Debates over immigration got the year underway and gambling was the focus as fall turned to winter for Florida’s leaders.

Meanwhile, transportation -- ports, trains and rocket ships -- and the potential economic impacts tied in with them stood out across the state, filled the Internet, TV, and even the once-dominant means of communication: newspapers.

But when it all came down to it, the top business item was the seemingly single-minded focus of the governor: jobs.

Slow, steady private-sector job growth.

Since January, the state has gained 120,200 jobs, with the unemployment rate dropping nearly 10 percent.

Still high at 10 percent, Florida has seen nine private-sector jobs for every government job cut, according to the Department of Economic Opportunity.

NASA and the Space Coast

Manned missions from Cape Canaveral came to an end -- officials say it's temporary -- with the July launch of the space shuttle Atlantis.
For Florida’s Space Coast, the bittersweet launch marks the end of some 9,000 NASA-related jobs.

A glimmer of hope was cast on the space industry as Gov. Rick Scott and other elected officials fueled enthusiasm for a new private venture expected to return 550 aerospace jobs to Cape Canaveral and maintain Florida as a vital part of the nation’s space program.

NASA announced a public-private partnership with Space Florida, the state’s aerospace economic development agency, to lease the Kennedy Space Center's Orbiter Processing Facility-3 -- the space shuttle's main engine-processing facility -- to Seattle-based Boeing Co.

Bullet Train Derailed

Stunning high-speed rail proponents, Gov. Rick Scott in February turned down federal funding for a proposed Tampa-Orlando train project that he called a rolling "boondoggle."

High-speed rail advocates called it "a huge setback for the state of Florida."

Scott rejected the rail venture as fiscally untenable. He cited questionable ridership projections and the likelihood that cost overruns would dwarf the $2.4 billion Washington earmarked for the 84-mile line.

In November, Scott had an I-told-you-so moment when the cost of California’s high-speed rail effort was reported to have grown from $43 billion to $98.5 billion.

Prepping for Panama Canal

The governor directed $77 million to the Port of Miami so the Army Corps of Engineers could dredge the port to a depth of 50 feet, making it a viable option to handle the new Post-Panamax ships that will come through the Panama Canal when the expansion project is completed in 2014.

Before Scott sailed into the port issue, organizations such as the Florida Chamber of Commerce and Florida Ports Council, a Tallahassee-based nonprofit corporation serving the seaports, were already sounding warnings that Georgia, South Carolina and Virginia were outpacing Florida’s ports in terms of spending and planning for waterfront commercial growth.

It should be noted that the dredging has been put on hold, however, as a last-minute challenge to the state-issued permit for the “deep dredge” has been filed.

Immigration Reform Failure

A hotly debated bill in the spring legislative session to require businesses to use E-Verify to ensure new workers in Florida are legally in the United States, ran into a business-backed roadblock.