Florida News that impacts you – July 28th
Bottom Line: Your daily recap of the some of the biggest news from around the state that impacts you in South Florida.
- Florida’s CFO Jimmy Patronis announced that thru FLTreasureHunt.gov, over $1 billion in previously unclaimed property has been returned to Floridians since 2018. An average of over $1 million per day. He estimates 20% of Floridians still have unclaimed property on the website. In pointing out that anyone can have outstanding property owed to them, he highlighted that Senator Marco Rubio, Marlins Co-owner Derek Jeter and legendary collegiate football coach Lou Holtz have had outstanding property in their names to be claimed. Speaking of Patronis...
- Citizens has confirmed they’ll not begin to drop unpaid polices on August 15th as originally planned. Jimmy Patronis intervened with Citizens to attempt to continue the moratorium on dropped policies during the pandemic and peak hurricane season – on Monday Citizens confirmed they’ll wait. A specific date for a resumption of cancelling unpaid policies hasn’t been announced.
- A Palm Beach Circuit Court judge ruled Palm Beach County’s mandatory mask order in public places to be lawful. This marks the second challenge to uphold the rights of local governments to institute mandatory mask policies. Previously the Leon County Circuit Court upheld a local government’s policy.
- In yet another credibility issue for the Florida Department of Health’s dashboard, the agency admitted a coding error led to an inflating of positive test rates in children during the week of July 10th. The error led to a positive test rate of 31% reported vs. 13% actual. This is especially problematic as numerous school districts were considering the data during that time to steer decisions for how and when to resume school this fall.
- Florida’s reported case count on Monday, just under 8,900 was the smallest in 20 days.