Whose Interests Is Pam Bondi Looking Out For?
Who does Pam Bondi represent? It's supposed to be the people of Florida, but they haven't noticed much evidence of that on two very important issues, and they're starting to ask that question.
Her pet project since she was elected has been to make sure Floridians are "protected" from good, affordable health care, or the evil "ObamaCare" as she, Rick Scott and all the other Tea Party folks like to refer to it. She has continued the crusade begun by former Attorney General Bill McCollum, at our expense no less.
When she ran for office, we were in the midst of the disaster from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf. At the time Bondi talked tough about the spill claiming she would even consider criminal charges if necessary. Now?
"Oil spill? What oil spill?"
A year after BP capped the oil gusher in the Gulf, crude oil and tar balls still wash ashore from the spill that covered 491 miles of coastline from Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Oil mats remain down below that some fear pose more danger if removed rather than left where they are. Despite the appearance of claims BP and Rick Scott seem to push: "Hey, it's all good!" Well, it's not all good.
So where is Pam Bondi in all this? Good question. Last week Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood filed a lawsuit against the Gulf Coast Claims Facility and its director, Ken Feinberg, seeking documents that would make certain the BP oil spill claims process has been fair. That state had subpoenaed Feinberg in February and Hood was not satisfied with the response, so the state of Mississippi sued.
The Pensacola News Journal puts it this way:
We have just two questions regarding a lawsuit filed by Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood, a lawsuit to get documents regarding BP oil claims:
Where is Florida?
Where is Pam Bondi, our attorney general?
We realize, and we applaud, that both Bondi and Gov. Rick Scott have asked for much of the same documentation. But it should be noted that such a request has been so effective that Mississippi is now filing a lawsuit.
We have long felt that the claims process has been cloaked in secrecy and that the public should be given a full account of how much, and to what groups, BP money has been dispensed. There remain, even a year after the oil disaster hit our beaches, far too many questions about the fairness of the process.
Frankly, we had hoped that Bondi would have taken the lawsuit lead on this, and not someone from Mississippi.
Florida's attorney general's office has been hot to join other states in lawsuits, such as the lawsuit against the so-called "Obamacare'' plan. But when it comes down to fighting for Floridians who lived with oil last year, Florida's new AG has stepped back to let Mississippi take the lead.
So, we have one more question:
Why?
Why indeed.
You could also ask the same on the foreclosure crisis in Florida. Who does Pam Bondi represent, and what is she doing about that? Last May, two investigators working on behalf of the Attorney General's office who had been conducting an investigation for two years on fraudulent foreclosure practices in Florida were abruptly forced to resign. Why? Well, those investigators would like to know the answer to that question too.
“It just came out of nowhere,” said [Theresa] Edwards, who had worked in the attorney general’s economic crimes section for more than three years. “We were completely stunned.”
Less than a month before they were forced out, a supervisor cited their work as “instrumental in triggering a nationwide review of such practices.” Now, Edwards is convinced their sudden dismissals will have “a chilling effect” on those probes into the shoddy foreclosure practices that caused national outrage when they made headlines last fall.
Although similar abuses have occurred throughout the country, they have been particularly rampant in Florida, which was ground zero for the housing bust and is home to a collection of large law firms that were hired by the financial industry to relentlessly churn out foreclosures in recent years. That made the investigations headed by Edwards and Clarkson among the earliest and most closely watched by officials across the country.
A spokeswoman for Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi declined to comment on what she cited as internal personnel matters but said in an e-mail that the foreclosure investigations remain a top priority.
“We were farther along in our investigation because we had dug a little deeper than anybody else,” Edwards said. “We kept opening up more and more investigations, more and more cases.”
Their work won them accolades. In the evaluation provided by Edwards, a supervisor wrote that the pair had “achieved what is believed to be the first settlement in the United States relating to law firm foreclosure mills” — a multimillion-dollar settlement a month earlier with a Fort Lauderdale firm.
Despite that praise, Edwards and Clarkson said in separate interviews that they sensed a change when Bondi took office in January. Almost immediately, they said, supervisors began to question their findings and demand details about how they were gathering information.
Then at a meeting in May the two were suddenly told they could either resign or be fired. No explanation, no severance pay or two weeks notice, and they were locked out without any chance to brief others on the cases.
Bondi isn't commenting, beyond this:
A spokeswoman for Bondi, Jennifer Krell Davis, said the economic crimes division “continues to actively pursue the investigations into foreclosure law firms.” She said the division’s director, Richard Lawson, is leading the inquiry into one of the state’s largest foreclosure firms and is supervising other cases.
“The division has made these investigations a top priority and will continue to actively pursue all of our investigations into foreclosure law firms,” Davis said in an e-mail, adding that Lawson had assigned 14 attorneys and investigators to work on the cases that belonged to Edwards and Clarkson.
If it's a "top priority" it would stand to reason that investigators who know the cases inside and out would be a might big asset. Again, lots of questions, few answers.
If only Pam Bondi would "actively pursue" the investigations into oil spill claims and shady foreclosures on Floridians behalf as aggressively as she has tried to take away their health care.
Florida can't afford it, but we're paying the price in more ways than one.
