http://www.pnj.com/article/20101225/NEWS01/12250321/Oil-spill-politics-biggest-state-stories-in-2010-
Paul Flemming * News Journal capital bureau * December 25, 2010
At the beginning of 2010, Floridians knew they’d have a new governor in a year, but no one predicted it would be Rick Scott.
Gov. Charlie Crist was a Republican then, but he would end the year a pariah in the GOP and on his way out of public life.
The town hall meetings surrounding President Barack Obama’s health care initiatives showed the force of tea party activists, whose disenchantment U.S. Sen.-elect Marco Rubio rode into office.
Back in January, it was possible that proponents of offshore drilling for oil and gas in state waters could pass a proposal to allow it. That debate would forever be changed April 20 by the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Here are some selected highlights of the year from Tallahassee:
January
* Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer was under direct fire from major donors, party leaders and statewide Republicans with increasing demands for his resignation. At a Jan. 9 meeting of the party’s executive board, Greer was voted out.
* At the end of the month, Crist delivered his final budget as governor. It proposed spending $69.2 billion and relied on money from a Seminole-gambling compact that didn’t then exist and more than a billion extra federal Medicaid dollars that hadn’t been approved.
February
* Republican Rep. Ray Sansom of Destin, under criminal indictment related to a $6 million Okaloosa County airport hangar that cost him his speakership the year before, resigned from the House rather than face an ethics hearing by fellow representatives. Sansom said the structure of the ethics hearing compromised his criminal defense.
March
* U.S. Rep. Allen Boyd, a Monticello Democrat, voted for a revised version of Obama’s health care legislation. The bill passed narrowly.
Minutes after Obama signed the proposal into law, Attorney General Bill McCollum filed a legal challenge in federal court in Pensacola on behalf of Florida. He was joined by a dozen other states.
April
* During 10 days at the end of the month: BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico killing 11 crew members; Crist left the Republican Party to run for the U.S. Senate as an independent; and the Legislature passed a $70 billion budget remarkably close to what Crist proposed.
May
* Crist declared a state of emergency for five Northwest Florida counties in response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
* Anyone watching TV recognized Rick Scott, who spent $5 million on advertising, already more than Republican gubernatorial frontrunner McCollum had raised in his bid for the nomination.
“My goal is to connect with Floridians,” Scott said.
June
* Ousted GOP chairman Greer was jailed at the beginning of the month, charged with six felonies of skimming more than $100,000 from the state GOP under a secret contract he rigged with an aide.
* More than a month after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, oil hit Florida beaches, starting in Escambia County. Throughout the month, winds and currents pushed pollution onto the Panhandle’s shores.
Crist showed up in Pensacola early in the month with singer Jimmy Buffett to see the damage.
“We’re going to be open for business come hell or high water,” Buffett said. “People in the Panhandle are tough people.”
July
* On July 15, BP’s Deepwater Horizon well was capped. Later estimates concluded 4.9 million barrels spilled into the Gulf.
* Leon County Circuit Judge John Cooper ordered Florida State University and the National Collegiate Athletic Association to pay more than $300,000 in legal fees paid by media outlets in a public-records case.
The year before, Cooper’s and appeal court rulings forced the release of more than 700 pages of documents in an academic-cheating inquiry.
August
* After a St. Petersburg Times story detailed the features of the still-under-construction 1st District Court of Appeal building in southeast Tallahassee, Loranne Ausley, Democratic candidate for chief financial officer, began the criticism that continued through the election and beyond.
* Scott beat McCollum in the GOP primary, spending more than $40 million of his money in the win. CFO Alex Sink easily won the Democratic primary for governor.
September
* Pensacola federal judge Roger Vinson allowed McCollum’s lawsuit challenging Obama’s health care legislation, now joined by 19 other states, to go forward.
October
* Sink criticized judges of the 1st District Court of Appeal and project managers at the Department of Management Services with an audit that derided the new $49 million courthouse. The audit reported 17 instances of inconsistencies with state laws and rules.
* The state’s Ethics Commission found that incoming Senate President Mike Haridopolos of Merritt Island failed to disclose tens of thousands of dollars in pay through his consulting firm, along with misreported assets.
November
* Scott defeated Sink, all three Cabinet positions went to Republicans, four incumbent Florida Democratic members of Congress were sent packing and the statehouse swung even further to the GOP with veto-proof majorities in both chambers.
* Rubio defeated Crist and U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek in the race for U.S. Senate.
December
* Crist, in one of his last actions as governor, posthumously pardoned rock legend Jim Morrison for a 1969 indecent-exposure conviction from a Miami concert.
* The U.S. Department of Justice filed suit against BP and eight other companies it says were responsible for the Deepwater Horizon spill, seeking billions in fines and cleanup costs.
Jim Ash and Bill Cotterell contributed to this report.
Special thanks to Richard Charter.