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- [Rob] Coming up next, the legislature passes a new gambling agreement with the Seminole tribe but does it violate the state constitution?

A Sarasota company is leading their presidential recount in Arizona and a Florida teacher's removed from her classroom position for putting up a Black Lives Matter flag.

Political insights next on Florida This Week.

(upbeat music) - Welcome back.

the state legislature passed a new gambling agreement with the Seminole tribe of Florida after a three-day special session this week.

- [Reporter] Governor DeSantis and the Seminole tribe of Florida negotiated the compact and the legislature overwhelmingly approved it.

The state will receive at least two and a half billion dollars over the next five years and an estimated 20 billion over the course of the 30 year deal, the tribe would operate sports betting and would receive other benefits including being able to offer craps and roulette at its casinos.

There were a few Democrats and Republicans who opposed the bill arguing that the compact violates a state constitutional amendment that prevents the expansion of gambling without voter approval and question whether it will survive a legal challenge.

They also said the state could have made a better deal.

And this weekend Washington, Florida's Congressional Delegation voted mostly along party lines on whether to create a commission to investigate the January 6th insurrection.

Only two Republicans both from South Florida Carlos Gimenez and Maria Elvira Salazar broke ranks with the rest of Florida's Republican delegation and voted to support the bipartisan commission.

The bill if passed by the Senate would create an independent 10 member commission that will create a proposal for securing the Capitol and we'll conduct the official investigation into the deadly riot.

Meantime, the Sarasota company that is conducting that controversial audit of presidential votes in Arizona's largest county says it needs more time.

The company Cyber Ninjas had promised to finish the audit by last week.

Now it says it will take another six weeks.

Cyber Ninjas is being paid $150,000 by Arizona's legislature.

It's looking into claims that a massive number of illegal votes were cast in Maricopa county.

Two past audits as well as a partial hand recount have reconfirmed the results of Maricopa county showing that Joe Biden won by more than two points.

- The lone member of the Florida State Senate to vote no on the gambling compact was St. Petersburg State Senator Jeff Brandes.

Senator Brandes joins us now, Jeff, welcome back to Florida This Week.

- Great to be with you.

- Why did you oppose the gambling compact?

- Sure, so I'm a Republican who believes in free and open markets and this bill, this compact doesn't represent that at all.

In fact, it basically creates a 30-year monopoly for the Seminole tribe in Florida on most gaming and that's something I just don't support.

I think we could have broken this compact up, done with something on the physical facilities, the roulette and the craps tables but we didn't have to go so far as a 30-year monopoly for sports betting.

That was something that wasn't included in Amendment 3 that was passed in 2018 on gaming.

I think it's an area where we could have been much more open and free market.

- Do you think that the compact or what the legislature did potentially violates the state constitution?

- Well, I think that's ultimately all for the courts to decide.

I think there's going to be a lot of arguments on both sides but again this compact still has to get federal approval and that's not an easy thing either.

Most compacts are in the 20 year range.

This is a 30-year monopoly as part of this compact and so the money aside, which I think whether we had granted the monopoly or whether we had added more free market system which is what I would advocate for.

We would have received roughly the same amount or more money.

And frankly that's what I'm arguing for is that we didn't have to create a monopoly to do this.

- What effect does it have on existing businesses, on existing pari-mutuels?

I mean, does it hurt the existing businesses that are out there?

- Well, many of the pari-mutuels now are able to decouple and there's some other opportunities that come along with the pari-mutuels.

There was some additional discussion about allowing the pari-mutuels to do bingo but that ultimately failed.

Look, the pari-mutuels are in a very strange place right now because while they got access to sports betting through the tribe, if you bet with the pari-mutuel, you're really betting through the tribe.

And so I think that it creates a real problem for them in some ways.

- Let me ask you another question.

The legislature just wrapped up its regular session two in addition to the special session it just had last week.

In terms of dealing with Florida issues.

How well do you think this last session of the legislature did?

- Well look, I think we dealt with a lot of issues and some of them had really nothing to do with Florida.

For example, we passed an anti-riot bill which really was a bill in Florida to solve the problems of Portland.

We passed a voting bill that was really, you know, even after the governor has said we had a great election, really flawless based on if you talk to the supervisor of elections.

And there was a reason that the supervisors of election didn't support this legislation because it adds additional burdens that frankly they think will hinder the ability and some people's access to voting.

And so that's something that I didn't support either.

I think that Florida has a history has gone from, you know, worst in the country on elections to really best in the country on elections.

We should continue to help foster that.

But some of the things that were in this bill, I thought went too far, you know, I think really we've gotta focus on some of the key problems of Florida.

One property insurance is a major issue.

Anybody who's open up their bill lately has seen their rates go from 20 to 70, maybe 100% more than they were just a couple of years ago.

That's the Achilles heel of the state of Florida.

It will shut down growth if property insurance continues to rise.

And then another area that I focus in on is the prison system, about 60% of our prison facilities are at emergency staffing right now.

Which means we don't have enough staff to adequately both provide for the safety of the people that are inside and the security of the people that are on the outside to ensure that we don't have other problems in our prison facilities.

Those are the two areas that I think Florida is the weakest on right now and we didn't focus enough on those two areas.

- And why do you think the legislature did?

I mean, if you're saying that they addressed issues that were pertinent to Portland or pertinent to Arizona, the election law.

Why do you think the legislature was so focused on those issues and not the Florida issues?

- Well, I think those are the issues that play well in the media and those are the issues that people were talking about.

Nobody really talks about the prison system in Florida and frankly, you know, the conversation about insurance has been one that's been brewing for a long, long time but has yet to be adequately addressed.

Even the solution the legislature come up with this year was probably only a 30 or 40% solution to the problem that needed to be solved in order to stop the radical rise in property insurance rates.

So I think, you know, the legislature tends to shift towards things that the public wants to talk about at sometimes the expense of the other issues that are the things that needs to talk about.

- Well, Senator Brandes, thanks a lot.

Thanks for coming back on the program.

- My pleasure, great to be with you.

(upbeat music) - Well, another opponent of the new gambling compact with the Seminole tribe is state representative Anna Eskamani.

She represents a district which includes parts of Orlando and she joins us now and representative as Eskamani, thanks for coming back.

- Thanks too for having me.

- So we just had state Senator Jeff Brandes on.

He said he opposed the compact because he's a free market person and he doesn't believe in monopolies and he didn't think that Florida got a good deal.

Why did you oppose a gambling compact?

- Well, I would agree with some of Senator's Brandes' concerns.

I mean, the fact that the Seminole tribe would be the only owner of sports betting in Florida should be of concern to everyone.

A compact really giving a free market approach to that option of gambling.

However, my opposition was also grounded in the fact that voters here in the great state of Florida approved via Amendment 3 back in 2018, a referendum that requires any expansion of gambling to be approved by the voters.

And when I asked multiple times to the bill sponsors, why are we not just bringing this to the voters for them to decide?

The answer was a pretty mixed bag with some lawmakers even admitting they don't think parts of this compact would survive in court.

So I cannot vote against our state constitution.

I can't vote against the will of the people of this state who wanna say in the direction of gambling and I also had a lot of concerns around how this new money would be spent.

I filed an amendment to the compact where new revenue from gambling would go towards mental health and substance abuse prevention.

That amendment was called out of order and other colleagues filed similar amendments trying to allocate these dollars towards direct services for the people of Florida that could be impacted by gambling.

And the fact that we don't know how this money will be spent is another area of deep concern for me.

- Amendment 3 says that as long as, if the gambling takes place on tribal lands then Amendment 3 doesn't apply.

So I'm wondering, I mean if you have sports betting on a mobile phone where do you think that gambling is taking place?

Is it taking place at the mobile phone site or on tribal lands where the servers are?

- That's the question at hand, right?

Those who support the compact, try to make this illustration that if the servers are housed on tribal land that is not expansion of gambling and yet you would be able to gamble from the comfort of your home with the direction of this compact and I do think that that's a questionable expansion of gambling that the voters should really play a role in - Orlando where you are is known as kind of the family-friendly vacation capital of the U.S. and there are conservatives and others that think that this compact will hurt that the family-friendly standing that Florida has.

What do you think, where are you on that issue?

- I think it's a valid point and I brought up a lot of questions during debate and committee around, you know what are the health concerns when it comes to expansion of gambling?

Especially compulsive gambling and addiction and, you know, there are dollars put towards some of these organizations that focus on providing support to Florida, into individuals who face addiction.

But I do think that more dollars are gonna go towards especially mental health in a state like Florida where we're so underfunded in that area.

The other concern that comes from an area like Orlando candidly it's not always around family values but it is competition.

And I do think that when it comes to competition around the convention industry and some of the biggest companies in the state like Walt Disney World, they don't want expansion because they see as a threat to some of their other type of business ventures.

So I think it's an important dialogue to have around public health and I did not see a lot of points made on that area from my colleagues but my opposition was very much grounded to the fact that voters need to decide when it comes to the expansion of gambling.

- Let me ask you the last minute that we have left.

The state legislature in addition to the special session had, its regular session which ended a few weeks ago.

I'm wondering, you said in a meeting last week that you thought that the regular session was all about culture wars what did you mean by that?

- It was the creation of fake enemies, pretend problems that took over the legislative session whether it was attacking our right to vote because the Republican majority said that there was fraud in our election, attacking their free of speech by demonizing Black Lives Matter protestors and attacking trans kids by saying that trans girls are dangerous to women's sports.

It was a constant theme of fake enemies.

Meanwhile, actual problems like the affordable housing crisis do not get the attention they deserved.

- Well Representative Eskamani, thanks for coming back on the program and we hope to see you soon.

- Thank you so much.

(upbeat music) - Duval county high school teacher Amy Donofrio was removed from her classroom in March after displaying a Black Lives Matter flag above her classroom door.

The removal prompted her to file a lawsuit against the district over free speech.

Her case was mentioned in a speech this week by Florida's Education Commissioner, Richard Corcoran.

- I'm Getting sued right now in Duval county which is Jacksonville because it was an entire classroom memorialized to Black Lives Matter.

We made sure she was terminated and now we're being sued by every one of the liberal left groups for freedom of speech issues.

And I say to them, you know to the point, your question, try to find common ground.

I'll say, look, let's not even talk about whether it's right or true or good, what you have there.

My issue is when you're a 3rd grade teacher and only you know, 42%, 41% of your kids are on grade level.

Why don't you do me a favor, get them on grade level and then we'll have that discussion.

- The teacher in question Amy Donofrio is here along with her attorney Evian White De Leon.

Amy, welcome to Florida This Week.

- Thank you for having me.

- Amy, what did you think of the way commissioner of education Richard Corcoran characterized your case?

- I was devastated (chuckles) and shocked.

I simply stood in solidarity with my students and affirmed the value of their humanity and of their lives and to be deemed unacceptable for simply affirming your students.

It's shocking.

- Let's talk about your students for a moment.

You don't teach 3rd graders, you teach 12th graders.

Tell us about the ethnic composition of the people in your classroom.

- Yeah, that's correct.

That was another pretty shocking aspect of the comment.

I teach 12th grade at Robert E. Lee High School, Home of the Generals in Jacksonville.

And you know, not only do I teach 12th grade but my students are not only making standards, they're exceptional.

I think you can see that in my growth scores in my evaluations, I've been labeled as highly effective by the Florida Department of Education currently.

And for most of the last few years beyond that, I mean, my students, we met president Obama, we've gone to the White House.

We've presented at Harvard University Graduate School of Education four times.

They've excelled and what they've excelled based off of is a lot of things but primarily elevating youth voices.

They've used their voice, right?

To speak about issues that matter to them and make a change.

And this is for youth and particularly black youth at our school, which is 70% black.

And for youth to be empowered and to achieve this beautiful thing that is being nationally recognized but is condemned by our own school, by out of state in fact, it's devastating.

- Even this raises questions about academic freedom, is Amy's case the only such case in the U.S. or are there more cases like this where politicians are trying to say what can and cannot be taught in the classroom?

- Unfortunately, we are seeing a wave of backlash against not only Black Lives Matter but any teachings that incorporate race into a classroom and this is being seen across Florida.

It's being seen in other legislatures across the country and it's also being seen in other districts, school district administrations across Florida.

To give you an example, we met one teacher in Florida who was disciplined for showing the recent inauguration in her classroom.

She was never disciplined for former inaugurations showing them to her students but this year she was.

And unfortunately there is this, like I said wave of backlash to Black Lives Matter which is a statement of fact and not political.

It's really, really disheartening and terrifying that at the bottom line is safe spaces are not being created for our students in classrooms.

- And Amy hear a lot about cancel culture.

I mean, do you feel like you're the victim of conservative cancel culture by hanging the flag?

And what do your 12th grade students, what did they say to you about your removal from the classroom?

- I mean, unfortunately I feel like my students are the biggest victim in the midst of all of this.

And unfortunately I've not really been able to speak with my students because I've missed the last two months of their senior year, their last day was actually yesterday.

And I think we all lose, not just me, not just my students, not just the education system but as a state I think we all lose when we refuse to honor value and talk about what does it mean, right?

To value each other.

What does it mean to matter?

And I really think we should reconsider that.

- Well thanks to both of you for coming on the program and we promised to follow the case.

- Thank you so much.

(upbeat music) - A Sarasota firm, Cyber Ninjas was selected by Arizona's Republican-led Senate to lead an audit of the 2020 election.

President Joe Biden beat Donald Trump in Arizona by 10,457 votes, a result confirmed by multiple reviews.

Zac Anderson is the Political Editor at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

Zac, welcome back, nice to have you here.

- Good to be here, thanks for having me.

- So Zac when the Cyber Ninjas name first came out you looked into it being a Sarasota company.

What did you find out?

How big of a profile, what kind of credibility do they have?

What do you know about the company?

- Yeah, well, to start with, I had never heard of the company.

I don't think they have a very big profile here in Florida or even in this area, you know, from what I can tell they only have a handful of employees.

They haven't been in the Sarasota area for a very long time.

They moved here from Indiana in 2014, they received some help with moving here.

They worked with the Economic Development Corporation of Sarasota County to help relocate here in a press release.

You know, the owner, Doug Logan said that, you know he was interested in moving to the area because you know, a beautiful area that's close to, you know, major transportation hubs like the Tampa Airport but it doesn't seem like they've been extremely, heavily involved in the business community From what I can tell.

According to some press releases on their website, they were participated in some technology forums and things like that where they, you know, did some educational and networking stuff with local businesses but it doesn't seem like they were, you know, that well-known even in this area.

- I guess the big question is do they have the credibility and the depth to handle a really significant voting audit?

But let me ask you this.

What did Republicans tell you, local leaders in the Republican Party tell you?

And did Mr. Logan, the head of this company, did he indicate where in the political spectrum he was when you wrote your article?

- Yeah, I spoke to Joe Gruters who's the head of the Republican Party of Florida and the longtime chairman of the local Republican Party also a state senator, he had no idea who this guy was, says that he isn't familiar with him.

Doesn't remember coming across him.

So, you know, that's one of the biggest Republicans in the state and he's not familiar with him.

And other Republican leaders, activists, consultants in the states have said that they didn't know who this firm was.

It doesn't appear that they have very much if any experience in election auditing, you know, it looks like, you know, their expertise is in, you know sort of making sure that apps and online applications you know, you can defend them against hackers.

So but no, it doesn't appear that they're heavily plugged in to the political scene or the elections, you know auditing scene.

They do have one connection at least to Republicans in the area, the spokesperson for the company during this whole audit in Arizona and also before that is a guy named Rod Thompson.

Who's a Republican consultant in this area.

When I spoke to Rod though, he said that, you know, that Mr. Logan had not been involved in the political scene and Rod would know.

Rod was head of the Sarasota Republican Club, locally he's very well networked in local Republican groups and he's involved in the local Republican Party.

So, you know, even though Rod is connected to this, he says that Mr. Logan was not connected to Republican politics locally.

- There have been some newspaper reports that suggested that Logan the head of Cyber Ninjas, the owner of the company believes in conspiracy theories or believes the election was stolen.

That's the way he entered this process in Arizona.

Have you been able to confirm that?

- So just based on some of the reporting from our sister organizations in Arizona that it does appear that, you know, a Twitter account that is believed to be associated with him had shared, you know, posts that basically cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election and raise questions about election fraud and tampering with machines and things like that.

Even shared a post from Sidney Powell who was, you know an attorney who has been very prominent and this quote-unquote, "stop the steal, movement and raising questions, these unfounded accusations of election fraud."

So it appears that some of his online activity and I believe he also was mentioned in a court document in Michigan related to an election lawsuit there.

So it does appear like he's been involved in some of these things - Zac, thanks for coming on the program.

It's a story that we're all paying attention to and thanks for giving us, shedding more light on it.

- Thanks for having me.

(upbeat music) - Thanks for watching.

You can view this and past shows online at WEDU.org or on the PBS app and Florida This Week is now available as a podcast.

You can find it on our website or wherever you download your podcasts.

Well, finally, singer Bob Dylan turns 80 this Monday.

His career began in the folk era of the 1960s.

He's written more than 500 songs and maybe the most covered songwriter of all time.

In 2016, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Here's Dylan singing "Visions of Johanna," stay safe, take care of each other.

We'll see you next week.

♪ Ain't it just like the night to play tricks ♪ ♪ When you're tryin' to be so quiet ♪ ♪ We sit here stranded though ♪ ♪ We're all do our best to deny it ♪ ♪ And Louise holds a handful of rain ♪ ♪ Temptin' you to defy it ♪ ♪ Lights flicker from the opposite loft ♪ ♪ In this room the heat pipes just cough ♪ ♪ The country music station plays soft ♪ ♪ But there's nothing really nothing to turn off ♪ ♪ Just Louise and her lover so entwined ♪ ♪ And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind ♪ - [Announcer] Florida This Week, it's a production of WEDU who is solely responsible for its content.