At a law office in downtown Orlando, Worrell pointed to the reintroduction of the Orange-Osceola State Attorney’s Office’s adult civil citation program, which was initially discontinued by appointed state attorney Andrew Bain before he announced Monday it will resume this month. The program offers alternatives to arrest for non-violent offenders, such as counseling or community service.

She further cited her office’s conviction rates, with what she said was a 70% felony conviction rate and 99% for homicide cases in the second quarter. On Monday, Bain reported strikingly similar numbers: convictions in 71% of felony trials and all of five homicide cases for his first 100 days.

“Not surprisingly, most of what he reported were the exact same things I was doing under my administration,” Worrell told reporters. A spokesperson for Bain did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Worrell’s press conference comes less than a month before her legal team is scheduled to present oral arguments before the Florida Supreme Court in an attempt to be reinstated as state attorney. Lawyers for Gov. Ron DeSantis said the Florida Senate is the proper venue for reinstatement, calling her suspension a “political question.”

The hearing is set for Dec. 6.

DeSantis appointed Bain, a former Orange County judge, after suspending Worrell on Aug. 9 for what he said was a dereliction of duty for not prosecuting certain crimes more aggressively. Cited in his suspension order were alleged policies to avoid pushing for mandatory minimum sentences along with prosecutors dropping cases involving illegal guns and drug trafficking.

Worrell on Monday said the governor to date has not offered “not one scintilla of evidence” supporting those claims, adding that cases involving minimum mandatory sentences were handled “with care and caution.” She also further questioned data reported by the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office regarding her office’s handling of their drug trafficking cases. Sheriff Marcos Lopez said she refused to prosecute many cases, but Worrell insists cases had to be dropped because of mishandled investigations.

DeSantis, who critics say went after Worrell for exercising prosecutorial discretion, counts law enforcement leaders among his supporters in the lawsuit against him. Earlier this month, the Florida Sheriffs Association filed a brief urging the Supreme Court to uphold Worrell’s suspension, which came after a months-long feud between her and local leaders.

“Law enforcement’s biggest contention with me was that I didn’t rubber stamp their decisions and that I did hold them accountable when they broke the law,” Worrell said. “That is why they wanted me out of office and that is why you see them laud and praise the governor’s state attorney [Bain], because they are all carrying out the governor’s agenda.”

On Monday, Bain said he plans on running for election against Worrell to keep his position as state attorney. Records show Worrell and Republican Seth Hyman have filed as candidates.

Authorities said Donna Adelson, 73, was arrested Monday night as she and her husband were about to use one-way tickets to board a flight to Dubai and Vietnam, countries that do not have an extradition treaty with the United States. She is charged with arranging the 2014 murder of Florida State University law professor Daniel Markel, who was shot in the head inside his Tallahassee garage.

Leon County State Attorney Jack Campbell said in a Tuesday phone interview that while he believes his prosecutors already had enough evidence to convict Adelson before Monday, plans for her arrest had to be accelerated when investigators learned of her plans to leave the country.

“It was going to be complicated and really difficult trying to bring them back, depending on where they ended up in the world,” Campbell said. “The arrest was not just based on the flight, but that played a part in the timing.”

Adelson was being held Tuesday at the Miami-Dade County Jail without bail pending her transfer to Tallahassee. Jail records do not show if she has an attorney./ She has long denied involvement in the killing.

Her son, Dr. Charlie Adelson, was convicted last week of arranging Markel’s shooting through a girlfriend, Katie Magbanua. She employed her ex-husband and his friend, both members of the notorious Latin Kings gang, to murder Markel, 41.

Magbanua and her ex-husband, Sigfredo Garcia, are serving life sentences after being convicted earlier of first-degree murder. His friend, Luis Rivera, is serving a 19-year sentence after pleading guilty to second-degree murder and testifying against the others.

Charlie Adelson, 47, faces a mandatory life term when sentenced next month.

Markel had been involved in a bitter custody battle with his ex-wife, lawyer Wendi Adelson, and had gotten a court order barring her move from Tallahassee back to South Florida with their two young sons.

Authorities say the Adelsons offered Markel $1 million to let his ex-wife and sons move, but when he refused Charlie Adelson and other members of the family began plotting his death.

During his trial, it was shown that Charlie Adelson paid Magbanua $138,000, which she split with the killers, and the family then gave her a no-show job at their dental practice and other payments totaling more than $56,000. Charlie Adelson also gave her a used Lexus.

Wendi Adelson and her father, dentist Harvey Adelson, have not been charged, but Campbell said the investigation remains open. They have denied involvement.

Markel was shot while parking in his garage after he dropped his sons off at daycare and visited the gym.

The Adelsons immediately became suspects in Markel’s slaying after Wendi Adelson told detectives that the killing could have been arranged on her behalf, saying her parents were “very angry at Markel.” She told them that her brother had joked about hiring a hit man to kill Markel as a divorce gift, but he bought her a TV instead.

Still, the investigation involving local and state agencies and the FBI proceeded slowly.

Investigators were able to track phone records showing numerous calls between Charlie Adelson and Magbanua, her and the killers and Charlie Adelson, his mother and his sister in the hours before and shortly after the killing as well as large monetary transactions between the family and Magbanua. Garcia and Rivera were then linked to a rented Toyota Prius the killers used.

In 2016, an FBI agent, impersonating an extortionist, approached Donna Adelson outside her home and demanded $5,000 to not turn information about the slaying over to investigators. The ruse had been concocted in hopes that it would trigger a reaction from the Adelsons.

She contacted her son, telling him they needed to discuss “some paperwork” and that “you probably have a general idea what I’m talking about.” They led to several calls and meetings between her and her son.

Charlie Adelson was arrested last year after technicians enhanced a recording made of him and Magbanua inside a Mexican restaurant in 2016 while they were under surveillance discussing the extortion attempt.

In the conversation, Adelson told Magbanua that she would need to meet with the extortionist and agree to a one-time payment.

He also told her he wasn’t worried about being arrested, but if he thought police had any evidence proving the family orchestrated the slaying, “we would have already gone to the airport.”

But this year, the swarming insects were nowhere to be seen, and Norman Leppla, a professor with the University of Florida’s Department of Entomology and Nematology, is getting calls from across the state asking why.

Leppla fell in love with these particular bugs in 1972, when he moved from Arizona to the Sunshine State on a research grant. His first paper on lovebugs, published two years later, studied their behaviors in Paynes’ Prairie, just outside of Gainesville.

At that point, the lovebug outbreak still was at its peak and Leppla was fascinated by them.

The agglomeration of all his lovebug knowledge is chronicled in Leppla’s 2018 article Living with lovebugs. He’s now considering writing a sequel: Living without lovebugs.

While questions about the insects are swirling, Leppla said because lovebugs don’t contribute much to Florida’s ecology, research on their apparent demise would be unlikely to get funding.

The Tampa Bay Times recently spoke with Leppla about what may have happened to Florida’s nonessential nuisances.

Q: When did you realize the lovebugs had disappeared?

I didn’t really notice it until about maybe last year or the year before. They’ve just sort of tapered off and this year — or at least this season — I haven’t seen any. It just seemed like, “OK, it’s a natural variation.” But then they didn’t rebound and I was very surprised. I have a holly tree outside of my office window, and they’re always abundant there because it’s a source of nectar. But there’s nothing.

Q: Do we know what happened to them?

Well, people are noticing and would like to have answers, but it’s really not an area where we could get funding to do research. There is quite a bit of concern about declining insect populations. And maybe somebody would want to include (lovebugs) with some studies right now that focus on things like honeybees and pollinators.

Q: And lovebugs aren’t big pollinators, right?

No. We don’t even think of them as pollinators. They are basically thought of as nuisances. That’s a real classification. It’s insects that don’t bite or sting or transmit diseases or do things that harm other animals and plants. Those would be nuisances.

Q: Could their disappearance be related to this year’s drought conditions and record-breaking heat?

Florida is really, really diverse in habitats. We’ll get rainfall in one area and drought in another 30 miles [away]. So there’s so much variability in the habitat that that would not account for the lovebug decline.

They’re pretty hardy, but they’re also in lots of different habitats. So, all in all, there are plenty of ways that we would still have lovebugs in certain parts of Florida.

The larvae can move. If they have a bit of drainage — like on the side of a highway — they can move up and down, so they don’t drown or desiccate. They are under things like leaves, cow manure, just plain, decaying plants. So they get a certain amount of protection.

One thing that really would cause them to decline is their attraction to automobile exhaust. But that’s never caused them to go away before. I guess the only other thing would be some sort of general pressure.

It’s got to be variables that we look at, and that’s obviously climate, habitat, pollution. They’re just standard reasons that we look at and wonder, “What happened?”

Q: Scientists are warning of an “insect apocalypse.” Forty percent of all insect species are declining globally, and a third are endangered. Why is this happening?

It’s gotten to the point where it’s alarming. Entomologists are concerned about it, and we’re doing more and more to try to figure out what’s going on, but it’s just that our habitats are changing. Our climate is changing, and it’s putting pressure on lots of organisms.

Certainly, we’re tracking all kinds of vertebrates. As you know, populations are declining and habitats going away. We’re concerned that insects are part of that problem.

They’re part of the food chain. I guess even lovebugs have entered it. In the case of lovebugs, they’re invasive. Our ecosystem doesn’t depend on them, so they’re not that big of a concern.

Nobody seems like they wanted them to come back, but people are asking. I’m surprised there’s quite a bit of interest in wanting to know why they went away, and I wish I could give you an answer, but I don’t know, either.

Q: You’ve studied these insects for decades and seen populations wax and wane. Do you expect them to bounce back?

I don’t think so.

This continuous decline for three years indicates that something has changed. The flowers that typically attract them are abundant but the insects are absent.

Q: What could have caused lovebugs to decline in Central Florida?

Lovebugs have occurred over a wide geographical area and in a range of habitats. It is unlikely that environmental conditions have changed significantly everywhere in Central Florida. It is more likely that lovebugs have been attacked by a parasite or pathogen.

If so, these organisms require hosts for continued reproduction and may not be limited to lovebugs. This hypothesized situation would keep lovebugs from resurging.

Honestly, I can’t accurately predict what will happen to lovebugs in Central Florida.

“R-Evolution,” a kinetic sculpture depicting a nude standing woman known for appearing at the Burning Man festival, was unveiled on the 400 block of Lincoln Road on Tuesday morning ahead of Miami Art Week next month.

The artwork, designed by artist Marco Cochrane, was brought to Miami Beach by the Lincoln Road Business Improvement District in partnership with the City of Miami Beach. It is on view until April 2024.

In recent years, Lincoln Road publicly exhibited works by Colombian artist Fernando Botero and French artist Richard Orlinski on its promenade.

“We wanted something that was monumental, that was large and could be a conversation piece that wouldn’t get lost in the breadth of Lincoln Road,” said Lyle Stern, the Lincoln Road BID president. “We also wanted something that signaled a major statement for conversation, and I think we can all agree that this did it.”

Cochrane, an American sculptor, debuted “R-Evolution” at Burning Man in 2015. The sculpture, which was modeled after singer and dancer Deja Solis, was the third sculpture in Cochrane’s series.

Unlike most California girls, “R-Evolution” traveled from the west coast to Miami on two semi trucks. The work features 16 motors inside the chest to make it look like she’s breathing. It was designed to shine brightly during the day and glow with LED lights at night.

Outgoing Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber thanked Stern, the BID and Miami Beach residents for supporting the arts. (Last year, residents voted to approve $159 million in bonds to fund local cultural institutions.)

“The best kind of art is free art, and the very best kind of free art is public art,” Gelber said. “Because you can walk down the street and just see something that gives you a sense of place and a sense of marvel, and that’s what we’re aiming for in our city.”

In between interviews with press, Cochrane stopped to take selfies with some residents who saw the sculpture for the first time. Luz Cevallos, a longtime Miami Beach resident, shook his hand and congratulated him.

“How beautiful,” Cevallos said in Spanish as she took photos on her phone. She enjoys coming to Lincoln Road to walk and said the artwork is a great addition.

“Precious, divine,” she added, describing the sculpture. “There are no words.”

Cochrane said it’s thrilling to have his work seen by residents and visitors, especially during Art Week.

“I really didn’t know it was going to be like this,” he said. “There’s a lot of people here. It’s by far the most people she’s ever been around. I feel like it really fits in here.”

Cochrane said “R-Evolution” was inspired by female empowerment and humanity.

“It’s just about how powerful it is to be — just to be,” he said. “The world is really busy and crazy right now, crazier than ever. I want to remind people that being, just being, is enough.”

Want to check out the “R-Evolution” sculpture? It’s located outside on the 400 block of Lincoln Road, next to the 407 Lincoln Road building and until April.

The town hall, moderated by Tampa Police Chief Lee Bercaw, comes less than two weeks after dozens of residents and business owners spoke at a Tampa City Council meeting to push back against a proposal to close Ybor bars at 1 a.m. for the next six months.

Tuesday night, some community members decried Ybor’s clustered bar scene, but other longtime residents said the neighborhood was still a safe place despite what happened last month.

Many of the two dozen who offered input to Bercaw, police officials and City Council members in attendance asked for more youth outreach efforts and fewer guns on the streets.

Dionne Neal, 53, moved to Tampa in 2019 so that her son Dyante could live with her and enroll in Hillsborough Community College to finish his associate’s degree.

In 2019, the 25-year-old student was punched and killed outside a bar on East Seventh Avenue in Ybor. Neal said she hoped to see a curfew for minors that would keep them off the streets late at night.

Visit Orlando defends work, $100M budget but Orange County plans ‘haircut’

“I don’t want to see another Tay Tay,” she said.

Bercaw said dispatch calls and even the number of guns confiscated in Ybor doubles in the early morning hours compared to those before midnight. He said 34 guns were seized Monday night — 10 of them before midnight and 24 afterward.

“After midnight is the witching hour,” Bercaw said.

On Oct. 29, an argument broke out in the early morning between two groups and shots rang out near the 1600 block of East Seventh Avenue, police say. Two were killed and 16 injured — 15 by gunfire.

While police have not released the victims’ names, citing Marsy’s Law, family members have identified both 14-year-old Elijah Wilson and 20-year-old Harrison Boonstoppel as the two people killed in the incident.

Police arrested Tyrell Phillips, 22, hours after the shooting. Phillips has since pleaded not guilty after prosecutors charged him with one count of second-degree murder with a firearm. Investigators are still looking for at least two additional shooters.

Eric Schiller, the owner of Gaspar’s Grotto, asked Bercaw to stop closing the streets when Ybor businesses close for the night.

“I feel like a broken record because I’ve said this same damn speech about every five years to as many people as I possibly can,” he said.

Bercaw defended the decision to close the streets along Ybor’s bars when those businesses close. He said it allows the large wave of bargoers to exit safely without risk of being hit by a vehicle.

“That’s the million-dollar question is whether to leave the streets open or whether or not to,” Bercaw said. “There’s a sweet spot where we feel like we have to close them when the public is coming out of the nightclubs. The sidewalks can’t handle the volume.”

‘Can you get my son back to me?’ Tampa parents grieve after Ybor shooting

Niki Carraway, 44, of Brandon, said she regularly attends the Police Department’s Town Hall Tuesday events and the turnout Tuesday night was the largest she’d ever seen.

“What’s happening in our community is not a police problem and it’s not a club scene problem,” she said. “This is a community problem. And as a community, we have got to start to come together.”

She urged adults to check in with troubled young people.

Prosecutors file murder charge against Ybor City shooting suspect

“Our youth is our future,” she said. “And if we don’t do something about it, we’re going to lose them.”

Calvin Johnson, the department’s deputy chief of community outreach, said this work starts at home.

“A lot of these shootings is within — like the chief said — about 10 or 15 seconds because somebody has not told their child to take a deep breath when you get upset. They haven’t had that conversation,” he said.

“I think that we’re doing everything that we can possibly do to help reduce gun violence. But what I don’t want you to leave here tonight with was thinking that your involvement doesn’t mean anything. We need you as ambassadors out there.”

That will come later after staff discussions, Orange County Administrator Byron W. Brooks said.

Commissioners said some of Visit Orlando’s 30% share of every tourist-tax dollar could be better spent addressing more pressing county needs like the scarcity of affordable housing or funding other worthwhile projects.

“What we’re talking about is balance,” said Commissioner Mayra Uribe, who first used the “haircut” term.

She suggested chopping as much as $30 million from the agency’s budget, much of which has been used for “global marketing” efforts in U.S. and international markets including Brazil, Canada, Mexico and the United Kingdom.

Visit Orlando gets $96 million. Lynx gets $54 million. That’s messed up | Commentary

The budget, which has grown from about $62 million in 2019 to an estimated $108 million next year, became a focus of debate for the board as it weighed requests for millions in future revenue from the tourist development tax.

The tax, also known as TDT or bed, hotel, resort or tourist tax, is a 6% levy on the cost of a hotel room, home-sharing rental or other short-term lodging in Orange County. Revenues in fiscal year 2022-23, which ended Sept. 30, topped $359 million, shattering the previous mark of $336.3 million set the year before.

Under a county agreement approved in 2019, Visit Orlando’s share of tourist-tax money grew over the past four years from 23% to a 30% cap in 2023, with funds promoting the region’s attractions and luring conventions to town.

Uribe suggested an annual budget between $70 million and $80 million.

Commissioner Emily Bonilla said $75 million a year or 25% of hotel-tax collections — whichever was less.

Casandra Matej, Visit Orlando’s president and CEO, said the agency is important, not only to theme park giants Walt Disney World and Universal Orlando, but to hundreds of smaller attractions, hotels and restaurants that employ 450,000 workers.

She said the agency’s work has helped make Orlando among the most-visited travel destinations in the world — a title it must fight to retain as competition for tourists heats up with old rivals like Las Vegas and new ones such as Dubai.

Matej said Orlando boasts 130,000 hotel rooms with an annual occupancy rate of 75% but still has room to grow.

“What we know is if we can grow the occupancy number even one or two percentage points that could be hundreds of millions of TDT dollars to use within the community,” she said.

After defending the agency’s work inside the chambers, Matej left sounding resigned to likely cuts.

“It is disheartening the fact they want to cut our budget because we are part of the tourism ecosystem and, I think, a very important part of that,” she said. “I think there’s going to be more conversations ahead to understand what their direction, their priorities are but hopefully we were able to share with the community the importance of Visit Orlando.”

Since the summer, commissioners have weighed requests for a $560 million expansion of the Orange County Convention Center, a $400 million upgrade of Camping World Stadium, a $90 million appeal for a sports tower at the University of Central Florida’s football stadium and other projects that are expected to draw tourists to Orlando.

Dozens of people signed up to plead with commissioners to support Visit Orlando, including hospitality workers, many of whom wore orange T-shirts distributed by the agency bearing the message: “When tourism works, so do I.”

Some hoteliers and International Drive executives spoke out against a budget cut for the nonprofit marketing group, citing growing domestic and global competition that threatens to take Central Florida’s title as tourism capital.

“There’s huge investment in tourism in foreign countries right now and they’re going after our visitors,” said Chris Jaskiewicz, president & CEO of ICON Park Orlando, which includes the 400-foot-tall Wheel and other attractions on I-Drive. “When I consider the billions being spent there, I think we should raise Visit Orlando’s marketing budget not cut it.”

But Michael Perkins, board president of the Christian Service Center for Central Florida which serves homeless people, said the county should do all it can “to prevent a crisis of homelessness from impacting our area more than it already is.”

“Let the theme park companies and hotel conglomerates market for themselves,” Perkins said.

shudak@orlandosentinel.com

Before you make it to the top, you can hear Kenny Haelsig.

If you’ve headed up for a nightcap in the Harry Waugh Dessert Room in the last two decades, there’s a chance this man has delighted you. Five nights a week, the piano man provides the soundtrack for the glitziest dessert in Tampa Bay.

Haelsig, 44, draws from a repertoire of over 300 songs from “All of Me” to “Zoot Suit Riot.” If you come up to his piano bench with a song that’s not on his list, chances are he can figure out how to play it on the spot.

This was his first steady restaurant job, and likely his last.

“You don’t get an atmosphere like that anywhere else,” he said. ”I’ve been working here for 23 years, and I hope I stay here for the whole rest of my career.”

A sweet start

When Bern and Gertrude “Gert” Laxer purchased the former Beer Haven property on Howard Avenue in the mid 1950s, they initially considered opening a soft-serve ice cream business, according to Times archives. Back then, the modest block in Hyde Park was also home to a liquor store, barbershop, pharmacy and bookstore.

The restauranteur couple couldn’t find a bank that would lend them money for such a project. So, they pivoted to serving beer and burgers. They would later end up buying the rest of the businesses on the block and transitioning to a steak house.

The entire vibe of the restaurant, starting with its windowless exterior, was designed to surprise patrons and plunge them into a fantasy world far from Tampa. According to the book “Bern’s Rare and Well Done,” the Laxers were inspired by European design.

They scoured auctions for ornate antiques and hired seamstresses to create custom burgundy and gold wall coverings to match the aged steaks and wine on the menu. The lobby, with marble busts and moody red lighting, was once described by the Tampa Tribune as “half-brothel, half-spook house.”

The Laxers would end up spending seven years working on the Harry Waugh Dessert Room, building and rebuilding it seven times according to the Bern’s book. The name comes from a famed British wine expert who inspired the Laxers while hosting them during a trip abroad.

At the time, there was no other restaurant in the country that boasted an entire floor for dessert, and Gert predicted that the dessert room would flop. The Laxers transformed their dust-covered attic by building 48 private booths out of aged redwood wine casks. They papered the walls with enlarged printouts of century-old books on wine. Each booth once had its own television screen to watch the piano player who performed in a lounge area on the same floor.

Manny Furia started playing music at Bern’s in 1967, roaming the dining room with an accordion. He later moved upstairs, behind the piano in the dessert room. While patrons tucked into macadamia nut ice cream or Cheesecake Gert, Furia showed off a repertoire that ranged from Dean Martin to heavy metal. He would later inspire Haelsig.

“He was a great mentor,” Haelsig told the Times in 2008. “He taught me how to interact with people. He helped me become a better entertainer for Bern’s.”

Meet the piano man

Past the private wine cask tables, the luckiest patrons in the dessert room are seated in a semicircle nook. Six curved booths, bathed in low crimson light, point toward Haelsig.

Under two bright spotlights, Haelsig is the focus of the room. He plays gracefully as his audience orders cappuccinos and whiskey flights. He is not distracted by plates of bananas foster and baked Alaska bursting into blue flame beside him.
Haelsig says his musical streak runs in his mom’s side of the family. He inherited his grandmother’s perfect pitch and started learning piano at age 3.

A trip to Bern’s Steak House is actually what kicked off his piano career. A Tampa native, his family would spend special occasions at the restaurant. He still can remember the first time he visited around age 8 or 9. It wasn’t the food that amazed him most, it was the phone next to his table, where he could call the pianist and send in a request.

Haelsig went on to study music at the University of South Florida. At 21, he decided to audition for an open position in the dessert room. He got the job on the first try.

“I enjoy pretty much any song that people want to hear,” he said. “As long as they’re happy, I’m happy.”

On a Wednesday night in October, Haelsig serenaded a young birthday girl wearing a pink crown, watching from behind her mom. He smiled at two little boys who stood on their toes to toss dollar bills into his tip jar. He wished two couples a happy anniversary, reminded countless others to watch their step and have a good night on the way out.

His audience wanted Gershwin and Beethoven, Van Morrison and Tracy Chapman. When two folks on a date night asked for “Ain’t No Sunshine,” a song Haelsig didn’t know well, he pulled it up on YouTube so he could improvise. He got close enough to have the audience toe-tapping and singing along.

“Newsflash,” he quipped after the bridge. “Bill Withers knows.” A red light flickered on the phone behind him. He twisted around to answer it.

“Hello?” He paused. “I’d be more than happy to do that.” Then his hands started moving again.

The opening bars of “Piano Man” filled the room.

Hear Kenny Haelsig at the Harry Waugh Dessert Room

Bern’s Steak House is located at 1208 S Howard Ave, Tampa. Haelsig can be found playing piano upstairs in the Harry Waugh Dessert Room from 7 p.m. to midnight on Sundays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and 7 p.m. to 1 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. The dessert room also has piano music on Thursdays, performed by another pianist. The restaurant is closed on Mondays.

The dessert room accepts reservations between 6 and 6:45 p.m. daily, though walk-ins for dessert are also welcome.

Dinner patrons at Bern’s Steak House and sister restaurant Haven do not need to make additional reservations for the dessert room. For more information, visit this site.

Information was used from the Tampa Bay Times archive as well as the book “Bern’s Rare and Well Done” by David and Christina Laxer.

“We catalogued them as women’s,” Massey said. “But we recently talked to a fashion historian who is convinced one is a men’s suit … The other could have been unisex. A lot of the suits then were androgynous.”

The 1920s are described as roaring, but there was little skin at the beach, the most risqué dance was the foxtrot, and, while liquor — or hooch as it was called back then — was bountiful, one sip put you on the wrong side of the law.

So, is roaring accurate?

Absolutely, Massey said, when compared to the previous Victorian generation. “They were rebelling against the more conservative environments that they grew up with.”

That story is told through the history center’s new exhibit, “Decade of Change: Florida in the 1920s.” It features the music of the time as well as displays about prohibition, Pentecostalism and those sexy androgynous bathing suits.

To understand why shorts and tank tops as beachwear were considered provocative, look to the style from a few years earlier, which sometimes included sleeves.

“In 1917, anything that was two inches above the knee basically defied regulations by the American Association of Park Superintendents,” Massey said. “At some beaches, the police would come and get you.”The younger generation pushed back with less fabric covering their bodies. Men still hid their chests behind tank tops, but women dared to show more leg.

“When everyone was dressed on the beach like that, it became normal,” Massey said, “and there wasn’t much the decency police could do.”

Inspired by the new jazz music hitting the scene, women’s nightlife fashion changed, too.

While the foxtrot seems tame by today’s standards, the upbeat dance music with horns was radical for the 1920s. The old Victorian-style gowns were not conducive for those who wanted to cut a rug. So those were replaced with ballroom gowns, or “glad rags,” as the exhibit calls them.

“If you look at the ballroom attire of the 1920s,” Massey said, “it’s not much different than it is today.”

The history center has an interactive exhibit with dance steps to teach the foxtrot to visitors, but don’t let 1920s-era Pentecostals see you practicing the devil’s steps.

The growth of the Pentecostal movement in the 1920s and their tent revivals was, in part, in reaction to the rebellious ways of that decade, Massey said. By 1926, Florida had over 500,000 Pentecostal church members.

“Holy Rollers … argued that all the historical teachings told in the Bible were accurate,” reads a placard in the exhibit hanging near a model of the type of tents used for worship centers throughout the country. “Many also abstained from drinking alcohol, dancing, going to the movies and engaging in other popular modern amusements.”

But they couldn’t keep nonbelievers from those amusements, especially alcohol, nor could the state and federal governments.

“Florida goes dry early. By 1904, there are 26 dry counties,” Massey said. “Then in 1915, we outlaw saloons. Hillsborough is one of the few counties that is still wet at the time of statewide prohibition in 1919, a year before nationwide prohibition.”

The Tampa Bay area didn’t seem to care. Speakeasies replaced bars and moonshiners in the rural areas delivered the illegal alcohol in jugs, some of which are on display at the history center.

“And a lot of booze that comes to Florida gets smuggled from the Bahamas,” Massey said. “The year prohibition goes into effect, the imports of liquor to the Bahamas increased by 20 times … It’s not as if the Bahamian people decided that they’re going to start hammering down drinks. Almost all of that ends up in Florida.”

Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker issued a ruling that rejected arguments by the university that it should not have to cover the fees. Walker awarded $372,219 in fees to attorneys from two firms, while also tacking on $1,575 in costs.

Political science professors Sharon Austin, Michael McDonald and Daniel Smith filed the lawsuit in 2021 after university officials denied their requests to serve as witnesses for groups fighting a new state elections approved by Gov. Ron DeSantis and the GOP-controlled Legislature. In denying the professors’ requests, university officials said going against the executive branch of the state government was “adverse” to the school’s interests.

The case drew widespread attention, and the university walked back the decision on the professors’ testimony. Then-university President Kent Fuchs said they would be allowed to be paid to testify if they did so on their own time and did not use university resources.

Walker based the decision in part on a preliminary injunction that he issued in January 2022, finding that the university had violated the professors’ First Amendment rights. The university appealed, and the case was ultimately dismissed this year after university officials adopted a revised policy about the disputed issues.

“Plaintiffs received enduring relief in the form of their preliminary injunction, followed by a substantial rule change that eliminated the constitutional issue that prompted plaintiffs to bring this case to vindicate their First Amendment rights in the first place,” Walker wrote last week. “In this way, the case undoubtedly served a public purpose.”

The plaintiffs were represented by attorneys from the Debevoise & Plimpton LLP and Donnelly + Gross LLP law firms.

The U.S. Department of Justice last week filed a 79-page brief at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals as part of a decade-long dispute with Florida about care for children in the state Medicaid program.

U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks in July sided with federal officials and issued an injunction that, in part, requires the state to provide more private-duty nursing to help children live with their families or in their communities, rather than in nursing facilities. The state quickly challenged the ruling at the Atlanta-based appeals court.

In the brief filed last week, Justice Department attorneys said Middlebrooks correctly ruled that the Medicaid program has violated part of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

“The district court properly concluded that Florida is operating its Medicaid system in a manner that leads to the unnecessary institutionalization of children with medical complexity and a serious risk that other such children will be unnecessarily institutionalized,” the brief said.

The case involves children in the Medicaid program with conditions that often require round-the-clock care, including such things as ventilators, feeding tubes and breathing tubes. About 140 children are in nursing homes, while the case also involves a broader number of children considered at risk of going into nursing homes.

Middlebrooks wrote that the Americans with Disabilities Act requires the state to provide services in the most “integrated setting appropriate” to meet the needs of people with disabilities. He also cited a major 1999 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, in a case known as Olmstead v. L.C., that said “undue institutionalization” of people with disabilities is a form of discrimination.

The state is challenging Middlebrooks’ ruling on a series of grounds, but a key issue is part of the injunction that requires the Medicaid program to provide 90% of the private-duty nursing hours that are authorized for the children to help them live in family homes or communities.

In a brief filed in September, attorneys for the state called the injunction a “wildly overbroad and disproportionate response that violates principles of federalism” and called the private-duty nursing requirement “arbitrary and unprecedented.” The brief cited a nursing shortage that the state says would make it impossible to comply with the 90% requirement.