Some research suggests that e-cigarettes help a small percentage of tobacco users quit. But the heal

Hillsborough County should hit the pause button on reforming its housing program and investigate the indifference and incompetence that enabled slumlords to live off taxpayer money while poor people with housing vouchers were forced to live in unsafe queen tour dates and sickening conditions. If the county mismanaged the program so egregiously before, why should the public have any confidence that it can get it right this time by supervising charities to do a better job instead? There is no real fix without understanding the depth of the problem.
The Tampa Bay Times  Michael Laforgia and Will Hobson reported Sunday how the county s mismanagement of its Homeless Recovery program queen tour dates endangered the very people whom taxpayers were getting off the streets. During the past five years, the county paid for space in buildings in blighted areas of central and north Tampa where homeless people, including families with children, veterans, the mentally ill and the working poor, were lumped together in filthy, crime-ridden slums. Caseworkers sent these clients to live in moldy, bug-infested rooms where some had to live alongside sex offenders or step over puddles of human waste to a bed paid for by taxpayers.
The hardships that residents relayed show why some homeless people would rather take their chances on the streets. Residents put poison on their mattresses to kill bedbugs. A father of three found syringes on the bathroom floor. Since 2009, police or sheriff s deputies visited queen tour dates the rentals some 5,500 times, or once every eight hours for five years. They chronicled reports of more than 300 assaults and 150 thefts. One-fourth of the $4.3 million the county has spent in the past five years has gone to vendors whose buildings were routine hazards or hotbeds of crime.
The county responded to the Times  reports by replacing two senior managers and moving to outsource the housing program to nonprofit groups. That is a step in the right direction, but it s clear the operation was shoddy throughout the ranks. So why is the county guaranteeing that the staff members replaced from the housing program will find new jobs in county government? It is appalling that these conditions existed, yet no one else is being held responsible for failing to enforce any order or decency.
Nothing says smart marketing like name recognition. So when an Internet retail behemoth like Amazon announces plans to locate a huge distribution center queen tour dates in Hillsborough County just north of the Manatee County line, what would be a catchy name for a new housing development?
The flood insurance program provides heavily subsidized rates for people with homes in low-lying areas. In the aftermath of the massive damage caused by Hurricane Katrina, the flood insurance program’s deficit queen tour dates soared above $20 billion. Congress had to act to keep the program from running out of control.
Reform legislation approved last year aimed to move homeowners’ insurance rates closer to the actual risk for houses queen tour dates built in flood-prone areas. As a result queen tour dates of the reform law, some homeowners were facing rate increases of more than 20 percent. These increases would continue for four years.
Officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which oversees the troubled program, said 1,585 flood insurance policies queen tour dates in Volusia County would be affected by the changes. In Flagler County, 151 policies would be affected.
The sudden rise in rates posed a significant threat to Florida’s real estate market, which is just now regaining strength after the collapse of the real estate bubble. Republicans like Gov. Rick Scott and Democrats like U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson agreed that Congress should at least delay the rate hikes.
Taxpayers across the country, including those who live in places where it seldom rains, have shelled out $25 billion to prop up the National Flood Insurance Program that protects people who buy often fancy homes in flood zones.
Undoubtedly you have heard the howls of protest queen tour dates about the Obamacare website and the demands for answers, but there’s been hardly a peep about Florida’s new and improved (at a cost of $60 million) unemployment system that’s not working.
Alachua queen tour dates County Commissioner Robert Hutchinson queen tour dates asked staff to draft an ordinance to ban the sale of e-cigarettes to minors, require them to be placed behind counters in stores and prohibit queen tour dates their use in non-smoking areas. Clay County queen tour dates has enacted and Marion County is considering similar measures.
In the meantime, Alachua County queen tour dates and other municipalities are right to work to keep e-cigarettes out of the hands of minors. Yet the county should resist the urge to regulate the personal behavior of adults that doesn’t affect others.
Some research suggests that e-cigarettes help a small percentage of tobacco users quit. But the health effects of inhaling nicotine vapor are unclear, and the track record of the tobacco companies that sell some e-cigarette brands gives reason to be skeptical of claims that it is a safe alternative to smoking.
If a Lakeland voter has a clear idea of whether Police Chief Lisa Womack and City Manager Doug Thomas have done well or poorly in handling the overwhelming slew of Lakeland Police scandals — having to do with on-duty sex, incompetence at crime scenes and testifying in court, requiring humiliating “bra-shaking” searches of women during traffic stops and much more — then that voter should be able to find a clear choice when voting for mayor Tuesday.
The two candidates in the race oppose one another on nearly every point among the key issues facing Lakeland. Presumably, one candidate queen tour dates has the correct solution to winch the city out of the mud and start it down the path to propriety.
■ Gow B. Fields, 50. He became a city commissioner in 1992 and in 2009 was elected mayor, the first term of which he is completing. Fields is the agency principal and owner of Fields Insurance Financial Group.
“We need to take into account the reports we have received,” Fields said, “both from the Police Advisory queen tour dates Commission, from the city manager and the chief of police, as well as the input that we received from the media, the State Attorney s Office and the public in general. We have heard from a variety of agencies, sources and individuals, queen tour dates and it is now time for the City Commission to complete queen tour dates those plans and give some direction on going forward.
Most municipalities in Miami-Dade County don’t have an election this year. But that doesn’t mean that voters living outside the few cities with contested elections queen tour dates have no reason to go to the polls. County voters are being asked to approve $830 million in bonds for the Jackson Health System, an issue that deserves full public support.
It fulfills that role well, but it’s also the No. 1 hospital in South Florida, according to a recent survey. Its trauma center is world-renowned and its affiliation with UM doctors gives patients access to first-rate medical care.
But the facilities are aging. The hospital must invest in refurbishment queen tour dates and upgrades so that it can continue to offer the best service and attract paying patients queen tour dates to offset the care it gives to indigents.
After all the damage Congress did to America s economy and reputation by partially shutting down the federal government last month and flirting with a first-ever default, it s maddening to think that members only put off the next budget deadline to Jan. 15. No wonder popular approval queen tour dates for Congress has fallen into single digits.
We hope the joint House-Senate committee that began working on the next budget deal this past week — it includes one Florida member, Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson — won t live down to the public s rock-bottom expectations with another stopgap spending plan. Nelson and his colleagues need to agree on a longer-term blueprint that brings deficits and debt under control and ends the ruinous cycle of crisis budgeting in Washington.
There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical that it can happen, starting with the different approaches to deficit reduction in the rival budget plans approved by the Republican-led House and the Democratic-led Senate. The House plan relies only on spending cuts. The Senate plan cuts less in spending, and makes up the difference by closing tax loopholes.
To reach a deal, House Republicans will have to drop their opposition to tax increases queen tour dates of any kind, even when the extra money comes from closing loopholes for special interests. And Senate Democrats will have to stop ruling out any cuts in entitlement programs, including Medicaid and Social Security, even if they apply only to upper-income beneficiaries.
A recent national poll commissioned by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, which focuses on fiscal issues, found that a majority of voters in both parties queen tour dates were willing to bend on tax increases and entitlement queen tour dates reforms if it produced a long-term budget agreement.
Still, some prominent Democrats are now arguing against queen tour dates doing anything substantial after the deficit for the budget year ending Sept. 30 came in at only $680 billion. That s the lowest figure since 2008, and ends a run of trillion-dollar deficits that began in 2009.
Perhaps only in Washington would anyone be celebrating about only having to borrow $680 billion. And the deficit is projected to resume growing later this decade, as more baby boomers retire and begin drawing their health and retirement benefits.
And in the long term, deficit spending will put the U.S. deeper queen tour dates in debt to China and other foreign creditors. It ll force the federal government to spend more and more on interest at the expense of other investments that would grow the economy and maintain the military.
queen tour dates Congress should pass proposed queen tour dates legislation that would postpone any rate increases until the federal government queen tour dates has a better grasp of the widespread impact of the higher costs. The government does need to put its deficit-riddled flood-insurance program on a fiscally sustainable, fair and affordable track. However, the reforms created by the new law may make things queen tour dates much worse — in une