For two decades, every time the Emergency Operations Center was activated, Escambia County held regular press briefings to explain what was happening -whether it was a hurricane, oil flood, ice storm, flood or jail explosion.
The current county administrator, Janice Gilley, has held only two press conferences at the EOC – on March 17 and April 1 – over the 36 days the EOC has been activated.
This morning, the Florida Department of Health reported the state had only 440 new COVID-19 cases since 6 p.m. Tuesday.  However, 17.7 percent of those cases were in one county – Escambia.  The county had  a 23% increase within 17 hours, making Escambia the fourth highest per capita COVID-19 hot spot in Florida.
Rank | County | Population | Cases | Per 30K |
1 | Dade | Â Â Â 2,715,516 | 10153 | Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 112.17 |
2 | Broward | Â Â Â 1,924,229 | 4228 | Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 65.92 |
3 | Palm Beach | Â Â Â 1,446,277 | 2403 | Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 49.85 |
4 | Escambia | Â Â Â Â Â Â 311,522 | 418 | Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 40.25 |
5 | Collier | Â Â Â Â Â Â 363,922 | 483 | Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 39.82 |
6 | Osceola | Â Â Â Â Â Â 338,619 | 423 | Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 37.48 |
7 | Clay | Â Â Â Â Â Â 207,291 | 257 | Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 37.19 |
8 | Manatee | Â Â Â Â Â Â 373,853 | 445 | Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 35.71 |
9 | Lee | Â Â Â Â Â Â 718,679 | 794 | Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 33.14 |
10 | Duval | Â Â Â Â Â Â 924,229 | 925 | Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 30.03 |
It’s incumbent upon the chief executive officer of Escambia County government to explain this unprecedented spike, days before the state and county begin to phase out restrictions.
Her predecessors – George Touart, Bob McLaughlin, Randy Oliver, Larry Newsom and Jack Brown  – never would have hesitated to get experts in front of the media to discuss what was happening and answer questions.
We can make guesses for the jump, but we only have raw data. Ms. Gilley and her team have the answers, and the taxpayers have right to hear them.
What is she hiding? And why are the commissioners allowing her to be the most secretive administrator in recent county history?
It is absolutely horrifying that responsible State of Florida elected officials and agencies dismally failed to take enforcement action to close down the American Family Planning Clinic located at 6115 Village Oaks Drive in Pensacola for on-going blatant violations of Executive Order 20-72 prohibiting non-emergency elective medical procedures. For the past several weeks, carloads of unscreened at-risk and potentially COVID-19-infected individuals drove to this Pensacola clinic (located behind Hobby Lobby) from Louisiana, Texas, and Alabama in violation of Governor Desantis’ order signed in late March! This inexcusable non-enforcement of the law has substantially jeopardized public health and safety of Northwest Florida citizens, and very likely contributed to the statistics that have spotlighted Escambia County as the area with the 4th highest per capita incidence of confirmed COVID-19 cases among Florida’s 67 counties. Hundreds of calls, emails, and other communications to our elected representatives (Alex Andrade, Ron DeSantis, Matt Gaetz, et al), the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, and the Florida Department of Health were arrogantly ignored. Citizen demands for immediate enforcement action were consistently unanswered – with no acknowledgement and no explanation, and a steady stream of out-of-state vehicles continued unabated to their Pensacola abortion clinic destination. Many have heard the expression applied to big banks: “too big to fail.” Sadly we are now witnessing a similar phenomenon in the “sacred cow” abortion industry – “too politically protected to risk radioactive fallout” in the context of gutless and reckless non-enforcement of the executive orders prohibiting elective medical services in Florida. Shame, shame, shame!
She’s too busy whining about missing “good restaurants and hair cuts†and playing hide and seek with the numbers for the hoteliers!