florida senate

Hillary and Tina interview Lauren Book, Florida Senate Minority Leader. Elected in 2016, Lauren Book is a rising star among Florida Democrats. After being unanimously selected Senate Democratic Leader, Lauren has led Democrats in the fight against the growing far- right in Tallahassee. Leader Book has dedicated her career to fighting childhood sexual abuse both in and out of the Legislature. As Chair of the Children, Families, and Seniors Committee, Lauren reconstructed Florida’s child abuse reporting system, designing a central hotline so that no report is left uninvestigated. She went on to expand Medicaid for newborns and babies from just 3 months to a year- no small feat for a Democrat. Outside of the Legislature, Lauren founded Lauren's Kids, an Emmy Award winning non for profit dedicated to ending childhood sexual abuse through education. Her programming is found in schools in 41 states and internationally. Senator Book speaks to us about her role as in the Florida Senate, recent legislation, and her hopes for the midterm elections. Special Guest: Lauren Book.

On Thursday, March 10, 2022, the Florida State Senate voted in favor of a bill (FL HB 7049) that changed state government entities' requirements to place public notices in local newspapers. The amendment that passed changed some language from the existing bill, which was just approved in 2021, allowing public notices to remain in the public domain through newspapers, their websites, and online at www.floridapublicnotices.com. The floridapublicnotices site is a free and independent site operated by the Florida Press Association and provided to Florida and several other states by  Column, a public benefit corporation founded by its CEO Jake Seaton.

In short, just approved Florida Senate House Bill 7049, which now heads to Governor DeSantis' desk, will eliminate the requirement for local governments to publish public notices in a newspaper. Instead, governments would be allowed to post them on a county website.

Critics of this latest change argue that, under the new bill, the state's legal notices could be strewn across 67 different county websites instead of the centralized platform run by the Florida Press Association and Column.

In this 128th episode of “E&P Reports,” Column founder and CEO Jake Seaton talks with E&P about the compelling data his company compiled, showing how efficiently the current public notice system in Florida is working, as well as his experiences meeting with legislators and giving testimony to try to keep a 68-day old law from being repealed