Florida Trident

When the Sarasota County Commission narrowly approved a $7.5 million federal disaster recovery grant to a startup nonprofit last fall, it was sold as a cornerstone of workforce recovery for trade apprenticeship programs after Hurricane Ian.Just days after the vote, Jon Mast—CEO of the Building Industry Institute (BII) which received the grant—was photographed at a party, cigar in mouth, beer in hand, donning a custom T-shirt that read: “$7.5 Million.”The optics of the photo did not sit well with many Sarasota residents.And in a late move April 22, the county commissioners reallocated the grant.

What started as a routine city manager search unraveled into a public spectacle recently at Sarasota’s City Commission. The breakdown on Friday, April 11, played out over two separate meetings — a morning workshop and an afternoon special session — where commissioners openly admitted to confusion, mistrust, and having no clear path forward.Commissioners contradicted each other, the search firm hired to oversee the process struggled to provide basic materials and information, and the public was left in the dark — literally and figuratively — about how the process would move forward.

Seth Miller visited his client at North Florida’s Jackson Correctional Institution in February of 2019 with some good news. The client, Thomas Gilbert, was serving a life sentence for a 1973 murder in North Miami Beach he always said he didn’t commit.That afternoon, Miller, the executive director of the Innocence Project of Florida, informed Gilbert they had discovered powerful new evidence of his innocence that included police files from 1977 containing an entire reinvestigation of his case with multiple witness statements saying Gilbert was not present, the results of a polygraph Gilbert took “exculpating” him, and a confession from a man who said he was the one who actually committed the murder.

The March 27 announcement on the conservative website Florida’s Voice that Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno is considering a run for Congress was met with incredulity from some voters. According to his political consultant, Anthony Pedicini, Marceno is eying the Congressional seat being vacated by U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, who is running as President Donald Trump’s pick for governor.

Since the overhaul of New College of Florida in 2023, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’s administration is now moving toward a potential expansion for the tiny public liberal arts college in Sarasota, by taking over educational and cultural facilities from other state universities.DeSantis aims to have the school take over the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, which is adjacent to the school but run by Florida State University.

The Sarasota County Commission voted unanimously Tuesday morning to stop work on a proposed agreement with Hi Hat Ranch, directing staff to cease further drafts of any agreement. The project will not move forward until a public workshop is scheduled within six months.The decision follows a Florida Trident investigative report published just a day earlier, which raised concerns about the deal’s financial impact — requiring taxpayers to cover half of a $28 million road-widening project for a segment of Bee Ridge Road between Bent Tree Boulevard to Lorraine Road.

A senior Sarasota County staffer called the developer’s proposal ‘insulting’ and urged the county to abandon negotiations.

In the early hours of Saturday, May 18, 2024, a cascade of failures within the Florida criminal justice system led to a heartbreaking tragedy: one man dead, his brother—a star running back for the Auburn University football program—partially paralyzed, and a grieving community. At the heart of the chaos was the shooter, Darryl Bernard Brookins, Jr., a five-time convicted felon with prior arrests for violent crimes, who remained free despite an arrest just three months earlier for allegedly sexually assaulting a minor.