an exhausted bullpen was overmatched Thursday night and Jacksonville came from behind to win the series opener 10-9.
Both teams came out swinging to start the ball game. Pensacola batted around the lineup to open the game against Jumbo Shrimp starter Brandon Barker. Gabriel Guerrero doubled home two runs and then scored on Aristides Aquino’s RBI-single to make it 3-0 after a half inning of play. Jacksonville quickly countered thanks to Monte Harrison’s solo home run and John Norwood’s run-scoring single to cut the lead down to 3-2.
Pensacola went right back to work and scored once in the top of the second, but the Jumbo Shrimp immediately responded by scoring three more runs off Pensacola starter Daniel Wright in the bottom of the inning. The theme continued in the third inning, and by the time the dust settled in the fourth inning, the game was tied 4-4 and both starters were out of the game.
Pensacola manager Jody Davis hoped that his reigning Southern League Pitcher of the Week would deliver a lengthy start to rest his exhausted bullpen from the previous series; however, Wright was chased from the game with two outs in the third after allowing seven runs on 11 hits.
For the second night in a row, Davis used four different pitchers in relief. The bullpen battled throughout the night, and only allowed three runs over the game’s remaining six innings. After the Wahoos tied the game in the top of the ninth on a Taylor Sparks triple and a wild pitch Jeff Kinley (W, 1-0), to tie the game at nine. Sparks finished the night going 3-for-5 and extended his hitting streak to 12 games.
In the bottom of the ninth with Sharif Othman on second, Kyle Barrett doubled off Alex Powers (L, 0-1), which gave the Shrimp a dramatic 10-9 win.
Pregnant Woman Flips Car Trying To Avoid Ducks Crossing The Road
April 26, 2018
A young pregnant woman escaped serious injury Thursday when her vehicle overturned.
The accident happened on Rockaway Creek Road north of Nokomis Road. The driver reportedly stated that she was attempting to avoid ducks that were crossing the road on their way to a nearby pond. She lost control and ran off the roadway, with her vehicle flipping over in a ditch and coming to rest upside down.
The woman refused medical transport by Escambia County EMS and headed to the hospital in a private vehicle.
The accident is under investigation by the Florida Highway Patrol. The Walnut Hill Station of Escambia Fire Rescue and the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office also responded.
NorthEscambia.com photos, click to enlarge.
Sheriff, Commission Reach New Budget Deal
April 26, 2018
The Escambia County Commission and Sheriff David Morgan have reach a new budget mediation agreement that will mean an extra $9 million over the next four years for staff pay raises.
“We are pleased that we can start the process to pay our deputies and employees what they were worth all along. We’d like to thank the citizens who stood behind the Sheriff’s Office through the appeal process. We are hopeful that the BOCC will begin a plan to properly fix compensation for their own first responders and employees as well as develop a way to ensure the County never again gets this far behind in proper compensation for the employees it is responsible to fund,” Morgan said.
The $9 million is broken down as:
- $1 million in fiscal year 2018
- $2.5 million in fiscal year 2019
- $2.6 million in fiscal year 2020
- $2.9 million in fiscal year 2021
The agreement will also create a Sheriff’s Mediated Reserve (SMR) to be used in fiscal year 2020 or after for workers compensation, pension and health care costs. The county and the sheriff will contribute a total of $2.5 million to the reserve fund — $500,000 in fiscal year 2019, $1 million in fiscal year 2020 and $1 million in fiscal year 2021.
The SMR can only be used by the sheriff if the BOCC increases their budget allocation for health care costs for each employee by more than $10,000, if there is a net increase to the amount the sheriff contributes to the Florida Retirement System, or if the sheriff has a worker’s compensation premium increase in fiscal year 2020 or 2021.
Once an interlocal agreement is signed by both parties, the sheriff agrees to drop his budget appeal to the governor’s office. The BOCC has retained the right to seek to enforce a previous mediation agreement in the event an interlocal agreement is not signed.
Unlike a previous agreement, the new terms to not require the BOCC to use commissioners’ discretionary funding for outside agencies or Law Enforcement Trust Fund money as a funding source.
The new agreement will prevent the sheriff’s from appealing future budgets to the governor, allow him to request funding for additional positions in fiscal years 2020 and 2021, and the sheriff will be allowed to require additional operational or capital funding.
Pictured: Gov. Rick Scott and Escambia County David Morgan during a meeting October 5, 2017, at the Escambia County Emergency Operations Center concerning then Tropical Storm Nate. Photo for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.
Mayor Selects Godwin As New Century Town Clerk
April 26, 2018
Mayor Henry Hawkins will recommend Kim Godwin as the Century’s town clerk.
“She’s the best fit, and she’s my recommendation,” Hawkins said Wednesday afternoon.
Godwin was named interim clerk in March after the resignation of Leslie Howimgton. She transitioned into the clerk position from gas superintendent for the town’s utility department. Godwin’s previous experience with the town includes deputy clerk of utilities and communication, and senior citizens services specialist. She also worked as a secretary specialist for the colonel at Century Correctional Institution.
Godwin is an active member of the International Institute of Municipal Clerks, is seeking official certification as a municipal clerk, is a member of the Florida Gas Utilities Board of Directors; a former secretary for the Century Area Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors; and a former member of the Twin Cities Volunteers (previously Rotary Club) Board of Directors.
Hawkins will officially announce his selection to the Century Town Council at their next regular meeting on Monday, May 7.
Two other applicants interviewed for the job [click for previous story].
Pictured top: Kim Godwin records minutes during a previous meeting of the Century Town Council. NorthEscambia.com photo, click to enlarge.
Byrneville Elementary Hires Architect To ‘Pre-Design’ New Building
April 26, 2018
The Byrneville Elementary School Board of Directors voted Wednesday to hire a local architectural firm to take the first big step toward the construction of a new building.
Sam Marshall Architects will provide pre-design services for the proposed additions and modifications, including a 10 or 12 classroom addition, a new cafetorium and perhaps the conversion of the existing cafetorium into a library and an upgrade to the air conditioning system. The services will include preparing educational specifications required by state standards.
The company will meet with the school to set goals and hold a followup meeting to present the final report. The final report is expected to take about two months to complete and will include anticipated costs for the overall project.
Sam Marshall Architects will charge $4,000 for educational specifications, $3,000 for food service specifications and $2,000 for the statement on anticipated construction costs.
Local educational projects completed by Sam Marshall Architects include the new Ernest Ward Middle School, Northview High School and Bellview Middle School.
The board received one other proposal from Bullock Tice Associates for $12,500.
Wednesday’s vote does not commit the charter school to actually build the facility – that will take additional steps including the arrangement of financing and a final design.
The largest building on the current Byrneville campus was build in 1941 and contains five classrooms, plus offices and a cafeteria. Several classrooms and the school library are located in old wooden portable buildings.
Pictured top: Byrneville Elementary Principa lDee Wolfe-Sullivan and board members Melanie Killam, Brandy Carter, Jeremy Hawsey, Cheryl Boutwell and Chris Hawkins review proposal for architectural services Wednesday afternoon. Pictured below: The current main building at Byrneville Elementary was constructed in 1941. NorthEscambia.com photos, click to enlarge.
Friends Of The Library Big Spring Book Sale Is This Weekend
April 26, 2018
The annual Friends of the West Florida Public Library Spring Book Sale is this Friday through Sunday at the downtown Main Library, 239 North Spring Street. Thousands of hardcover, paperback, and collectible books will be available for purchase, plus a variety of DVDs, CDs, puzzles, and other items. Proceeds are used to fund programs and enhancements at WFPL branches including Century and Molino.
Friday is the Friends Advance Sale from 3-7 p.m. with first choice on the best selection of books. General admission is $5 at the door, and Friends of the Library members are admitted free. Memberships can be purchased at the door.
Saturday is the regular book sale from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. with free admission.
Sunday is the Bag Sale from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. The Friends will provide a brown paper bag, and all the books that fit inside the bag are just $5. There is no limit on the number of bags that can be purchased.
Book sale items include thousands of generous donations from the public and some library books retired from circulation, many of them now out-of-print. Novels and mysteries are sorted by author or into genres like science fiction and westerns. Other book categories include arts and entertainment, children’s, cookbooks, history, holidays, home and hobbies, literature, foreign language, military, modern living, nature and gardening, religion, science, sports, technical, and travel. Most prices range from 50 cents for paperbacks to $2 for hardcover. There are also recorded books, magazines, and other media for sale.
The Collector’s Corner will feature an assortment of signed books, pre-1950s books, books by local and Florida authors, and other special books that are great for gifts. These items are priced as marked and must be checked out separately, so shoppers paying by check should bring at least two checks.
Payment by cash or check is preferred, but credit cards are welcome.
NorthEscambia.com file photos, click to enlarge.
Court Backs State In Felon’s Rights Fees
April 26, 2018
Siding with Gov. Rick Scott and the other members of the Board of Executive Clemency, a panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals late Wednesday blocked a federal judge’s order that would have required state officials to overhaul Florida’s process of restoring felons’ voting rights by Thursday.
The appellate court ruling was a decisive victory for Scott, Attorney General Pam Bondi and the two other members of the Florida Cabinet, who serve as the clemency board, in a legal battle in which state officials have been on the losing side in a series of rulings by U.S. District Judge Mark Walker.
“The Fourteenth Amendment expressly empowers the states to abridge a convicted felon’s right to vote,” appellate Judge Stanley Marcus wrote in a majority opinion joined by Judge William Pryor. “Binding precedent holds that the governor has broad discretion to grant and deny clemency, even when the applicable regime lacks any standards.”
Walker ruled the state’s vote-restoration process violated First Amendment rights and Fourteenth Amendment equal-protection rights of felons. Last month, he gave Scott and the board until Thursday to revamp what the judge called a “fatally flawed” process and rejected a request by Bondi to put his order on hold.
Scott and the board immediately appealed Walker’s decision and asked the appellate court to put a stay on what the governor’s office branded a “haphazard clemency ruling.”
In its 2-1 decision Wednesday, the three-judge panel not only granted the state’s request to put Walker’s decision on hold but also indicated the judge’s invalidation of the vote-restoration process likely would not stand up.
Echoing arguments made by Bondi’s lawyers, the majority found “there is wisdom in preserving the status quo” until the appellate court issues a ruling in the overall case.
The clemency board “has a substantial interest in avoiding chaos and uncertainty in its election procedures, and likely should not be forced to employ a rushed decision-making process created on an artificial deadline now, just because a more thorough decision-making process could be employed later,” Marcus wrote. “We are reluctant to upset the system now in place — particularly since the district court order creates so truncated a schedule — when there is a good chance the district court’s order may be overturned, and the system would need to be changed again, potentially re-disenfranchising those who have been reenfranchised pursuant to the district court’s injunction.”
Scott has steadfastly defended the state’s process, saying it is founded on a 150-year old system enshrined in the state Constitution.
“We are glad that the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has stayed the lower court’s reckless ruling. Judges should interpret the law, not create it. Governor Scott will never stop fighting for victims of crime and their families,” Scott spokesman John Tupps said in a statement Wednesday night.
The majority also found that the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, filed last year by the Fair Elections Legal Network and the law firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC on behalf of nine felons, had not shown — or even claimed — that the state’s vote-restoration system is discriminatory.
“All we have is the assertion by the appellees (the plaintiffs) and a statement by the district court that there is a real ‘risk’ of disparate treatment and discrimination, precisely because the Florida regime is standardless,” Marcus wrote, adding that such a risk is “insufficient” under previous case law.
Lawyers representing the felons issued a terse statement following Wednesday’s decision, saying it “preserves the status quo” and “will be briefed and argued to the 11th Circuit on the merits.”
The court also rejected Walker’s finding that the state’s process violated the First Amendment rights of felons because, in part, “no First Amendment challenge to a felon-disenfranchisement scheme has ever been successful.”
But in a dissent, Judge Beverly Martin agreed with Walker that First Amendment rights of speech and association encompass the right to vote.
The board “has ‘unfettered discretion’ to permit an applicant to exercise her right to vote ‘at any time, for any reason,’ “ Martin wrote. “This unbridled discretion is not just concerning when it confronts expressive and associational freedoms traditionally protected by the First Amendment, but also when it threatens the right to vote.”
Martin wrote that, while she disagreed with Walker’s decision that the state could not completely do away its vote-restoration system, she would have left the rest of his injunction in place.
Due to the appellate court ruling, Scott canceled a hastily scheduled Wednesday night meeting of the clemency board, planned in case the Atlanta court did not grant the stay.
The restoration of felons’ rights has long been a controversial legal and political issue in Florida, with critics of the state’s process comparing it to post-Civil War Jim Crow policies designed to keep blacks from casting ballots.
Florida, with about 1.6 million felons, is considered an outlier in a nation where more than three dozen other states automatically restore the right to vote for most felons who have completed their sentences.
After taking office in 2011, Scott and Bondi played key roles in changing the process to effectively make it harder for felons to get their rights restored.
Under the current process, felons must wait five or seven years after their sentences are complete to apply to have rights restored. After applications are filed, the process can take years to complete.
Since the changes went into effect in 2011, Scott — whose support is required for any type of clemency to be granted — and the board have restored the rights of 3,005 of the more than 30,000 convicted felons who’ve applied, according to the Florida Commission on Offender Review. There’s currently a backlog of 10,085 pending applications, according to the commission.
In contrast, more than 155,000 ex-felons had their right to vote automatically restored during the four years of former Gov. Charlie Crist’s tenure, according to court documents.
Siding with the plaintiffs, Walker in a March 27 ruling chastised Scott and other state officials and ordered the clemency board to devise a constitutionally sound program with “specific, neutral criteria that excise the risk — and, of course, the actual practice of — any impermissible discrimination, such as race, gender, religion or viewpoint.”
Walker scalded state officials for threatening to do away with the rights-restoration process all together and gave the clemency board until Thursday to “promulgate specific standards and neutral criteria” to replace the current “nebulous criteria, such as the governor’s comfort level.”
Walker also cautioned that there is a risk that the clemency board “may engage in viewpoint discrimination through seemingly neutral rationales” or a “perceived lack of remorse” that “serve as impermissible” masks for censorship.
“Therefore, the board must promulgate specific standards and neutral criteria to direct its decision-making,” Walker ordered in March. The judge did not specify a particular process but ordered that “Florida’s corrected scheme cannot be byzantine or burdensome.”
Arguing that they needed more time to craft new regulations, the state’s lawyers asked Walker to put his decision on hold, again drawing a rebuke from the judge.
“Rather than comply with the requirements of the United States Constitution, defendants continue to insist they can do whatever they want with hundreds of thousands of Floridians’ voting rights and absolutely zero standards,” Walker wrote in a six-page decision April 4. “They ask this court to stay its prior orders. No.”
The legal tangle involving Scott, the federal judge and the felons in the case comes months before Floridians will decide whether felons should automatically have their voting rights restored.
A political committee known as Floridians for a Fair Democracy collected enough petitions to put a constitutional amendment on the November ballot that would automatically restore voting rights to felons who have served their sentences, completed parole and paid restitution. Murderers and sex offenders would be excluded. The amendment, if approved by 60 percent of voters, could have an impact on about 600,000 Florida felons, according to supporters of the measure.
by Dara Kam, The News Service of Florida