To develop his clients' vast land holdings, attorney Glenn Storch met with Volusia and Brevard county officials, bordering property owners and conservation groups.

They talked about roads. They talked about water. They discussed residential densities and jobs creation, debated how much land should be preserved, explored the impact on school construction planning. The company pulled together a panel discussion of national experts to critique their plans in public.

"We have spent four years thinking about how to do the right thing, and we're only halfway there," Storch said recently.

Several proposals for major changes in Florida’s state and local tax systems are now under discussion. The intense interest in taxes, and especially property taxes, arises from the interaction of Save Our Homes (SOH) and the recent housing boom.

On January 29 of this year, Floridians will vote on a proposed constitutional amendment to reform the state’s property tax system. This proposal arose in response to widespread and growing dissatisfaction with the state’s current system of property taxation. Residents’ complaints about the tax system may be that total taxes are too high, that the distribution of taxes is inequitable, that high taxes on business make Florida uncompetitive, or that the current system “locks” owners in their present homestead properties.

March 2-8 is National Consumer Protection Week and to underscore the importance of and need for consumer protection, researchers Dr. Lynne Holt, University of Florida, and Dr. Susan MacManus, University of South Florida, jointly review several types of fraudulent practices that often result in consumer complaints in Florida: identity theft; health insurance fraud; fraud related to home repair, mortgages, and home insurance; and auto repair fraud and price gouging.

Among the various uses of history, one is to tell a story. Telling a story involves picking out main themes, weighing competing interpretations of events, and relating what happened, usually in something close to chronological order. That is not what we do here. Another role for history is to provide background on current issues, how we got to where we are, with the belief that understanding how conditions that are of concern developed is a source of insight into creating ways to improve them.

The purpose of this paper is to survey current literature on the economic impact of the Internet on transportation. To that end we have searched literature across disciplines including sociology, geography, business, and economics that offers potential answers to the following questions: How are companies incorporating Internet technology into their products and business models? How will the Internet change commuter and shipping traffic? By how much? What models are available to predict the impact of the Internet on future transportation patterns?

Florida’s public highways are congested. At the same time there is excess capacity on private railroads. Further, the social costs of moving a ton-mile of freight—including costs from air pollution, accidents, congestion, and wear on the nation’s transportation system—are lower by rail than by truck for many types of freight movements. Given this situation, should the state design policies to increase utilization of the state’s railroads?

This paper presents a micro-location model of public investment in pedestrian safety capital. A special case of the model predicts that economies of scale in safety capital can offset the effect of rising population density on the pedestrian fatality rate. Using county level data we confirm this prediction empirically and measure the elasticity of the fatality rate with respect to civil time of sunrise and sunset, sales at bars, highway lane miles, income, climate, and tourism. Pedestrian fatalities on interstate highways are shown to differ from those elsewhere.

This report uses economic analyses and presents relevant information to help policymakers determine why pedestrian fatality rates in Florida exceed those in the rest of the country.

Intermodal transportation is an increasingly important aspect of Florida’s transportation system, one with the potential to boost the State’s economic development and sustain its environment. As such, intermodalism—the concept behind intermodal transportation—is increasingly drawing attention and consideration from agencies and policy-makers at all levels of government. Intermodalism and intermodal transportation can be ambiguous terms.