Florida Politics - Campaigns & Elections. Lobbying & Government.

Jim RosicaJuly 12, 2017

Can Melinda Miguel, formerly Gov. Rick Scott‘s inspector general, do consulting work involving a nonprofit doing business with the state’s child-welfare agency if she worked on a whistleblower’s report against that same concern? Yes, according to a staff recommendation of the Florida Commission on Ethics released Wednesday. The commission is scheduled to consider the opinion at its […]

Jim RosicaMay 16, 2017

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George Sheldon, a former Florida official now facing an ethics inquiry as director of Illinois’ Department of Children and Family Services, also ran into a spot of trouble at home this week. Property records show Sheldon, secretary of Florida’s Department of Children and Families in 2008-11, claimed a homestead exemption on his Tallahassee house while […]

Staff ReportsMay 15, 2017

George Sheldon‘s hometown newspaper now has weighed in on the former Florida politico, putting in newsprint the latest ethics woes of the now-director of Illinois’ Department of Children and Family Services. The Tallahassee Democrat’s Monday edition (online version here), with help from the Chicago Tribune’s estimable reporting of the last few weeks, documented Sheldon’s travails as head of […]

Florence SnyderApril 21, 2017

In the wake of two suicides of teenage foster children in their “care,” the “leadership team” of Miami’s “community-based care” agency took their marbles and accrued benefits and went home. Judging from their whiny, self-involved letters of resignation, the agency’s name — Our Kids — refers to the six-figure people running the place, and not […]

Les NeuhausMarch 24, 2017

Part of a psychological evaluation administered to Naika Venant in June 2015 included a sentence completion test. For the beginning stem sentence “The thing I want to do most of all is …” the then-12-year-old girl responded: “Die happy.” Sentence tests can provide indications of attitudes, beliefs, motivations or other mental states. Other sentences she […]

Tag: Our Kids
Image via Palatka Main Street.

Ethics panel could approve ex-Rick Scott official’s consulting work

George Sheldon, under fire in Illinois, also faces questions at home

George Sheldon now taken to task by hometown paper

Florence Snyder: Why children die, Part 4 — Clues in the resignation letters

Psychotropic cocktail may have contributed to Facebook Live suicide