Brevard sheriff wants more money.
Sheriff Wayne Ivey is proposing a $16 million increase in his annual budget. Rick Glasby has details:
He wants over $206 million for the Brevard County Sheriffs Office. The primary driver for the nearly near 9% increase is compensation and benefits. Brevard staff now is working on putting together an overall budget plan for the county, which it will release in July for commissioners to consider.
TaxWatch Releases Budget Turkey List
Florida TaxWatch released a list of 242 “turkeys” in the recently passed state budget, while suggesting that Governor Ron DeSantis’ office should also give extra scrutiny to 16 hundred local projects that lawmakers put into the spending plan.
The Tallahassee-based fiscal watchdog group is raising concerns about the process in which more than 416 million dollars in appropriations were included in the 115.1-billion-dollar budget, while highlighting individual projects requested by lawmakers for their home districts that total over two billion dollars.
TaxWatch Executive Vice President Jeff Kottkamp, a former lieutenant governor, says his group bases its analysis on how spending projects end up in the budget, often as part of last-minute, behind-the-scenes negotiations.
“With this report, we are simply holding legislators and the process accountable for the hard-earned taxpayer dollars that they are spending each year.”
The 2025 budget not yet officially been sent to the governor for his signature.
The next fiscal year begins July 1st.
What the NCAA settlement means for the USF athletic program
The University of South Florida will soon be able pay its student athletes directly.
As part of a settlement between the N-C-A-A and student athletes, schools will have an annual salary pool of up to 20-and-a-half million dollars, starting July 1.
Athletic director Michael Kelly says this means the university will offer more scholarships to its athletes.
Kelly says U-S-F will fund that pot through donations and program revenue, including money generated by its new on-campus stadium.
"Comes from raising money. It comes from finding deals from sponsors and it comes from new revenue generation aspects, which are all things we're working really hard on, particularly as we gear toward the stadium. As you might imagine, that's a big, big thing."]
The stadium is scheduled to open in time for the 2027 football season.
Kelly hopes adding around 100 new scholarships will help U-S-F recruit and retain players.
Brightline IOUs downgraded to junk bond even as ridership increases
Brightline borrowed billions of dollars from investors to build and now operate its trains between Miami and Orlando. Last month, credit ratings agency Fitch Ratings downgraded its view of the bonds, cutting its rating into what is commonly known as junk bond territory.
Ben Munguia [moon-GEE-a] is the lead analyst at Fitch. He says Brightline spent more of its cash savings than expected thanks to weaker than expected ridership, lower fares and higher operating costs.
Those reserve accounts had been spent down faster than anticipated leaving less room for a project runway to get to a stabilized ridership level.
Fitch Ratings also placed a negative watch on Brightline’s bonds, warning the bond rating may get cut again in the next six months or so. It called the next year or two the “most pivotal period” for Brightline’s business.
Total ridership was up almost 10 percent in the first quarter this year compared to a year ago. But shorter rides by passengers between stops in South Florida continued to fall.
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