Calling it an oversight, a Broward judge belatedly ordered hit-and-run killer Ryan LeVin to wear an ankle monitor as part of his house arrest at an oceanfront Fort Lauderdale condominium.

Broward Circuit Judge Barbara McCarthy said the ankle bracelet should have been part of the sentence handed down Friday, according to state prosecutor Stefanie Newman, who attended a Monday morning hearing involving the return of LeVin's Porsche.

LeVin, 36, was sentenced to two years of house arrest and 10 years of probation after pleading guilty to two counts of vehicular homicide in the Feb. 2009 incident that killed two British businessmen.

LeVin, scion of a prominent Illinois family that has made a fortune in the jewelry business, reached a confidential money settlement with the victims' families to help avoid a lengthy prison sentence. Without the settlement, which was paid on Friday, the civil case would have started today.

Craig Elford, 39, and Kenneth Watkinson, 48, were in town recruiting employees for their pharmaceutical company. They were killed when LeVin's Porsche jumped the curb on State Road A1A, and struck the men from behind, just steps from their hotel, at 2:30 a.m.

The damaged vehicle was later found abandoned on an Interstate 595 ramp.

The fate of LeVin's Porsche will not be resolved until the case involving Derek Cook, who helped LeVin ditch the car, is adjudicated on Tuesday.

Continue reading "Judge orders ankle monitor for LeVin in hit-run house arrest" »

As I wrote in a blog item last week, massive job terminations have been announced for Broward teachers, with all first and second-year teachers being told their contracts would not be renewed.

All told, some 1,400 classroom instructors will be affected, although some in critical subject areas like math and science will be hired by for the new school year in August.

Meanwhile, in our neighboring counties, cuts are being made outside classrooms.

Palm Beach County and Miami-Dade County schools are trying to spare teachers from job losses. Administrative, clerical and physical plant workers are on the chopping block.

So why is there such a dramatic difference between Broward and the other two counties?

That's the topic for my Thursday print column.

Feel free to share your thoughts.

Meantime, a few words pop to mind when I look at the contrasting situations: Mismanagement and misplaced priorities.

Where does Florida lottery education money go?

That's the question I've heard most often in nine years as a news columnist — other than "do you miss sports?"

Variations include: "How come schools are always crying about their budgets — don't lottery profits go to them?" and "Is the Florida lottery really helping education?"

With layoffs, furloughs and cuts on the horizon for South Florida public schools, I've been hearing those questions again lately.

The answer, like everything in life, is complicated.

Turns out most of the lottery's education money doesn't go to K-12 classrooms, but instead to college scholarships, higher learning institutions and school construction projects.

And the little that makes its way to public schools mostly gets doled out by a rewards system that gives everything to A-rated schools and nothing to struggling ones.

So in a sense, the lottery distribution teaches kids a valuable lesson — namely, that life isn't fair and the haves usually wind up with even more.

Continue reading "Where does Florida Lottery money go? A breakdown" »

As National Teacher Appreciation Week came to a close last Friday, rumors swirled through Broward schools that all first and second year teachers would soon be laid off.

Turned out to be a premature alarm, but not necessarily a false one.

Formal notification of layoffs won't start until next week, according to a union spokesman.

And this year, unlike the last two years, the casualties might be steeper and permanent.

In 2010, 536 teachers got layoff notices in May and June, but nearly all were re-hired when the new school year started.

In 2009, almost 400 teachers got layoff notices before the summer break, and all but around 30 were rehired.

But this year, with no federal stimulus money as a backstop and looser class-size restrictions coming, the budget crunch could hit classroom teachers hard.

"I don't want to be an alarmist, but the number (of layoffs) could be significantly higher and the odds of everybody being rehired is very slim," said Broward Teachers Union spokesman John Ristow. "It's hard for teachers to focus when there's all this discussion of layoffs."

Continue reading "Broward teachers brace for layoffs (again)" »

When it comes to scoping out a Kentucky Derby winner, most years I spend hours studying my Daily Racing Form, scrutinizing Beyer speed figures, Tomlinson ratings, dosage indexes and all the other inscrutable handicapping tools that make horse racing as much fun as advanced trigonometry.

Not this year.

This year, I'm going with a local angle that comes straight from the heart.

Three years ago, horse trainer Kathy Ritvo of Davie was dying of heart disease. She needed a heart transplant to get a new lease on life.

In November 2008, she got one.

And now she's got a heart-pounding Kentucky Derby contender, too.

The name of her colt is Mucho Macho Man, and he's listed at 12-1 in the morning line odds for the Derby, which goes off Saturday at 6:24 p.m. on NBC.

Continue reading "Macho Derby pick: Ritvo-trained colt is one from the heart" »