Voters will soon choose a new state attorney and public defender as the long dominance of prosecutor Dave Aronberg (12 years in office) and Public Defender Carey Haughwout (24 years) come to an end.

A similar transition took place in Broward four years ago. Voters chose Harold Pryor as state attorney and Gordon Weekes as public defender to replace two long-time incumbents, Mike Satz (44 years) and Howard Finkelstein (16 years). Facing re-election this year, Pryor and Weekes both won new terms without opposition.

The point is, these powerful positions rarely change hands.

When they do, voters have a responsibility to get it right. That’s especially true in the race for Palm Beach public defender, the hotter one at the moment.

The outcome will be decided in the primary on Aug. 20 between Democrats Daniel Eisinger and Adam Frankel.

But it is open to all voters, including Republicans and independents, who together far outnumber Democrats in Palm Beach, because the Republican Party did not field a candidate for the position.

This greatly alters the political dynamics, and that comes through most clearly in Frankel’s tough-on-crime talk. So clearly, in fact, that it looks as if Frankel is in the wrong race. He should be campaigning for state attorney.

Eisinger, who has been Haughwout’s chief assistant for six years, is more experienced and better qualified for public defender, which is why he has her support, and the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board’s endorsement.

Frankel is a defense lawyer and former Delray Beach city commissioner who touts his endorsements from Aronberg and from local police organizations — the groups whose members arrest people represented by the public defender.

Cozying up to cops is not the P.D.’s job. They are natural adversaries.

Frankel is making false, inflammatory accusations against Eisinger and cuddling up to Trump’s MAGA base to win.

He’s making the election a test case as to whether Republicans can decide the outcome of a countywide office long held by Democrats. (The office should not be partisan to begin with, but that’s another debate.)

Eisinger co-authored a Palm Beach Post essay four years ago in which he argued for ending a cash bail system that forces poor people, many of them Black, to languish in jail while others, often white, go free solely because they have money. Courts could impose other conditions that don’t involve money, he wrote.

“People (should) not sit in jail just because they are poor,” Eisinger wrote.

Frankel is texting and robo-calling voters with scare tactics that accuse Eisinger of wanting to put “dangerous individuals back on our streets faster.”

A Frankel flyer falsely makes it appear that the Sun Sentinel said Eisinger would let “some accused felons back on the street faster.”

A disclaimer below cites an endorsement interview in which both candidates participated (it’s online). Eisinger advocated for bail reform in the interview, but the scare tactics about felons walking the streets is purely Frankel’s invention. Yet the piece makes it appear as if we said that. We didn’t. Don’t fall for it, voters.

The Palm Beach Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers called Frankel’s claims especially troubling. “Attorneys have an ethical duty to advocate for the client’s best interest, as stated by the Florida Bar and the American Bar Association. For pre-trial clients who are presumed innocent, this means lowering cash bail,” the group said in a letter to the Sun Sentinel.

Eisinger says Frankel is skipping Democratic forums and “leaning way into the MAGA right.” The Florida Jolt, a blog aimed at the same MAGA right constituency, took the bait, calling Frankel a “moderate” and Eisinger an “extreme leftist.”

Eisinger attacked Frankel’s claim to be a “champion for public safety” as a misread of what a public defender is about.

“He clearly has no understanding about the role of the defense lawyer in our criminal justice system,” Eisinger posted on Facebook. “He believes that the police, prosecution and the defense should be ‘allies.’ The Public Defender is a constitutional officer charged with the duty of advocating for the poor (and) must fight for individualized treatment of their clients. Justice only occurs when the police, prosecution and defense fulfill their ethical obligations in their respective roles. This is something my opponent either doesn’t understand or chooses to forget in order to win an election.”

By the way, to dispel any confusion, Adam Frankel is not related to the popular and better-known member of Congress, Lois Frankel of West Palm Beach.

The name association cuts both ways. Adam Frankel will benefit from voters who recognize his name and who like Frankel, but it will turn off Republicans who would not vote for the Democratic congresswoman, a long-time liberal champion.

Are Democratic voters in Palm Beach willing to sit idly by while Republicans choose the county’s next public defender, possibly for the next two decades?

Let’s hope not.

Steve Bousquet is Opinion Editor of the Sun Sentinel and a columnist in Tallahassee and Fort Lauderdale. Contact him at sbousquet@sunsentinel.com or (850) 567-2240 and follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @stevebousquet.

It could have been a straight-up contest of ideas between Democratic incumbent Ric Bradshaw and Republican challenger Mike Gauger.

But dirt is what Palm Beach County’s police union wanted.

So, dirt is what voters are getting.

In trying to manipulate the Republican primary for sheriff, the local chapter of the Police Benevolent Association put out an attack ad featured on a since-deleted social media post. The ad publicized Gauger’s private military-related health information while ignoring state rules designed to keep law enforcement officers safe by not revealing identifying information, including birth dates. And it made campaign contributions to Gauger’s opponent in a poorly disguised effort to keep Gauger, Bradshaw’s best-financed challenger, from facing the sheriff in November.

You could understand why the union thinks knocking Gauger off the Aug. 20 primary ballot will lead to a slam dunk win for the sheriff in the general election. Four years ago, Bradshaw easily beat Gauger’s current GOP primary opponent, Lauro Diaz.

Four years ago, there’s no campaign record showing the county’s police union gave Diaz a dime.

This year, with a credible challenger to the sheriff, the union is suddenly very interested in Diaz’s political health. Palm Beach and Broward county police unions, as well as three police union political action committees, each donated $1,000 to Diaz. Miami-Dade County’s police union followed suit, bringing police union support for Diaz to $6,000.

If the local union had only sought to finance Gauger’s opponent, that would be sketchy politics, but still: just politics.

But the union went further. Its political action committee obtained and distributed a restricted military document with Gauger’s health information and used it in a video. The video claims the discharge paperwork, which is not a public record, showed Gauger had presented himself as a veteran when the document proved he had never served at all.

In fact, it showed the opposite. Gauger, who was drafted during the Vietnam War, briefly served and was dismissed with an honorable discharge based on a health condition. That makes him a vet, according to Veterans Administration rules.

So why is the union kneecapping Gauger? Try money.

Gauger believes deputies get paid too much, PBA president John Kazanjian told The Palm Beach Post.

Not our job to fact-check, added Bradshaw’s campaign spokesman in a sort-of effort to distance the sheriff from the smear.

But that comment about deputy pay drags the sheriff and his budget right into the middle of this ugly fray.

Burgeoning spending is Bradshaw’s most obvious political vulnerability and has been for years. And for years, he has repeatedly cited rising wages to justify budget hikes. That includes wages his office negotiated with the union.

The sheriff’s budget has shot up by 51% from $630.7 million in 2018 to a proposed $952.3 million for 2025. In the new budget, personnel costs grow by $64 million, and of that increase, $42 million stems from union-negotiated wages and undefined benefit policies.

At $102,252, the starting salary for a Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office sergeant is already the highest of any sheriff’s agency in the state, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The $133,212 starting salary for lieutenants is the second highest. Both are far above Broward and Miami-Dade wages.

And they are minimums.

The county foots the bill for this groaning board of a budget, but it has no real say in salary. A 2004 state law specifically limits Palm Beach County from cutting sheriff’s wages. That leaves it up to the sheriff’s office to hold the line.

True or not, the union clearly believes Gauger would not give them a good deal, just as it believes Bradshaw will continue to do so, even as local taxpayers will shoulder an estimated billion-dollar law enforcement budget by 2026.

And why wouldn’t the union believe that? Bradshaw announced his bid for reelection in the union offices.

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board endorsement of Bradshaw in the Democratic primary came with requests: more budget transparency and more distance from the union. They are serious concerns and need to be addressed. Bradshaw is not a bad candidate, and supporters who have repeatedly returned him to office are confident he is a good sheriff.

It’s union mudslinging that threatens to make him look like a bad one.

Pat Beall is a columnist and editorial writer for the Sun Sentinel. Contact her at beall.news@gmail.com.

This is probably not the ideal way to choose the people who will represent us in public office, but it is what we have, and it’s always encouraging to see voters who take it seriously.

The campaign trail in Broward goes through John Knox Village, a popular retirement community in Pompano Beach. It’s a nostalgia trip, a throwback to how political campaigns in Broward looked in the 1970s and ’80s.

The place was packed on Monday afternoon as about 200 highly attentive older voters filled the auditorium.

Many of them scribbled notes about individual candidates as they made their political pitches, one after another, in intervals of exactly three minutes, after which they were interrupted and told “Thank you!” and then politely ushered away.

So many candidates showed up passing out so much campaign literature that one woman stacked up her flyers on her walker.

For weeks, I’ve been hearing from candidates disappointed by light turnouts at political clubs across Broward. They were a magnet for grassroots activism in decades gone by.

Clubs that could draw crowds of 500 or more during the heyday of the condo boom are now lucky to draw 30 people.

It’s because the demographics have shifted dramatically. Those New Deal Democrats in the condos are gone, and so is the sense of cohesion that they brought to local politics.

John Knox remains a notable exception.

For decades, the retirement haven near Dixie Highway has been a treasure trove of votes — both Republican and Democrat — and a dream come true for all those attention-starved candidates, making this forum a must-attend event for candidates.

Well, most candidates.

Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony was nowhere to be seen, even though public safety is a big concern of older voters, and even though Pompano Beach contracts for its police protection through the sheriff’s office, and even though crime is a major concern on the city’s west side, not far from John Knox Village.

All three of Tony’s Democratic rivals showed up for their three minutes on stage. One of them, former BSO Col. Al Pollock, told the crowd: “He (Tony) could not get another job because of his history.”

Judicial candidates spoke first. Most were there, but not ghost candidate Christina Arguelles, who’s trying to hoodwink enough voters to get on the bench even though she lives in Orlando. It’s an act believed to be unprecedented even by the standards of Broward, which has a history of wild judicial races.

Her opponent, the well-respected, widely endorsed (including by this newspaper) Circuit Judge Carol-Lisa Phillips, was there.

In a race for an open seat on the county bench, lawyer Corey Friedman (another Sun Sentinel endorsee) asked rhetorically if anyone would fly on a plane with a pilot who has not flown before.

“Why should we treat our courtrooms any differently?” Friedman asked.

An experienced litigator, Friedman said he has tried cases before juries all over the state, and his opponent, lawyer Tamar Hamilton, told the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board that she has never tried a jury case.

Hamilton, who followed Friedman to the stage, said: “We need someone who has been in the community, working with the people,” and besides, she said, most county court cases are tried by a judge, not a jury.

And on it went all afternoon. As school board and judicial candidates left the stage, they were replaced by candidates for Congress, sheriff, clerk, tax collector and supervisor of elections.

“Trust me,” Supervisor of Elections Joe Scott told the crowd. “I know it’s not easy to sit through all this.”

But they stayed, they kept taking notes, and without question, they’re all going to vote.

Steve Bousquet is Opinion Editor of the Sun Sentinel and a staff columnist in Tallahassee and Fort Lauderdale. Contact him at sbousquet@sunsentinel.com or (850) 567-2240 and follow him on X @stevebousquet.

Norton, an IT specialist with the Broward County School District, allowed her transgender daughter to play on a high school volleyball team. Florida’s inappropriately named Fairness in Women’s Sports Act bans students born male from playing on girls’ sports teams.

The ban was touted as saving girls from being injured by hulking transgender girls mowing down teammates and taking home all the trophies. However, like so many of the laws spewing from Gov. Ron DeSantis’ legislature as he ramped up his presidential bid, the 2021 law was only minimally tethered to reality. Norton’s daughter is slightly built. She frequently sat out volleyball games.

Broward’s newly hired school superintendent recommended firing Norton, who was clearly aware of the law: She and her husband had filed suit to overturn it.

By a 5-4 vote, the school board voted to suspend her for 10 days, hoping it will put the months-long controversy behind them.

Maybe. But they got there ugly, starting with the accusation that started the ball rolling. The world is full of amazing coincidences, so I guess it’s just a big old spoonful of serendipity that the anonymous person triggering this investigation just happened to be blowing the whistle on the woman suing the state and school board. Then there is the disconnect between the board and state’s own choices and the flurry of law-is-the-law justifications. A few:

• “Norton improperly held herself out to be an LGBTQ advocate.” Just like the Broward County School Board did last August, when it passed not one, but three resolutions in support of the LGBTQ community, two years after the anti-transgender Fairness in Women’s Sports Act was signed into law.
• “Norton broke the rules.” In trying to determine whether firing Norton was justified, the board asked for a list of other suspensions involving school employees. Here’s some of what they found: fraud, three-day suspension; indecent conduct, 10-day suspension; inappropriate behavior with student, three-day suspension; altercation with student, five-day suspension; abuse, 10-day suspension. (I am not certain if there is a rule on matching discipline to severity of conduct, but if there is, when the board decided it would be fair to suspend Norton for the same amount of time as someone whose misconduct involved abuse, the school district shattered it.)
• “Norton bullied people.” Not at all like state Rep. Webster Barnaby, who in a committee hearing said transgender people were “mutants living among us,” intoning “[T]he Lord rebuke you Satan and all of your demons and all of your imps that come parade before us.”
• “Norton cost taxpayers $16,500.” That’s the fine levied against the teen’s school by the Florida High School Athletic Association because it did not comply with the law. Not to be confused with the $108 million in taxpayer money the Broward County School Board will have to cough up to charter schools because it did not comply with the law.
• “Norton failed to maintain honesty in professional dealings.” Just like the school district, which in 2022 “took extraordinary steps” to keep 50,000 people from learning about ransomware attacks that jeopardized personal information. (Or maybe Norton took a page from the Florida Dept. of Education, which all but shrieked that there were no book bans. There were. Or DeSantis, who said reports that a Roberto Clemente biography was banned was a joke. It wasn’t. The book had been warehoused, gathering dust as Duval County’s school district tried to comply with a DeSantis-championed law.)
• “Norton distorted facts.” Just like Florida lawyers in another trans case, who insisted that Florida’s ban on transgender medical care for adolescents brings the state in line with all of Europe. (Which Europe would that be? Although some countries are more restrictive than others, Norway, Sweden, France, and the U.K. are among those allowing medical treatment for gender dysphoria. And their restrictions are being accompanied by a commitment to expanding research to see where the science leads. Florida is the outlier.)

Now, Broward County is an outlier, too; the only Florida school district known to have punished a child as a result of the law. And they did punish her, however indirectly: She was a homecoming princess and president of her class. Outed as transgender, she now attends school virtually. No sports, no classmates, no prom, no cap-and-grown graduation.

As for her mother’s suspension, Jessica Norton did not harm a child, pointed out board member Sarah Leonardi.

No, she did not. The other adults did.

Pat Beall is a columnist and editorial writer for the Sun Sentinel. Contact her at pbeall1@gmail.com.

Other insurance companies were aghast. Not only did they tell the Insurance Journal that they hadn’t been invited to compete for the policies, they were flabbergasted that so many policies were given to a company that didn’t exist as an authorized carrier just months earlier.

“It’s an unfair advantage for Slide and it just seems like a sweetheart deal,” Bob Ritchie, the CEO of Tampa-based American Integrity Insurance told the Journal at the time.

Flash forward to today. The same company that scored millions of new policies with the help of state regulators two years ago is back in the headlines.

The Sun Sentinel’s Ron Hurtibise reported that Slide recently took advantage of an effort by the state-run Citizens Property Insurance Company to shed policies by “offering” to take the policies off the state’s hands.

The catch: Slide’s “offers” sometimes included massive rate hikes over what homeowners were paying Citizens — of 50%, 100%, even more than 300%. And if Citizens policy holders didn’t actively respond to the snail-mail letters — because they didn’t receive them, understand them or for any other reason — those customers would automatically become Slide customers.

Hurtibise found that “15,478 of those policyholders were transferred anyway to higher-cost Slide policies because they did not contact Citizens.”

I suppose it’s theoretically possible that someone paying $3,000 a year for insurance looked at a letter that told them that they would start paying $5,000 a year for insurance unless they responded and thought, “Hey, that sounds like a great idea! I’m going to do nothing and watch my rates skyrocket.”

But that defies common sense. Even Citizens CEO Tim Cerio acknowledged as much to state officials saying: “Maybe there’s a reason a policyholder might want to pay more … if it’s 100% more, I can’t fathom what that reason would be.”

Bingo. So something already stinks.

Citizens execs would later say Slide agreed to rescind offers that represented hikes of more than 100%, and the state decided to flat-out prohibit any company from making future “offers” of 40% increases or more.

But here’s the part I just don’t get: I simply can’t believe that no one envisioned this would be a problem before it was. I mean, I’m no insurance executive, but the moment I heard that the state was letting companies take customers at majorly jacked-up rates by method of non-response, I thought: “What’s to stop some company from ‘offering’ some insanely exorbitant amount, realizing many customers will just default into paying it, at least temporarily?”

That question, by the way, isn’t paraphrased. It’s word-for-word what I posed to a former Citizens Insurance official in an email back in October of 2023.

Homeowners and residents deserve answers.

First, you have some of the industry’s own executives saying Slide got a sweetheart deal to assume policies back in 2022. And now we have new reporting saying that more than 15,000 homeowners may have been moved over to Slide, even though it may not have been in their best financial interest.

Lawmakers should launch an investigation.

Slide CEO Bruce Lucas didn’t respond to questions I sent him this week. But a spokesman for the company told the Sun Sentinel that its data analysis was “extremely flawed.” The company said the eye-popping premium increases were “outliers” and noted that some customers actually paid less when they switched to Slide.

Wonderful. Then certainly an investigation would vet all that out.

Slide said the average rate increase for all of its assumed policies was a meager 8%, which sounds fair. A company spokesman also said the “average” Citizens customer would ultimately pay less, since Slide reduced its rates while Citizens raised theirs. But the Sun Sentinel reported that Citizens “did not have enough data to verify Slide’s numbers.”

All the more reason for an investigation — to verify everything.

The reality is that Floridians don’t have any real watchdogs when it comes to insurance; regulators, lawmakers and lobbyists are all incestuously cozy.

Slide has donated nearly $970,000 to political committees in Florida over the last two cycles, including more than $200,000 to the Republican Party of Florida and $100,000 to a political committee linked to Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis whose original registered agent was — wait for it — Tim Cerio, the current CEO of Citizens.

A Slide spokesman said the company is merely “an active participant in democracy” and complies with all state and federal laws.

But the Consumer Federation of America suggested all those donations — in connection with Slide’s recent acquisition of policies with the state’s help — were “evidence of a very cozy, and possibly improper, relationship.”

A spokesman for Attorney General Ashley Moody said this week that her office had received 18 complaints about Slide Insurance — all of which she had forwarded back to the state insurance office. We’ll see how that turns out.

It’s worth noting that the whole idea of forcing customers onto more costly plans unless they take action is a terribly anti-consumer practice. It’s something you’d expect out of a timeshare or cable-company agreement. Not your own government.

And the Sun Sentinel noted that, in a podcast interview years ago, Lucas described the process by saying: “You send them a letter, they toss the letter in the garbage. They’re a customer of yours.”

That was years ago. A Slide spokesman said those remarks were “not an assessment of the current market nor is it a part of Slide’s strategy.”

But one of Citizens’ own board members, Charlie Lydecker, said at a board meeting, “It feels to me like they are banking on people not reading the mail. And if they can get a certain return on that, that feels to me like a really bad thing.”

Lydecker later added that he thinks Slide has been “a good corporate citizen.”

Fair enough. That’s the kind of thing a thorough investigation should suss out.

Right now, though, we have evidence of more than 15,000 customers being moved to Slide at high rates without their request, other insurance execs saying Slide got a sweetheart deal to acquire tens of thousands of other policies and a consumer group saying things look way too cozy.

Why wouldn’t you want answers to what’s really going on?

Scott Maxwell is an Orlando Sentinel columnist. Contact him at smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com.

Good luck, people. If this “voter guide” was meant to unify Democrats behind their candidates, it had the opposite effect. Some people are furious at party leaders.

Candidates, volunteers and operatives are scrambling to figure out why some Democrats were listed and others were not. Some complained directly to state party chair Nikki Fried.

Operatives who cried foul suspect that one factor — money — determined why some Democrats in contested party primaries were listed and others were not.

“I don’t think the DEC (Democratic Executive Committee) should come out with a card,” said Barbara Effman, long-time president of the West Broward Democratic Club in Sunrise. “It’s very divisive.”

The most glaring case of the party not playing straight with its voters is the race for a state Senate seat.

The guide initially listed Barbara Sharief as the only Senate candidate in Southwest Broward’s District 35. Neither of her opponents, Rodney Jacobs and Chad Klitzman, were listed.

Why? No one’s talking.

We asked Democratic Party chairman Rick Hoye why, and he texted this reply: “We are of course sorry that not all candidates are happy with the recommendations we posted. (They) were decided by the campaign committee and in accordance with the Florida Democratic Party’s bylaws.”

But a Democratic source questioned that, noting that the Broward party has lacked a quorum at four straight meetings in the past year as bylaws require for any endorsement action, and that less than 80% of its precinct committee positions are filled. Just as outrageous, the party membership never approved this guide — just a few insiders in a proverbial smoke-filled room.

Under intense pressure, party leaders reportedly scrubbed the list and added Jacobs and Klitzman.

But the version on their Facebook page still excluded them and listed some judicial candidates who are not registered Democrats. Florida judicial races are officially nonpartisan, and judicial candidates are prohibited from discussing their party affiliation or from making partisan appeals.

Parties have no business endorsing candidates in contested primaries or playing favorites by listing some candidates and shunning others. This is a party that supposedly stands for fair elections? Voters should demand answers from Hoye.

Political parties typically endorse their incumbents, but the Democratic guide makes no mention of Clerk of the Court Brenda Forman, who has twice been elected countywide and is the only Black woman holding countywide office.

The guide lists only Charles Hall Jr. for clerk. (For the record, the Sun Sentinel endorsed Hall, but fair is fair. It’s outrageous for the Democratic Party to ignore Forman or a third Democrat for clerk, Annette Daniels.)

The guide looks like an endorsed slate, but it isn’t. It’s a mess. It lists all four candidates for sheriff, but only two of four for U.S. Senate. It’s not a slate card by a traditional definition, because it does not favor only one candidate in each race. It’s not a true voter guide, either, because it ignores some candidates.

As a result, the guide lacks credibility. But it will be given out at early voting sites starting Aug. 10 and circulated by volunteers.

By comparison, the Broward Republican Party’s voter guide lists its endorsed candidates only. It’s more straightforward.

It’s impossible for voters to be familiar with every candidate in every race. A fair voter guide would list every Democrat on the ballot, or at least explain to voters in clear, transparent terms why some Democrats were left out. This is precisely why some voters are suspicious of party insiders and their antics.

The “Official Democratic Party Voter Guide” was approved by a county party campaign committee, based on its “endorsement policy” that defines whether a candidate is in “good standing” in the party. One nebulous standard is “actions taken by the candidate in support of issues core to our values.”

Klitzman was outraged that his name was initially left off the guide, even though he’s a board member of a party caucus, the Broward Democratic Jewish Caucus, and has personally donated money to numerous Democratic candidates.

Alfredo Olvera, the party’s state committeeman and a campaign committee member, declined to discuss the internal workings. Nor did he defend the guide — another sign that this fiasco never should have happened.

Steve Bousquet is Opinion Editor of the Sun Sentinel and a columnist in Tallahassee and Fort Lauderdale. Contact him at sbousquet@sunsentinel.com or (850) 567-2240, and follow him on X @stevebousquet.

Just as South Florida heads into the teeth of the mean season, the good folks at the Heritage Foundation have a plan for dealing with rain, hail, waterspouts, searing heat, inland flooding and the wind monsters formerly known as hurricanes — just stop looking.

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 weighs in at 880-plus pages, so it’s totally understandable if you missed the chapter on taking apart the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and either trashing its component bits — including the National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center — or placing those bits in the loving hands of the private sector, aka “fat contracts for friends.”

I mean, you might have been busy bailing out from the rain that closed two emergency rooms in Broward this week. Or you might have been trying to get to one of them: Heat sent an estimated 31,011 Floridians to the hospital between 2018 and 2022. Maybe you were filling out disaster assistance forms from the no-name storm that flooded South Florida last month. Or scrambling to snare one of those rare-as-hen’s-teeth state grants to hurricane-harden your home in anticipation of next month.

Plus, to get to the war on weather (page 664), you must first wade through several hundred ideas on how to make our lives easier, such as making it easier to deny veterans’ disability benefits (pages 649-650); easier for farmers to go broke (page 297); easier for drug manufacturers to charge more to Medicare recipients (page 465); easier for kids to work dangerous jobs (page 595); easier to starve the poor (pages 299-300); easier for just about everyone to get information about your reproductive system (page 497).

But back to page 664. You know how everyone talks about the weather? There will be no more of that. Gov. Ron DeSantis only scrubbed the words climate change from every state document his minions can get their hands on. Amateur. Heritage shows him how the big boys do it.

The hurricane planes that fly meteorologists and researchers into the eye of hurricanes “like riding a roller coaster through a car wash” to gather more precise data? Besides saving big bucks on Dramamine, it’s hard to see the taxpayer benefit to keeping them out of the air. Never mind: Grounded and sent to other government agencies. (Page 677.)

Weather forecasts? The private market can take it over. Like AccuWeather. Except — spoiler alert — AccuWeather doesn’t want to be the next National Weather Service. Maybe because AccuWeather makes money using the free data it gets from the National Weather Service.

It’s all needed, say the Heritage authors, to counter the “climate alarmism” peddled by scientists alarmed about the climate.

For the record: We aren’t alarmed because someone in NOAA told us 2023 was the oceans’ hottest year.

We are alarmed because you can now poach eggs in South Beach surf.

Maybe because Project 2025 is less a blueprint for the next conservative president and more of a hard-right wrecking ball, some Washington folk are all “never-heard-of-it.” We’re looking at you, 140 former Trump employees. But the Heritage Foundation has a track record of results. Back in 1981, it drew up another ambitious plan for making our lives easier. The Reagan administration adopted 60% of it.

Even meteorologists would face an uncertain future, given that Project 2025 also calls for replacing tens of thousands of federal workers with political toadies beholden only to the White House. (Pages everywhere.) Maybe the new and unimproved NOAA won’t fire them. Since the goal is to commercialize forecasting, maybe NOAA will follow the lead of TV stations when a windstorm threatens: Hand them yellow raingear, industrial strength hairspray and an updated life insurance policy, then suggest a walk on the beach.

True, you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. But when the storms of September come huffing and puffing and threatening to blow all our houses down, when those first hard drops of rain hit the roof and leaves are being flayed from the trees, we don’t need political appointees with fistfuls of black markers drawing wavy lines on whiteboards and telling us everything is going to be okey-dokey.

We don’t need NOAA dismantled. We need it buffed up: more meteorologists, more tech, more science. Fewer Sharpies, please. More truth.

Pat Beall is a columnist and editorial writer for the Sun Sentinel. Contact her at pbeall1@gmail.com.

It detailed how the state’s hemp industry wanted Gov. Ron DeSantis to veto a bill meant to tighten regulations on their industry and then started cutting fat checks after the governor did what they’d asked.

First, the Orlando Sentinel reported on a $100,000 check from an Apopka hemp grower to the governor’s political committee. Then, CBS News Miami and the South Florida Sun Sentinel got hold of screen shots from a group chat amongst hemp execs who said they owed the governor and Republican Party for the veto.

“We know nothing in life is free and neither was this veto,” one post said. “Our lobby team made promises to rally some serious funding to stand with him on this.”

Other execs said: “We have to pay $5 million to keep our end of the veto” and that GOP leaders wanted $2 million within 72 hours and another $3 million after that.

It sounded like ransom money in a Liam Neeson film.

When all this was exposed, the governor’s office and hemp execs said everyone just misunderstood — that this was just like-minded people swapping ideas and cash because they all appreciated each other’s points of view.

Still, I heard from a number of people who were confused about how any of this is legal in a state that allegedly caps contributions. So I’m here to answer questions.

Scott, doesn’t Florida law limit the amount of money people can give politicians?

You bet your assets.

Well, what’s the limit?

It’s $1,000 for local and legislative candidates and $3,000 for statewide ones.

But didn’t you just write that someone gave Ron DeSantis’ committee $100,000?

I sure did.

So how can both things be true?

Because most campaign finance laws are about as useless as screen doors on a submarine. The state caps contributions to candidates’ official campaign accounts, but if I set up a separate committee called something like “Friends of Scott Maxwell,” my “friends” can make unlimited donations.

You mean like $100,000?

Way more than that. The Friends of Ron DeSantis committee collected checks as big as $5 million apiece.

So what’s the point of the limits on the other committees?

To make rubes like you think we have rules.

That’s rude. So can you actually pay politicians to do you favors?

Theoretically no. That would be illegal.

But you just wrote that the hemp guys asked the governor to veto a bill they disliked and then cut his committee fat checks after he did what they wanted.

Correct.

I don’t understand.

You’re not allowed to tell a politician that you’ll give their committee $10,000 in exchange for passing a law you want. But you are allowed to hand them a copy of the law you want passed along with a $10,000 check, as long as both you and the politician claim there was no connection between the vote and the contribution.

You’ve got to be kidding.

If I was kidding, I’d tell you that I used to be addicted to the Hokey Pokey until I turned myself around.

I’m going to ignore that. So donors can really do what you just described with $10,000 checks?

They not only can, they do. As just one example, the Miami Herald got hold of documents a few years ago showing that a lobbyist for Florida Power and Light drafted a bill meant to make it more costly for Floridians to install and operate solar panels. The lobbyist delivered the legislation to a Florida senator and then followed it up with a $10,000 check to her political committee.

How is that legal?

Because everyone involved said the money and legislation weren’t related.

Did state investigators believe that?

Aw, that’s cute that you think there might’ve been an investigation.

There wasn’t?

No. Politicians don’t investigate what looks like pay-for-play activity. They encourage it. Even though I’d argue it’s basically legalized bribery.

Well, why don’t we just pass laws that place hard caps on donations to ALL political committees?

First of all, I think many politicians would rather stuff fire ants down their drawers than restrict their own donations. Also, though, this nation has basically decided that unlimited donations are legal.

Who decided that? And when?

The U.S. Supreme Court. In 2010. By a narrow 5-4 majority, the court’s conservative bloc ruled that corporate and union spending in politics is essentially a form of “free speech” that can’t be restricted.

So what can the average citizen do?

Well, you can also try to cut $5 million checks.

But I don’t have $5 million.

Well, then you’re probably not going to get as many laws passed, now are you?

This is all pretty depressing.

Try writing about it for 30 years. But hey, if you’re looking for something lighter, I can tell you that I used to be afraid of hurdles, but I got over it.

I think I’d rather play with those fire ants.

Scott Maxwell is an Orlando Sentinel columnist. Contact him at smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com.

On his Facebook page, a candidate for a Broward County judgeship, Scott R. Shapiro, falsely boasted that he’s “endorsed by those who know justice best.”

“Honored to receive the endorsement of the County Court,” Shapiro’s Facebook page said. “Their support is a testament to my dedication to justice and fairness.”

What?

To begin with, “the County Court” does not endorse judicial candidates under any circumstances. It’s a lie.

Second, it would be highly unethical for any individual judge to make an endorsement. Broward’s chief circuit judge, Jack Tuter, told me on Friday that he had contacted the Florida Bar about the false endorsement claim.

But with a Florida Bar review certain to drag on far beyond the Aug. 20 election, Tuter said the circuit would send Shapiro a brief and blunt cease-and-desist letter, telling him to knock it off.

“What he’s doing is clearly improper and illegal,” Tuter said. “We’re going to get a letter out to him.”

When I called Shapiro Friday afternoon, he said he had no idea what I was talking about.

“What’s this all about?” he asked. “I didn’t put it up there.”

Shapiro said a California vendor runs his Facebook campaign account and that he had not looked at it lately. (The post was there since Tuesday. No payments to a California vendor appear on his campaign reports.)

Every campaign ad must carry a disclaimer that it’s paid for by the campaign, the point of which is that the candidate approved it and stands behind it. Shapiro said he hadn’t.

Shortly after our brief talk, the “County Court endorsement” was gone, replaced with this: “It appears the company my campaign uses for social media posted that I received an endorsement from the court. This is FALSE. I did not receive such an endorsement and I am fairly certain the court would never make an endorsement. I take full responsibility for not monitoring the page more frequently to avoid a mistake like this. It will not happen again.”

How stupid do some people think voters are?

At least Shapiro took full responsibility. But is this the level of attention to detail we should expect from a judge?

Shapiro, a Tamarac lawyer, is challenging County Judge Kathleen Mary “Katie” McHugh, who’s seeking a third term.

The Sun Sentinel endorsed McHugh in an editorial that revealed a shocking truth: Shapiro said he picked McHugh at random for one reason: She was the first judge assigned to the court’s civil or non-criminal division whose name he saw among judges up for re-election this year.

Now for something completely different.

Gregory Tony is the sheriff of Broward County — and don’t you ever forget it.

The county commissioners who approve his budget recently attended the dedication of the new gymnasium and training center, and some were taken aback by how Tony’s name is plastered all over the building on the floors, the walls, and even in light fixtures overhead (complete with the reference to “Ph.D.” to note his recent doctorate from Nova Southeastern University).

Tony is not the first Broward sheriff to make the agency an extension of his ego.

But all that self-promotion costs money, and the next sheriff will have to remove every bit of it.

The grandiose seven-story training center, originally proposed to cost $34 million, will end up costing more than $70 million, according to a report by the county auditor, the Sun Sentinel has reported.

Steve Bousquet is Opinion Editor of the Sun Sentinel and a columnist in Tallahassee and Fort Lauderdale. Contact him at sbousquet@sunsentinel.com or (850) 567-2240 and follow him on X @stevebousquet.

Good news! Party poopers might be weeping and wailing and gnashing teeth over U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s decision to toss out the classified documents case against the Master of Mar-A-Lago. Grammarians might bemoan a judicial ruling that turned “our nation’s secrets” into an oxymoron right alongside “jumbo shrimp,” “congressional intelligence” and “functioning Cybertrucks.”

Not me. Not all of us have second-bathroom space. And now that we are free to do with it whatever, however and whenever we want, I am happy to tell you there are many uses for NSA scrap paper!

You can make paper airplanes and throw them out of Air Force One!

You can grab a pot of paste and make your very own papier-mache Supreme Court! Optional: Toss out three of the justices who no one is listening to anyway. Or: Make another three papier-mache justices when no one is looking.

Craft a paper crown. Usually, art critics would not approve of painting something just so it would be all matchy-matchy with other shiny objets d’art laying around the house — chandeliers, a gilded toilet, airplanes, etc. But in this case, a bright, shiny gold is warranted. For an extra special finishing touch, stick six papier-mache Supreme Court justices on it. They won’t even know you have them where you want them. They haven’t figured it out so far.

You could grab some scissors and cut your secret memos into puzzle pieces. Send some of the pieces — but only some! — to BFFs like Victor, Vlad and Kim, forcing them to work together to solve it. Diplomacy! But slyly hold back the center piece. Maybe a few center pieces. Call it The Puzzle of Democracy.

Or slip a few papers into Hunter Biden’s briefcase. Feeling especially mischievous? Put the briefcase in Jim Jordan’s desk. Make an anonymous call to Merrick Garland. Or Maria Bartiromo. Or the guy next door with the Q-Anon flag and the YouTube channel. Stand back and watch the fun!

Of course, not every use has to be Etsy-worthy. There are bird cages to be lined and windows to be cleaned; political litmus tests to be administered and Rorschach test results that need to be hidden.

And since these are words we are dealing with, don’t neglect the opportunities for irony. For instance, super-white paper can contain trace amounts of highly toxic dioxins. So just tear up your own super-white, super-secret papers into teeny tiny little confetti-size pieces and sprinkle them over what is left of the EPA’s authority to regulate dioxins (and everything else). Pat your pocket-sized papier-mache justices on the back while you do so.

Also, paper is responsible for about 1% of greenhouse gas emissions. But that’s not nearly enough! Throw’em on the grill and smoke up a storm! Bonus: Incineration releases dioxins.

And you might very well want to burn them, and then bury their ashes, before anyone finds the political secret embedded in your cache of political secrets. Some paper is made with china clay, and even though it is little-c china and not big-C China, my experience has been that neither the next-door-neighbor YouTubers nor Jim Jordan are overly concerned with the subtleties of punctuation, much less geology. Not when a good old fashioned groundless conspiracy is being waved in front of them.

Plus, although china clay is mined all over the world, at least some of the china clay really is from clay in China, and how would you know which is which? Better to be safe.

But maybe set aside just one very special box of classified clips. May I suggest the ones that you have not already used as a soda coaster? Haul out a few Sharpies and get started on those thank-you notes to the many, many people who have made it possible to bring national secrets out of dark bathrooms all over American and put them proudly on display for friends, frenemies and, especially, gob-smacked foreign spies dazed by their good fortune.

Who also thank you.

Pat Beall is a columnist and editorial writer for the Sun Sentinel. Contact her at pbeall1@gmail.com.