Third-rate coverage (544 word story) by St. Augustine Record of Governor RICHARD LYNN SCOTT and his Gang of Four cabinet members, who snuck into St. Augustine yesterday for a meeting of the Governor and Cabinet, without advance public notice and without taking public comment. It was the first time in six months that the Governor and Cabinet met outside of Tallahassee, amid embarrassing Sunshine and Gay marriage litigation and FDLE firing questions that could never be raised here amidst secrecy and security here in St. Augustine, the nation's Oldest European-founded City. For the real news, about the meeting between Mayor Shaver and Governor Scott and the PR pep rally, see links below, then compare the Record's and Times-Union's shallow story, almost hagiography of rebarbative Republican Governor SCOTT:
http://cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com/2015/09/mayor-shaver-and-governor-scott-discuss.html
http://cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com/2015/09/pr-trickery-governor-holds-pep-rally.html (1415 words)
Governor, Cabinet talk local events, details of government during meeting in St. Augustine
Posted: September 1, 2015 - 9:16pm
By Steve Patterson
steve.patterson@morris.com
Days ahead of the city’s 450th anniversary, Gov. Rick Scott and the Cabinet met in St. Augustine Tuesday to consider subjects ranging from land conservation to financial regulations.
“We’re always delighted to share our city,” Mayor Nancy Shaver told the state policymakers convened inside the Treasury on the Plaza, the six-story, 1920s-era former bank at the center of downtown.
Honoring the anniversary with a resolution topped the group’s agenda, and Shaver talked enthusiastically about this weekend’s Celebrate 450! festival.
“We’re going to have a wonderful celebration,” she told the group, which last met in St. Augustine in 2013.
After opening events heavy with local connections — Scott gave the state Medal of Heroism to retired Flagler County Undersheriff Rick Staly for saving a sheriff’s deputy in 1978 from a gunman who shot Staly — the Cabinet settled into details of state government.
The group approved a work plan and priority list for Florida Forever, a land-buying initiative that environmental advocates have championed for years. Only a few of the 119 projects were new to the list, thought to represent billions of dollars worth of real estate for which little state funding is available. But a prominent environmental advocate urged Scott to back more conservation spending when he proposes the state’s 2016-17 budget.
Scott proposed spending $150 million this year for a land-buying plan that was expected to continue for years, and Audubon Florida executive director Eric Draper said he hoped Scott would repeat that. Scott and the Cabinet are the trustees of a state fund who sign off on Florida Forever project lists.
Florida’s Legislature rejected big parts of Scott’s last spending package, but Draper told reporters it was important to keep trying.
Priorities approved Tuesday gave high rankings to the Northeast Florida Blueway, a project to protect wetlands and uplands along the Intracoastal Waterway and nearby waters in parts of Duval, St. Johns and Flagler counties. Close to 20,000 acres have already been protected but another 12,000 acres remain exposed. The project was pitched as a way to protect both plants and wildlife if climate change raises sea levels and moves marshes and brackish areas inland.
Another project ranked a high priority, the Northeast Florida Timberlands and Watershed Reserve in Clay, Duval and Nassau counties, is envisioned as a corridor from Camp Blanding almost to Georgia that wildlife can occupy and move through.
Scott told reporters after the meeting his office will make “appropriate” proposals on conservation spending next year.
State staffers brought Scott and the Cabinet a laundry-list of other subjects, such as changes to state rules for companies in the check-cashing business. The changes, driven by a new state law, would create a database of when those companies handle checks worth more than $1,000.
After the meeting, members of the group scattered around Northeast Florida to push their own messages.
Scott headed to Jacksonville for a press conference about expansion of an Anheuser-Busch metal container plant expected to add about 75 jobs.
Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam stopped at Columbia Restaurant to promote his agency’s “Fresh From Florida: On the Menu” program, which champions restaurant use of food grown in-state. Columbia’s menu includes Cedar Key clams, Ruskin tomatoes, grouper from Florida and Key Lime pie.
(WHAT A BORING STORY!)
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