TAMPA BAY TIMES

TALLAHASSEE — Florida leads the nation in new HIV infections, but it’s not being treated as a crisis by Gov. Rick Scott or the state’s top health officer, Dr. John Armstrong.

As the disease has spread, Scott and Armstrong have imposed four years of personnel cuts in the Department of Health that have shrunk the size of county health departments.

State lawmakers are now asking whether the spending decisions have produced a sicker population in a state where HIV infections have risen each year since 2012 as they’ve declined across the country. Continue reading…