Can Florida develop a

new revenue stream?

Real Issues, In-depth Answers Have you ever noticed that every election cycle many of the issues are the same issues year after year? You’d think if we elected good candidates they’d solve them and move on. Considering most candidates only run on one or two issues, we could have all the problems solved and live happily ever after.Okay, it’s not that simple. Not everybody agrees how certain issues should be solved. And there are certain issues maybe the parties don’t really want to solve because they help “rally the troops” and get out the vote. I’m running for office because I believe we can do better. There are four major issues that are dividing us and going unsolved because current representatives are allowing lobbyists to write legislation that meets their needs and not the people’s needs. Issues such as education need not be dragged on for decades. Everybody wants a high-quality educational system, both

sides want accountability to make sure our children are learning and our teachers are doing a good job. Everything else is divided on how to accomplish those goals. Whether it’s through standardized testing, penalties for not accomplishing the goals, rewards for doing so, highly defined curriculum, vouchers or charter schools to give kids and parents other choices, it is (at least argued) to make sure children have the best education available for them. I believe we can solve this one and inside I explain how. Another major issue that just continues to go unsolved is property insurance. Not only has it been a problem for at least ten years, but it is about to get a lot worse. If you live in a condominium, your association is about to suffer a huge shock. I talk about why property insurance rates are as expensive as they are and what we can do to finally turn this problem around.

Have you ever thought about how Florida can continue to provide essential services like education, law enforcement, healthcare and infrastructure development and still keep taxes low? I have. I explain inside. And, of course, the big issue is about jobs - getting people back to work and minimizing the amount of time they are out of work. In addition to the ways we can create jobs, I have a proposal that can help get a lot of people back to work within eight weeks of losing their job while they’re collecting unemployment. It’s something I am adapting from elsewhere in the country and I think it’s exciting. Real issues and real in-depth answers. I know this is unusual for a campaign. But hopefully, if you have read this far, you will appreciate that I am not just running for the sport of it. We can do better and I will.

frus·trat·ed/ (Adjective:) Feeling or expressing distress and annoyance, esp. because of inability to change or achieve something.

Frustrated withPolitics?

INSIDE:Issues For 2012

Why Can’t Florida Move Forward?

Politics Dirty Little Tricks.

What’s Citizen’s Up To?

How to get people back

to work!What’s really

up with education reform?

Why home owners

insurance costs so much.

Make No Mistake, This is aPolitical Ad Every election cycle candidates spend a small fortune on mailers and campaign literature. In fact, when you get a full color, glossy mailer in the mail from someone running for the State House, chances are the candidate spent as much as $20-25,000 just for that one mailer. Yet, they are usually designed to tell you as little as possible about what that candidate stands for or what ideas they actually have to make Florida a better place. Why?

To make generic statements such as: “I’m tough on crime”, or “I support education”, or “I’m rated 100% conservative” or to cite lobbyists that endorse them is safer than actually talking about their ideas or the votes they cast that they know aren’t popular. Or maybe they just really don’t have any new ideas.

Rather than waste money on a high-gloss mailer, I thought it would be far more honest and informative to use this lower cost news print format and give you real insight into the ideas I have to solve Florida’s problems.

So, as the campaign season plays out and you are inundated with mailers, take an educated look at what they are really saying - or what they’re not. And tell me what you think about my ideas. Email me at:

carlzimmermanncampaign@yahoo.com

PRST STD

ECRW

SSU

.S. POSTA

GE

PAID

EDD

M R

ETAIL

LOC

AL

POSTA

L CU

STOM

ERState House District 65

Tarpon SpringsEast Lake

Palm HarborCrystal Beach

DunedinCountryside

The Problem: Florida has the highest rate of long term unemployment in the country according to Brookings’ Hamilton Project, which crunched Census data. And while that has improved some since the study was done in January, it is the area where we need to focus on to turn this economy around. Fifty three percent of the jobless were out of work longer than six months. And the longer you are out, the less job ready you are and the lower your confidence is to become re-employed. Many are forced to retire early putting an additional strain on a stressed social security system. Not to mention that if you don’t work, you can’t help in growing the economy.

The Solution: The Governor of Iowa recently rolled out a jobs program that involves labor, education, certification and business partnerships, that can be merged with current programs like WorkNet Pinellas. Here are some aspects: Florida currently has Workforce Florida that helps coordinate several incentives to businesses, (most of them Federal),to assist and encourage business to hire, but Iowa’s program goes much further and its mission is much more targeted. I quote: Number one: “People who collect unemployment...participate in ...internship opportunities as a way to build their skills while they look for a permanent job.” They are matched with firms looking to hire and willing to provide training. “The unemployed workers work at the participating company 24 hours a week for up to eight weeks while receiving their unemployment benefits.” In addition if they qualify for federal grants, the employer only pays half the salary and the grant pays the other half. Should the employer and the employee find a match, the person is hired and off of unemployment in a short eight weeks and possibly in a new career. “During the employee hiring and placement process, the National Career Readiness Certificate is (used as) an effective measure of

foundational skills.” Upon losing a job, every person interested would be given a skills test as an assessment of their own natural abilities and areas that they may boost. “The N.C. R. Certificate program certifies critical skills in applied mathmatics, locating information and reading for information. All three of these areas are critical to a successful STEM” (science, technology, engineering, mathmatics) workforce. Number two: More certification programs at local colleges like SPC or independent schools need to be promoted and developed that are aligned with current employment needs. Programs that offer certification in very short periods of time and can refocus quickly with the marketplace. These would not be long-term programs necessarily designed to be developed and kept for years, but instead quick, get-up-to-speed programs designed to take a group of people and get them re-employed in jobs that are available now. I understand not everybody wants to change careers. I also understand that many people that lose their jobs are highly skilled and may be the best in their field. None of this would ever be to force a person into a job they do not want. In other words, benefits would not be lost to the person that wishes to pursue their search in their own way. Instead, this is s service to redirect people to jobs they are suited for quickly. Years ago a person I know dearly was working as a clerk for a county. She tooka test that meaured aptitude and skills. The test indicated she might be very successful as a computer programmer, a field she never ever considered. She entered a training program and graduated a few months later doubling her salary. Being good at something is the fuel that drives your success, the success of the company, and the success of Florida. Losing a job is devastating. It is always taken personally and it takes a horrible toll on the person and ultimately the economy. Getting people back to work and keeping them employed will always dominate my thoughts in every decision I make.

4 Reasons Florida Jobs, Unemployment

The Problem: Our education system has problems. It’s not a secret. Teachers agree with that. Despite the FCAT, remedial reading classes, rigorous curriculums, legislation that demands higher math classes, charter schools, vouchers, educational think tanks, and even threats of more or longer school days, things keep getting worse. Yet, all the think tanks and the legislature seems to come up with is to demand more, threaten repercussions, hold teachers accountable in artificial ways so they can be fired or to privatize education through charters, virtual school and private schools. The real problem is that the 170-year-old public school model that is used by public schools as well as most private schools, is obsolete and it’s time we reinvent it. We have been delivering education the same way since compulsory public education began in 1840. Students come to school to learn to read, write, add, subtract and become good citizens. The teacher lectures and the students listen. That was more than sufficient when people grew their own food and didn’t have to worry about selling their skills and talents in order to survive. But the world has changed. Today, we want everyone to go to college. If you can’t afford it, there are subsidies; if you work hard, there are scholarships. And if nothing else, there are loans. Yet only about 20 percent of the students who enter ninth grade will get a four-year degree. Only about 20 percent of them will work in the field they get their degree in. For the 80 percent of students who won’t get a four-year degree, what has high school prepared them for? The vast majority have no practical business experience. They don’t know the psychology of sales. They don’t know bookkeeping, manufacturing, nursing, mechanics, management, advertising, computer repairs, financial planning or just about any other field where someone can make a living. High school has prepared them to either go to college or go fish.The problem lies with the leaders of this state and this country that don’t understand education and are driven

by outside influence. Every teacher I know works hard and wants students to succeed. But, the system is broken. We need to take a fresh look at what we want to accomplish for our children, what will engage them in the process and what will help them succeed even if they don’t go to college. We still need to turn out ethical citizens who can read, write and do the math they need to be successful. To compete internationally we don’t need everyone to be the best engineer, or mathematician - only the cream of the crop. We need to prepare the rest for life. Rather than move all students that score less than average in reading to remedial classes, leaving them no room to take the electives, we need to use the electives that capture their interest to help improve their reading. The legislature believes mandating higher-level math courses will improve education: Yet, more than 90 percent of the people in this country will never use math beyond basic algebra. Half of those who do are engineers and scientists, who seem to innately seek out that information. The rest may have failed math in high school, but learn it on the job in weeks as tile layers, carpenters and builders. Why are they able to learn this knowledge on the job but not in class? Because “on the job” is applied education. It is wonderful to enjoy literature, to know how to figure out the height of a building by the length of the shadow it casts, or to understand action versus reaction, but it means so much more when it is applied in a meaningful way to the student.

The Solution: Align our goals and expectations to careers. Examine the business needs that exist in the area and use partnerships and internships more. Subjects like reading writing and math should be taught in a more intergrated way. Academies are working examples. There are engineering academies that require advanced math, bio engineering academies, agriculture academies, criminal justice academies, journalism academies, theatrical academies, etc. They use

Dear Florida Guardian, I am sorry to inform you your current Florida legislature has failed miserably.

SUBJECT: Property Insurance GRADE: COMMENTS: Doesn’t seem to grasp the subject. Shows little understanding on what has caused the problem. Copies all their answers from the insurance companies.

SUBJECT: Education GRADE: COMMENTS: Continually does everything in their power to discredit public education while funneling more money to private business. Doesn’t understand how to help improve education. Needs to do their homework.

SUBJECT: Unemployment GRADE: COMMENTS: Has the highest rate of long term unemployment in the country with 53% out of work for longer than six months. Their only solution seems to be to be to cut taxes for big business and hold their breath.

SUBJECT: Budget GRADE: COMMENTS: Brags about cutting taxes and “making sacrifices” to services, but the budget continues to grow and so do the perks to the biggest lobbying groups.

We Can Do Better and I will.

Report Card

Education

the students’ avocational interests to add meaning to the knowledge and skills they need. This works just as well for college-bound students as it does for the other 80 percent. They can sample a field and get the starter skills they need to enter the workforce in a career should they not succeed in college. However, as long as we keep holding schools acountable for tests like the FCAT and spend 28 to 40 days per year administering state mandated tests, we can never have the freedom or time to genuinely make the change. So the second part of the solution is to give public schools the same freedom many charter and private schools have. Allow them to petition to exempt out of the new restrictive and constricting standards and

evaluations to truly reinvent. It is amazing the results you get when you empower people to do it. That’s not to say there shouldn’t be ways to evaluate if students are learning and teachers are doing their job. It’s actually so simple a fifth grader could do it. Every course should start with a pretest to measure how much the student knows. The teacher then teaches from a defined curriculum of information and skills that the state deems necessary for that class, and then the students take a final post test measuring how much of the curriculum they have learned.It also measures the effectiveness of the teacher.It truly is that simple. Forget all the other noise out there.

You might not be aware that Citizen’s Insurance cannot raise your rates by more than 10%. Tell that to the numerous homeowners that recently saw their mitigation inspection discounts disappear. Or the condominium complexes that have seen their rates more than double. I know of one that went from $70,000 per year to $180,000. Why is this happening and how do they get away with it? Governor Scott wants to purge policies from Citizen’s. His thinking apparently is if it’s too expensive at Citizen’s, people

will go to private companies. The problem is private companies don’t want them. In order to spur competition we need to first have viable suitors ready. They’re not. So to get around the 10% cap, all Citizen’s has to show is that there has been a change in the status of the insured. The condominium complex I mentioned hasn’t done anything to change its status, but an inspector recently came in and found wood attached to the metal roof on the third floor. This has been there since original construction in the mid-eighties, but it

was enough. In addition, Citizen’s is now requiring considerably more paperwork of the independent agents and rejecting many of their mitigation reports. They are also requiring the agents submit all paperwork within 7 days instead of 25. Why? The burden has increased so significantly that some are considering getting out of the business entirely. Another example of a misguided attempt to fix the problem that will instead make matters worst.

Pol. Adv. paid for and approved by Carl Zimmermann, Democrat, for Florida House, Dist. 65

Is Citizen’s New Policy: Charge More, Insure Less? Can you contribute? Visit my Website: www.carlzimmermann.com

Please Be Prepared For the Lies and Dirty Tricks

Property Insurance Budget

In 2008 I ran against Peter Nehr and got 49% of the vote. And despite being a Democrat in the most Republican district in the state, I would have won, except:. About one month before election day a $300,000.00 TV and radio campaign was launched against me claiming I supported a state income tax (a lie), that I thought taxes should be raised (also a lie), and that I wanted new government entitlement programs, another lie). Sounds absurd, right? Who would even believe something that absurd. But people did. And it turned the election. In addition, the day before election day

an automated “robo” call went out that was designed to hang up on everybody that answered their phone and then call them back several times and do the same thing each time. They chose the telephone number of my cell phone to be displayed on caller I.D. People began calling me irate thinking that I was calling them and hanging up. For hours my phone rang off the hook with angry callers. I couldn’t explain to them that this was a political prank designed to have voters angry at me. I filed a complaint with the sheriff’s office, but lost the election. So, I ask that you be prepared for more

of the same. I was able to scramble and do a few last minute things to try and answer the attacks, but too little and too late. That’s the way they plan it. And to set the record straight, I do not support a state income tax and never have. Nor do I support raising taxes. In fact, unlike my opponent who raised taxes through increased fees for everything from driver’s licenses to registration tags to how much you have to pay for public records, I want to reduce fees. And I do not want any new entitlements.

The Problem: Florida currently has a budget that hovers just under $70 billion. Most of that comes from sales tax. While property tax is another source, a lot of that goes back to the local government. Florida’s number one source for sales tax is tourism and we need to protect that. The state of Alaska, which some might argue is on the opposite side of destination places to live compared to Florida, currently receives over 90% of their revenue from land leases. In fact, rather than getting their revenue from the people, they pay their citizens a dividend. They also currently have a surplus of $12 billion dollars to do other things. And next year, the reserves will be replenished. Their money comes from land leases and while I’m not suggesting we allow drilling, (remember our number one source of revenue is tourism), we do need to refocus our thoughts on how the state collects money - without placing an additional burden on its citizens (unlike road toll leasing and expansion of gambling proposals which would cost Floridians more).

The Solution: Since NASA has taken a step back at Cape Canaveral and private space exploration has begun, we should become the center of the universe for private space exploration. Recently the first private mission successfully took off from there and that company is looking to expand. However, a massive cottage industry is in the process of starting and everyone of them should be near Cape Canaveral. And we shouldn’t have to give away the farm with tax breaks to attract them. Business goes where it is best for them, not where it is cheapest. If that were the case, everyone would be in Iowa. Instead, many choose New York, the most expensive real estate. Not to mention we have nearly 9000 highly experienced space workers ready to be hired. Every region of Florida has something special to offer. Tampa Bay is one of the leading bio-engineering centers in the country. Florida needs to market these areas and aggressively help them grow.

Can’t Move Forward

Dear Florida Guardian, I am sorry to inform you your current Florida legislature has failed miserably.

SUBJECT: Property Insurance GRADE: COMMENTS: Doesn’t seem to grasp the subject. Shows little understanding on what has caused the problem. Copies all their answers from the insurance companies.

SUBJECT: Education GRADE: COMMENTS: Continually does everything in their power to discredit public education while funneling more money to private business. Doesn’t understand how to help improve education. Needs to do their homework.

SUBJECT: Unemployment GRADE: COMMENTS: Has the highest rate of long term unemployment in the country with 53% out of work for longer than six months. Their only solution seems to be to be to cut taxes for big business and hold their breath.

SUBJECT: Budget GRADE: COMMENTS: Brags about cutting taxes and “making sacrifices” to services, but the budget continues to grow and so do the perks to the biggest lobbying groups.

We Can Do Better and I will.

Report Card

F

F

F

F

the students’ avocational interests to add meaning to the knowledge and skills they need. This works just as well for college-bound students as it does for the other 80 percent. They can sample a field and get the starter skills they need to enter the workforce in a career should they not succeed in college. However, as long as we keep holding schools acountable for tests like the FCAT and spend 28 to 40 days per year administering state mandated tests, we can never have the freedom or time to genuinely make the change. So the second part of the solution is to give public schools the same freedom many charter and private schools have. Allow them to petition to exempt out of the new restrictive and constricting standards and

evaluations to truly reinvent. It is amazing the results you get when you empower people to do it. That’s not to say there shouldn’t be ways to evaluate if students are learning and teachers are doing their job. It’s actually so simple a fifth grader could do it. Every course should start with a pretest to measure how much the student knows. The teacher then teaches from a defined curriculum of information and skills that the state deems necessary for that class, and then the students take a final post test measuring how much of the curriculum they have learned.It also measures the effectiveness of the teacher.It truly is that simple. Forget all the other noise out there.

The Problem: Remember when homeowner’s insurance was under $300 per year? Now it’s more than my property tax. So, what happened? If you said hurricane Andrew, you’re wrong. Many people believe it was Andrew and other hurricanes that caused the steep rise in rates and slashing of coverage. While they contributed, it was something else that set it in motion -sinkholes. Beginning in 1981 insurance companies have been required by law to cover damage caused by sinkholes. The idea was sound, but the consequences were unexpected. At that time most of the companies selling insurance in Florida were national companies - respectable companies with a long history - Allstate, State Farm, Metroplolitan, etc. They all based the language used in their policies on the language used by ISO, (Insurance Service Office), in New Jersey. But when Florida mandated sinkhole coverage, it changed the risk model and made it different than the product they were selling in other states - thereby making it difficult to assign a risk model. Sometime after that the insurance companies began thinking about separating themselves from their “riskier” Florida properties and came up with the idea of creating separate Florida companies known as “pup” companies. They would carry the same name as the parent company, but protect the parent company from the risk. This was denied by Florida because by doing so, the rates in Florida would be based on the much smaller pool of just Floridians instead of the whole country which would cause rates to go up. And then Florida was hit by Hurricane Andrew in 1992, a category 5 storm that destroyed Homestead. Insurance companies took a major hit and decided that Florida was too risky to continue doing business in unless they could separate their Florida risk from the national risk. In what some say was the last resort, Florida agreed in 1996 to allow the “pup” companies to begin. And the rates began to rise. Because we have less people (than the whole country) paying

in to cover the losses (the pool), the rates would have to rise. Many smaller companies simply left Florida. Others got out of property insurance. At first it didn’t seem too bad. Most people had no idea why their company was now called State Farm Florida or Allstate Florida. But as the rates continued to rise, and the fear of more hurricanes threatened, and the number of sinkhole claims kept climbing, insurance companies purged their higher risk properties leaving many people with no company that would insure them. That paved the way for Citizen’s Insurance. Originally it was known as the insurer of last resort. But with options for many being non-existent, Citizen’s grew. At first their rates were required to be higher than every other company so as not to compete. Eventually, that was dropped and Citizen’s grew into the largest company. Insurance company’s protect their assets by buying reinsurance. They literally purchase insurance to cover themselves against the losses they are insuring you for. If they get hit with big losses, reinsurance covers them. Once they became “pup” companies, they could buy reinsurance from the parent company and effectively funnel all their profits to the parent company as payment for reinsurance. When Charlie Christ became governor he realized that the high cost of reinsurance was driving up rates so he pushed for a law that Florida would sell reinsurance cheaper and that all companies had to buy reinsurance from Florida. There were two problems with this: Florida didn’t have the funds to cover a large loss - thereby exposing all of us to footing the bill through special assessments if that happened - and second, it didn’t require the companies to drop the reinsurance with their parent company. As a result, the cost to companies went up and they asked for rate increases of up to 42%. On one hand they were protecting themselves. On the other hand they were playing a shell game.In 2006, in an attempt to create competition, the legislature passed SB1980. That allowed virtually anybody with a minimum amount

of money to become an insurance company. One of the first was Royal Palm Insurance started by former senator Burt Lockwood. On its first day of business Royal Palm opened up by assuming 115,894 policies from Allstate (and another 120,000 a few months later) for a total net billing of $513,547,000 by the end of 2007. This was such a windfall business that 25 companies were in business within two years. And the former senator is on the board at least two. While the start up companies do fill a gap, they tend to be very small operations. (The joke was they had an answering machine and a fax.) They are not only likely to go bankrupt in the event of a big storm, they have little to no claims adjusters making state dependant on adjusters from State Farm to carry most of that weight.

The Solution: Competition usually brings down prices, but we need strong compa-nies that have capital behind them and those companies are only found out of state. Florida is the fourth largest state in the country so the market is desireable. The risk just needs to be more definable. Insur-ance companies work using mod-els and the two risks that present problems for them are sinkhole and wind. In 2008 I stressed the need to remove sinkhole from the basic policy, but not to take it away and leave people unprotected. Instead, to combine it with wind and expand the wind pool state-wide. If we do that now we can support it with the nearly 12 billion dollars the CAT (catestrophic fund) has combined with the surplus Citizen’s has. The remaining policy is a standard ISO model policy and outside compa-nies would flood the market. However, Florida should only allow national (parent) companies to sell these thereby ending the need for “pup” companies. And finally, Florida should get out of the reinsurance business, a venture none of us can afford.

Pol. Adv. paid for and approved by Carl Zimmermann, Democrat, for Florida House, Dist. 65

Can you contribute? Visit my Website: www.carlzimmermann.com

I’m a teacher, leader, business owner, a husband, a dad

and your neighbor for 27 years

Teacher of the Year - Six Times•

State Journalism Teacher of the Year, 2003•

27 Years Teaching TV/Journalism/Film•

carlzimmermanncampaign@yahoo.comPol. Adv. paid for and approved by Carl Zimmermann, Democrat, for Florida House, Dist. 65

Recommended by The Tampa Tribune in 2008•

Recommended by The St. Petersburg Times, 2008•

Award Winning Screenplay Writer•

10 Years With New York Ad Agencies•

We raised our own kids with a very simple motto: The most important thing in life is to be a good person. And I live by that. As a teacher, it has always been most important to me that I have a positive influence in the lives of my students. Have I taught them what my course requires? Always. Countless former students now work in the business including my own daughter, a reporter/anchor for the CBS affiliate in Sioux City, Iowa. But sticking by my students, believing in them and understanding that they will make mistakes is what they thank me for later. My life has given me a wide berth of experience. I worked in the New York advertising world for 10 years and helped over 100 businesses

find success. As a copywriter my job was to identify the consumer benefit for whatever I was hired to promote. As an account executive it was to find creative solutions to corporate problems - to think outside the box. That type of thinking is one of the core differences between me and many other people that seek to represent you in solving the problems we face in Florida. Take a careful look at many of the so-called solutions in the past and they are always driven by one thing -how is the group they are representing going to profit more. And the group is rarely the people of Florida. My client will be you. My solutions are always for the people. Not that the corporate entities aren’t given a fair shake, of

course they must be. But at the end of the day, we need to find real solutions that solve the problems. I’ve been through some tough times in my life, I nearly died at age nine from a silver-dollar size hole in my head from a construction accident, my parents divorced when I was thirteen and I had colon cancer at 39. And yet, I am thankful for every one of those experiences. Who we were defines who we are. I have been responsible, steady, dependable and innovative. I have won the backing of the major newspapers in the past because I come up with solutions. Give me a shot at solving the ones we face now. Twenty nine years ago my wife gave me a shot and that has worked out great.