Florida--Politics and government

This research attempts to delineate the communications patterns
within the Florida House of Representatives of 1967 in its deliberations
concerning the issue of education. To accomplish this goal, a
questionnaire was personally administered or mailed to all 119 members
of the House. A return rate of 51.3% (61) was attained. The bulk
of the questionnaire items were of a sociometric nature.
To map the communications of the House, ten specific hypotheses
were tested. These hypotheses concerned the relative importance
of particular types of legislative actors and groups in the communications
patterns of both parties. Administrative officials were also
included in the analysis. The rationale for these hypotheses
concerned the variables of age and/or size of the respective parties
and were based upon the history of Florida politics. All ten
hypotheses were based upon the contention that, as in other organizations
and decision-making groups, in a legislative body there would
exist a "practiced" communications pattern distinctly different from
the "formal" organizational pattern. The pattern which emerged from the analysis revealed that
members of both parties relied upon a small number of education
experts or specialists for information, regardless of the experts'
formal positions. The Democrats did not consider their party leadership
to be an important information source while the Republican caucus
--and through the caucus, the leadership--was a strong source of
voting cues. With the exceptions of Dade and Pinellas counties,
intra-delegation communications did not appear important in either
party. While Democrats did not rely upon any Republicans for information,
the Republicans did rely upon some Democrats (the experts}.
No geographical splits were apparent in Democratic communications.
The Pinellas Republicans were somewhat isolated from east coast
Republicans in the information flow.
The communications pattern between House members and
administrative officials focused upon cabinet members. Republican
Governor Kirk was most generally listed as an information source
by Republicans while the Democrats relied for information upon
Superintendent of Public Instruction Christian. Legislative staffs
were identified as information sources by members of both parties.

This thesis examines the impact of electoral forces on party unity scores among Florida's Democratic congressional delegation from 1972 to 1992. The impacts of in-migration of non-southern whites, immigration of Hispanics, realignment into the Republican Party, and the enfranchisement of Black voters were analyzed. The increased party unity scores among Florida's Democratic Representatives was determined to be primarily the result of in-migration and realignment which resulted in a smaller, but more homogeneous Democratic delegation, a trend likely to continue.

The purpose of this project was to determine the legal powers
and duties of state political party chairmen, as enumerated in party
by-laws and state election laws. The thesis is divided into six chapters, the most extensive
of which contains empirical tests of twenty-six hypotheses pertaining
to eleven groups of items organized from 235 judge-evaluated items.
The groups are: Qualifications, method of election and term of office; Appointive powers; Removal powers; Vacancy-filling powers; Voting; and
Functions of the chairman vis-a-vis the state committee, executive
committee, subcommittees, local committees, state conventions, local
conventions and elections. There are also chapters which analyze the 235 evaluated items,
the effectiveness of the by-laws and election laws, and the relationship
be tween the party scores and selected political and demographic
variables. The final chapter recapitulates the major findings and
conclusions. Ten appendices contain data utilized in the study.

Growth management grew as a concept and policy objective in the 1970s and 1980s. The interrelationships of the state and local governments changed when Florida developed growth policy and local government implemented the policy. Nine mandatory elements to be included in a local comprehensive plan and seven mandatory concurrency elements of the 1985 Florida Growth Management Act were expensive elements for local government to implement. As a result, the issue of funding the impacts of growth drove the growth management agenda, leaving the question of compliance. The question is: Did Florida local government comply with the transportation concurrency element of the Florida Growth Management Act? This dissertation analyzed five Florida counties and two Georgia counties to determine whether there was compliance with their respective state transportation policies. The study purposely looked at counties in different stages of growth to determine if the transportation requirements of the Florida Growth Management Act and the Georgia State Planning Act affected local budgets. Transportation is the most expensive element in local government budgets. Development orders would cease without the road capacity to carry the impact of proposed developments, making transportation the linchpin to state growth policies. A visual analysis and a multiple regression analysis were used to evaluate local government compliance with state transportation policy. A two-stage numerical evaluation was used for the visual analysis. The analysis looked for a slope change, a break in the trend, or both, after the impact of the intervention of the interrupted time series. A multiple regression analysis calculated the regression coefficient for a before and after dummy variable. The multiple regression removed the effects of population, interest rates, and road expenditure variables and isolated the effect of the dummy variable to determine local government compliance.