State regulators investigating gasoline price gouging complaints are turning their attention from retailers to oil companies, wondering whether they inflated the prices they charged gas station owners in recent days. ...more

September 16, 2008

Florida's top regulator of mortgage brokers said Tuesday that he will leave his post Sept. 30 amid continuing criticism for allowing thousands of ex-convicts to obtain mortgage brokering licenses and, in some cases, commit fraud. ...more

August 13, 2008

The state's chief mortgage regulator will keep his job for now while state investigators probe allegations that his office licensed thousands of convicted criminals to work as mortgage brokers. ...more

July 30, 2008

Plant City native Pam Walden has been appointed Hillsborough County schools supervisor of agribusiness and natural resources, a post left vacant by the recent retirement of Jim Jeffries. ...more

July 9, 2008

"The Reapers: A Thriller," by John Connolly (Atria, $26) ...more

June 1, 2008

Florida Agriculture and Consumer Services Commissioner Charles Bronson is calling on Congress and the Bush administration to investigate skyrocketing fuel prices. Good for him. Although we are not sure if anything will come of it, give Bronson credit for at least trying to do something. "We're being taken for a ride, and the evidence is everywhere, from the escalating prices we pay to fill up our vehicles with gasoline to the purchase of virtually all consumer goods," Bronson said Friday. "It is almost impossible to conceive of a product that is not dependent on oil in either its production or transportation to the stores in which it is sold." ...more

May 24, 2008

A West Pasco Special Olympics Pasco County athlete, Rosetta LoBianco, recently returned home from the Special Olympics Florida Athlete Congress, in Tallahassee. ...more

February 9, 2008

An additional trooper should have been patrolling the highways in Polk County when 70 vehicles collided last month on Interstate 4, the Florida Highway Patrol said Wednesday. ...more

February 7, 2008

As the Legislature cut $1 billion from Florida's budget last year, one lawmaker wanted the state to sell one of its three planes to save $200,000 annually. ...more

January 7, 2008

Much has been made of government's decision last summer not to pump phosphorous rich water into Lake Okeechobee. Florida Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson claims that this one decision - which some claim will somehow deprive growers of some irrigation water - makes up $4 million of the $1 billion in losses expected to Florida's farm economy. Further, sugarcane farmers argue that sugar production (and presumably profits) may fall by 20 percent. ...more

December 27, 2007