Gov. Rick Scott plans to buck a national trend to downsize prisons and spend up to $124 million to expand and upgrade corrections facilities across the Sunshine State, the Tampa Bay Times reports.
Under Scott’s plan, Florida’s corrections system — which locks up more people than most any other state — would re-open nine work camps that had closed last year. The cost would be $59 million.
In addition, the corrections system is seeking more money for officers, new transport vehicles, food service and an improved electronic timekeeping system.
The request comes as the governor asks state agencies to make a total of $100 million in spending cuts for next fiscal year.
Scott says he is pushing for the expansion because of projections that the number of new inmates will rise by an average of 2 percent a year for the next two years, even as the crime rate has continued to drop.
If the Florida Legislature supports Scott’s proposal, it will be moving in the opposite direction of many other states seeking alternatives to locking up illegal drug users and other nonviolent offenders.
A Pew Center study shows that Florida taxpayers spend $1.4 billion a year to incarcerate nonviolent drug offenders, the Times reports. Florida’s prison population tops 100,000.
Moonshine in the Sunshine State: The trend to buy local and bypass the corporate food chain has led to the rise of craft beers, restaurant gardens and backyard chicken coops. But moonshine?
Homemade hooch — or, at least, small batch whiskey — is no longer the stuff of hillbilly humor. It’s de rigueur at trendy bars in Tampa Bay and across the U.S.
Times Food Critic Laura Reiley reports that a pair of entrepreneurs are getting into the spirits of producing small batch whiskey, also known as white dog.
Sunshine Moonshine is being produced and bottled by Lee Nelson and Pat O'Brien of Brandon, who also debuted Cane Vodka.
Moonshine is not aged, so it has a stronger taste. At close to 100 proof — which is about 50 percent alcohol — it also delivers quite a wallop.
Of course, this new generation of small batch distillers is licensed by the state and pays taxes to the "revenuers," unlike Florida moonshiners and rum runners of recent history.
Illegally distilled whiskey was a big industry in northern Florida, even after Prohibition was repealed in 1933. The tax evaders were not sophisticated offshore operations but backwoods still operators in sparsely populated areas.
Preserving Tampa history: The rundown building on Zack Street is a safety risk in the eyes of officials at Tampa City Hall. But the 24-room boarding house is a piece of local black history worth preserving to activists and the building owner.
The so-called Jackson Rooming House — more than a century old — welcomed jazz greats like Billie Holiday and Nat “King” Cole, as well as civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. The rooming house offered shelter and homemade meals to African Americans during segregation.
Today the wood-frame building is falling apart, with a leaking roof, sagging floors and exposed asbestos in the walls and ceiling.
The city is estimating it will take $1.5 million to rescue the old building, and the owner faces fines of $75 a day for failing code inspections.
Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn told the Times that the priority is to make the building safe and secure.
A group of activists met this week at the Tampa office of U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Tampa. They are trying to help owner Willie Robinson form a nonprofit to raise money and secure a bank loan for repairs. The group has launched a website that tells the history of the building and details costs to repair it.
Castor’s office also released a statement noting the building’s historical value to “our entire community.”
"It is the only remaining structure from the era when the nearby Central Avenue thrived as Tampa's black business district," according to the statement. "We are helping to get the group in position to obtain the resources to save this important structure."
