Florida
Former Florida mayor seeks return to city commission
His goals include making Stuart’s economy one based on tourism.
MARTIN COUNTY — Sensing chaos in the city, former Stuart Mayor Merritt Matheson has filed to run again for a seat on the City Commission.
So far, he has one opponent: Johnny Cealmov.
Matheson served as mayor from December 2021 to August 2022, when former Mayor Christopher Collins defeated him by a slim margin of 95 votes or 2.6% in the election that year. He began his service as a city commissioner in 2018.
“I’m running to bring back integrity, respectful, responsible leadership and stability to the city of Stuart,” Matheson said. “I’d like to stop the chaos that we’ve seen in the city.”
Collins, in his first term on the commission, quit as mayor April 30 to run for Martin County Commission. Stuart Vice Mayor Sean Reed automatically becomes mayor.
The chaos includes going through four city managers in six months and departures of high-level staff, such as the finance director, as well as other finance department staff, Matheson said.
The chaos also includes, he said, the unnecessary lawsuits the city has faced and others it lost, such as one with Polk Street Hotels. It includes, too, the severance paid to former City Manager Michael Mortell, who was fired without cause.
The city remains out of compliance with Senate Bill 180, a state law prohibiting changes to land development regulations between August 1, 2024, and October 1, 2027, because it’s still implementing the changes it made after August 1, 2024.
The state, Matheson said, has reacted to the chaos by taking away Stuart’s ability to govern itself — by enacting laws like SB 180 — which made changes to Stuart’s land development regulations null and void.
What prompted Matheson to run?
Nothing in particular prompted him to run for City Commission this time, he said. The chaos certainly played a part.
Collins’ push to use Martin County Forever funds to buy a historic school building was another reason, Matheson said. Martin County Forever funds are meant for improvements to water quality and to conserve environmentally sensitive land.
Stuart is getting about $2 million a year for 10 years from the Martin County Forever initiative that voters passed in 2024.
“The best way to manage growth in Martin County is grow our conservation land,” Matheson said. He helped lead the work to get the Martin County Forever initiative passed and he sits on the Martin County Environmental Lands Oversight Committee, which helps direct the use of those funds.
What he would like to accomplish
Calling himself a “slow-growth proponent,” Matheson said he follows the law and understands property rights, too, he said.
“The job of a commissioner, more often than not, is choosing the best of two bad outcomes,” Matheson said.
He would like to improve the city’s infrastructure, such as sidewalks, bike lanes and landscaping. And he wants to find solutions to ease traffic. He’s a proponent of other ways of getting around, which might include a water taxi, for example.
And he would like Stuart to become a tourism-based economy, rather than a growth-based economy, he said.
Keith Burbank is a watchdog reporter for TCPalm, usually covering Martin County. He can be reached at keith.burbank@tcpalm.com.
Florida
US appeals court strikes down key part of Florida law restricting campus race and gender discussions
A federal appeals panel struck down a significant chunk of Ron DeSantis’s so-called Stop Woke Act on Tuesday, delivering another rebuff to the Republican Florida governor’s efforts to stifle free speech in higher education.
In a scathing order, judges of the 11th circuit court of appeal said by a 2-1 majority that the higher education component of the law – which prevented college and university professors teaching or sharing thoughts on concepts of race and gender – breached the free expression rights guaranteed under the US constitution’s first amendment.
It accused the state of “puppeteering”: making the educators their mouthpieces by controlling what they can say or teach.
“Because the government pays the professors’ salaries, Florida says, their speech is the state’s speech,” Britt Grant, a Donald Trump-appointed judge who wrote the majority opinion, said. “Emphatically no.
“Florida’s salary-for-speech rule is a breathtaking assertion of power to ban unpopular ideas from public discourse in the very places the state’s own statutes recognize as centers of inquiry – classrooms where students are trusted to puzzle through ideas that are good and bad, easy and hard, ideally getting ever closer to the truth.”
It added: “The ideas Florida targets may well be noxious. Or maybe not. Either way, in this context the first amendment trusts students to figure it out for themselves.”
The ruling removes a flagship element of DeSantis’s second-term agenda aimed at perceived leftwing ideology on Florida’s state-run higher education campuses. Passed in 2022, the Stop Woke Act, formally branded the Individual Freedom Act, restricted how race and gender could be taught in schools and colleges, and discussed in the workplace.
Tuesday’s decision mirrors the same appeals court’s 2024 ruling blocking the workplace provision of the law on the grounds that the state was attempting, unconstitutionally, to recharacterize protected free speech as conduct it could ban.
It reinforces a district court’s November 2022 injunction against implementation of the law at Florida’s colleges and universities – and represents a considerable victory for civil rights and free speech advocacy groups that launched the legal action.
The lawsuit’s named plaintfill – LeRoy Pernell, a professor at Florida A&M University’s college of law – welcomed the ruling.
“We are thrilled the court has stopped the erasure of topics that have real implications for our students, allowing them to learn, discuss, and develop tools for combatting the complex issue of racism in our country without being gagged by those who would dictate that only state-approved thought may be promoted,” he said in a statement.
Jin Hee Lee, director of strategic initiatives at the Legal Defense Fund, said the Stop Woke Act was an “egregious” effort by the DeSantis administration to try to force the public higher education system in Florida to adopt the viewpoints of those in power.
“It is no coincidence that this state law aimed to censor the perspectives of Black people and LGBTQ+ people, the very same people who are currently under attack,” Lee said.
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“With this decision, the federal appeals court has made clear that Florida cannot actively erase their history of discrimination or their lived experiences without running afoul of our constitution.”
Carrie McNamara, staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, also hailed the ruling as a victory for free speech.
“By upholding the district court’s ruling, the 11th circuit ensured that our system of higher education is guided by the principle of free speech, not government censorship,” she said.
“Our classrooms are meant to be rooms of curiosity, creativity, and learning. When we stifle this kind of critical thinking, we risk losing our education system as we know it.”
There was no immediate reaction to the ruling from the DeSantis administration or Florida’s unelected attorney general, James Uthmeier, the governor’s former chief of staff elevated by DeSantis in February 2025.
Florida
Miami ranks among top U.S. cities for debt collection calls as Florida places near top, study finds
Miami residents are among the Americans most likely to receive debt collection calls, according to a new study examining Federal Trade Commission complaint data.
The NumberBarn analysis ranked Miami fourth among the nation’s largest metro areas for debt collection complaints after adjusting for population. Florida also ranked fourth among all states for debt collection complaints per capita.
Nationwide, consumers filed more than 471,000 debt collection complaints with the FTC in 2025, more than twice the total reported a year earlier. Nearly 47% of those complaints described collectors as abusive, threatening or harassing.
Researchers caution that not every complaint involves a legitimate debt collector. Many consumers reported they believed the debt was inaccurate or that the calls were part of a scam.
Florida ranked behind Georgia, Texas and Louisiana for debt collection complaints per capita, underscoring the growing number of Floridians reporting issues with collection calls.
Among major metropolitan areas, Atlanta ranked first, followed by Dallas and Houston, with Miami placing fourth nationally. Miami also ranked among the five metro areas with the highest overall volume of complaints filed during 2025.
Researchers say the sharp increase in complaints may reflect rising household debt, more aggressive collection activity and greater public awareness of the FTC’s complaint system.
The study found Americans between ages 30 and 39 filed the largest number of complaints last year, followed by those ages 40 to 49 and 20 to 29, groups often managing mortgages, credit card balances, student loans and other major financial obligations.
Tips for consumers
Experts recommend taking several steps if you receive repeated debt collection calls:
- Ask the collector to provide written verification of the debt.
- Never give out sensitive financial information until you’ve confirmed the caller is legitimate.
- Learn your protections under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.
- Report abusive or suspicious calls to the FTC.
- Consider using call-blocking features available through your phone carrier or a trusted app.
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