Count Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi among anti-gambling forces fighting a proposal to allow three casinos in the state.

Bondi will join a noon press conference hosted by “No Casinos” today, her office announced in a press release this morning.

Even without Bondi’s opposition, the “destination resorts” bill sponsored by Sen. Ellyn Bogdanoff and Rep. Erik Fresen is facing an uphill battle.

The Senate Regulated Industries Committee wound up its second workshop on the proposal (SB 710) yesterday, logging nearly six hours of testimony in the two meetings.

Near the end of yesterday’s discussion, committee chairman Dennis Jones, who supports the plan conceptually, expressed frustration.

“It seems like more questions are arising every week that we don’t have answers to,” Jones, R-Seminole, said.

Senate Rules Chairman John Thrasher, whose committee has to sign off on the bill before it heads to the Senate floor, blasted the measure during yesterday’s meeting.

“I think this legislation is a major change in the culture and brand in the state of Florida and frankly I think it expands gambling to the point where I am concerned about it,” Thrasher, R-St. Augustine, said during yesterday’s meeting.

Bogdanoff, R-Fort Lauderdale, insists that her bill allowing the three high-end casinos and creating a statewide gambling commission won’t grow gambling in the state but will enable the state to establish a “strategic vision” for gambling.

But she acknowledged she’s got her work cut out for her. Bogdanoff, whose district includes part of Palm Beach County, compared her goal to overhaul gambling in Florida to former Gov. Jeb Bush‘s education reforms.

“It was a holistic view and everybody bought into it,” she said. “I don’t have a popular governor advocating at that level. I’m just a lowly senator from Palm Beach and Broward County.”

Gov. Rick Scott has not said whether he supports the proposal, but has said he does not want the state to be dependent on taxes generated by the casinos.

The Palm Beach County Commission has filed a lawsuit against Gov. Rick Scott, Attorney General Pam Bondi, the Florida House and the Florida Senate today over a gun law that that went into effect on Oct. 1. Local officials who violate the law could be removed from office and face a $5,000 fine.

The sanctions “are simply a form of political bullying that serves no governmental purpose” and have a “chilling effect,” the lawsuit reads.

The commission’s lawsuit complains that the new law, sponsored by Sen. Joe Negron, is unconstitutional because it violates the separation of powers because it gives the governor the ability to remove local officials from office and strips local officials of immunity from lawsuits.

Under current law, the governor is only allowed to suspend local officials and the Florida Senate has the power to remove them or reinstate them.

“Threatened removal of individual commissioners in a matter that is consistent with the terms of the Florida Constitution is political overreaching and political bullying that serves no legitimate governmental purpose,” Amy Taylor Petrick, an attorney for the county, wrote in the lawsuit filed in the Palm Beach County Circuit Court today.

The lawsuit asks the court to find that the law is unconstitutional, stop the governor from being able to remove local officials from office and order that they can’t be fined for breaking the law.

Negron said the penalties are necessary because city and county commissioners have ignored a law that gives the legislature the discretion to regulate gun laws.

After the law went into effect, municipalities, counties and state agencies were forced to scrap hundreds of measures dealing with firearms and could no longer bar people from being guns into government buildings, including the state Capitol.

“Political disputes should be resolved in the elected government arena rather than in courtrooms. So we’ll see where it goes from here,” said Negron, who had not seen the lawsuit Tuesday evening.

Negron, R-Stuart, said he does not intend to file a bill to repeal the law during the legislative session that begins next month.

“I would consider that just as I have to follow federal law and I have to follow county laws and city laws when I’m in their counties and cities, they should follow the preemption of the state law then nobody has anything to worry about,” Negron, R-Stuart, said.

Spokeswomen for Bondi and House Speaker Dean Cannon said their lawyers are reviewing the lawsuit.

National Rifle Association lobbyist Marion Hammer, who pushed the bill, called the lawsuit un-American.

“They’re using taxpayer dollars to try to keep from being punished for violating the law? That’s exactly the American way, is it?” she said.

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi will co-host the GOP presidential debate on Fox News this weekend, according to a press release distributed by the Republican Party of Florida this morning.

Bondi, a Fox fave who often appeared on the news channel as a legal analyst before her election in January and a frequent guest star since, will join fellow Republican attorneys general Ken Kuccinelli of Virginia and E. Scott Pruitt of Oklahoma on former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s show Saturday night at 8 p.m.

Bondi is leading the charge in the multi-state federal health care lawsuit, launched by her predecessor Bill McCollum, now before the U.S. Supreme Court. Undoing the health care law is among the GOP presidential wannabes’ top campaign pledges.

“This forum is an excellent opportunity to engage each of the candidates in a candid conversation about issues that are important to voters in our state and across the nation,” Bondi said in the press release. “This will be a historic election, and I am excited to play a part in helping voters gain a better understanding of candidates’ beliefs on fundamental issues such as constitutionalism and the role of government.”

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum have all agreed to participate in the forum, according to the release.

Critics of the federal health care overhaul supported by President Obama weighed-in Monday, praising the U.S. Supreme Court for agreeing to review the constitutionality of the sweeping measure.

Florida is among 26 states challenging the law, which the National Federation of Independent Business also wants to have overturned.

“I am pleased that the U.S. Supreme Court has granted certiorari in the States’ challenge to the federal health care law,” said Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has continued to spearhead a lawsuit first brought by her predecessor, fellow Republican Bill McCollum. ”Throughout this case, we have urged swift judicial resolution because of the unprecedented threat that the individual mandate poses to the liberty of Americans simply because they live in this country.”

Justices plan to hear arguments in March.  The dispute turns on Congress’s constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce.

Timing of the case only reaffirms that the health care overhaul will continue as a central theme of the 2012 presidential election.

 ”We are hopeful that by June 2012 we will have a decision that protects Americans’ and individuals’ liberties and limits the federal government’s power,” Bondi added. “We look forward to presenting oral argument and defending our position that the individual mandate is unconstitutional, that the entire law fails if one part fails, that the Anti-Injunction Act does not apply, and that Medicaid’s expansion is unlawfully coercive.”

 The Obama administration, which earlier asked the Supreme Court to review the legal challenges, said it’s confident the overhaul will be upheld as constitutional.

“ Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, one million more young Americans have health insurance, women are getting mammograms and preventive services without paying an extra penny out of their own pocket and insurance companies have to spend more of your premiums on health care instead of advertising and bonuses,” said Obama spokesman Dan Pfeiffer. “We know the Affordable Care Act is constitutional and are confident the Supreme Court will agree.

 

A Tallahassee judge has ordered Gov. Rick Scott‘s administration to “cease and desist” the bidding process for a prison privatization plan she earlier ruled was unconstitional.

Tallahassee Circuit Judge Jackie Fulford late Friday night put the brakes on Department of Corrections officials’ attempt to bypass her earlier decision that the way lawmakers ordered the privatization of the 18-county region in the southern portion of the start violated the state constitution.

In her order, Fulford pointed out that corrections officials reneged on a pledge made Thursday not to move forward with the bidding before a Nov. 16 hearing. Later the same day, the department announced it was reopening the procurement and bids would be accepted after Nov. 10, Fulford wrote.

Fulford ruled on Sept. 30 that lawmakers should not have included the privatization plan in the must-pass state budget but instead should have ordered it in a stand-alone bill.

Scott opted not to appeal, but Attorney General Pam Bondi filed a last-minute appeal late Monday on behalf of state lawmakers, setting the stage for Friday’s court showdown.

In granting the emergency stay to the Florida Police Benevolent Association, Fulford wrote that “defendants are not likely to succeed on the merits on appeal.”

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After nearly a decade, Florida doctors can now check out their patients’ prescription drug history in an online database aimed at curbing “doctor-shopping” and other illicit pain pill abuses.

The Elecronic – Florida Online Reporting of Conrolled Substances Evaluation (E-FORCSE) went live today after narrowly escaping being killed earlier this year by Gov. Rick Scott and other high-ranking GOP lawmakers.

Last month, all of the state’s 4,000 pharmacists and dispensing pracitioners began entering information about controlled substances, including highly addictive pain medication such as oxycontin and hydrocodone, into the database, as required by a law passed by lawmakers this spring.

After today, doctors can tap into the database to view their patients’ prescription drug history and view when and where they filled their prescription and who wrote it. Law enforcement officials will be able to access the database to investigate drug-related crimes.

Supporters of the system, including Attorney General Pam Bondi and state Surgeon General Frank Farmer, hope doctors use the database even though they aren’t required to. Bondi was instrumental in getting lawmakers to reach an agreement over the database this spring.

The Florida Medical Association and the Florida Osteopathic Medical Association are asking their members to participate.

“The prescription database is perhaps the single most important patient safety program to launch in recent memory,” Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, said in a statement. Fasano has tried for nearly a decade to get the database up-and-running. Lawmakers were so skittish about the database they forbade the use of state money to create and operate it. The Prescription Drug Program Monitoring Foundation, the non-profit organization footing the bill for the system, and the state have received $800,000 in federal grants for the database.

“After many years and many obstacles to overcome, the database is going live at a time when it is needed most. Although we will never know the number of lives that will be saved, we will know that many lives will not be lost as long as the database is consulted by every doctor every time he or she considers writing a controlled substance prescription,” Fasano said.

Attorney General Pam Bondi joined 24 other states in a lawsuit against President Obama’s administration over clean air standards even though the feds, under pressure from Republicans and states, last week weakened the rule.

Bondi and the other states are asking the Environmental Protection Agency to put off implementation of the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule utilities complain is too costly. The new consumer protection standards reduce power plant emissions that cross state lines and are set to go into effect on Jan. 1.

The lawsuit alleges the costs to utilities to implement the standards and the threat to the nation’s power supply outweigh the benefits to consumers. The Obama administration estimates the cleaner air standards could save up to $280 billion in health benefits by preventing premature deaths, heart attacks and lost work days within two years of going into effect.

“We cannot allow Floridians, many of whom are already suffering financial hardships, to bear the brunt of costly federal regulations,” Bondi said in a press release attached to an amicus brief filed yesterday. “The brief asks the Environmental Protection Agency slow down the implementation of their burdensome regulations in order to correct technical issues and consider the consequences.”

Bondi is leading the charge against Obama’s administration in a multi-state lawsuit over the federal health care law now before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a request for proposals from private lawyers for help in legal action related to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

In a press release issued late this afternoon, Bondi said the one-page RFP doesn’t mean the state is going to be suing BP or any of the other parties involved in the massive oil blow-out that stained Panhandle beaches and strained the entire state’s tourism industry last year.

“The proposal is part of an exploratory process that is non-binding and does not signify imminent litigation,” the release said.

Interested lawyers should show their experience in other similar cases, familiarity with the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, and how well-suited their firms are to handle complex, expensive litigation. Lawyers also have to say if they want to be paid hourly, by a contingency fee or a combination. Florida law has a sliding scale capping how much the attorney general can pay outside firms ranging from 25 percent for recoveries up to $10 million to 5 percent for settlements over $25 million.

Yesterday, Bondi gave the U.S. Justice Department guidelines on what she wants from an audit of BP claims czar Ken Feinberg, prompted by complaints about his handling of the $20 billion fund for victims of the oil spill.

Bondi asked that the audit look at:
- Discrepancies in payments to similarly situated claimants;
- Documentation required by Feinberg’s Gulf Coast Claims Facility;
- Whether Feinberg’s delays in processing interim payments forced claimants to accept “quick pay,” or final settlements, which require them to sign away their right to sue in the future;
- How different industries are being treated;
- The extent to Feinberg relied on how close a claimant was to the oil spill to decide whether or how much a claimant deserved.

Two Delray Beach residents have been charged with bilking the GCCF of more than $340,000 and using the money to rent luxury homes and buy expensive cars and boats. The duo made their first appearance before a U.S. magistrate in Miami today in what the U.S. Attorney’s office is calling “the largest financial loss case brought to date arising from claims filed in connection with the Deepwater Horizon explosion and pollution incident.”

Senate President Mike Haridopolos has agreed to call in State Board of Administration executive director Ash Williams to answer questions about a $125 million investment after Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater, Haridopolos’ predecessor, asked for the public meeting.

Atwater, a North Palm Beach banker, asked Haridopolos on Thursday to bring Williams in to satisfy Sen. Mike Fasano’s demands for information about an investment earlier this year in hedge fund Starboard Value and Opportunity. Williams gave Fasano, R-New Port Richey, a bill for more than $10,000 in response to a public records request for documents regarding the investment, which was in the works for more than two years before the investment was made in April.

“It is my deep belief that you and the other members of the legislature, elected to represent the interests of Floridians, should have full and open access to information wherever it might reside throughout government, including the SBA,” Atwater wrote in a letter to the senate president.

Atwater also said Fasano should not be charged to review the documents and that he trusts Fasano to keep any confidential information in the records private. On Monday, Fasano asked Haridopolos to subpoena Williams and the documents or to order him to appear before a Senate committee to explain the investment and the public records charges.

“Being that the CFO is a champion of transparency and given his expertise in this realm, I plan to take his recommendation and hold a meeting that will be open to the public and ask the Director of the SBA, Ash Williams, and his staff to be available to answer any questions that the public or my fellow legislators may have about the investment, as well as the public records request,” Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, said in a statement late Thursday. “Like CFO Atwater, it is my hope that this meeting will alleviate any questions that lawmakers or the public may have regarding this investment and the SBA, and the IAC may continue to conduct business.”

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Mitt Romney swept through the capital of the nation’s biggest swing state Wednesday, meeting voters at a restaurant, talking jobs with business professionals, and working to nail down dollars and support from some of Florida’s most influential Republicans.

The former Massachusetts governor cast himself as the candidate most likely to get the economy moving again – and the Republican best positioned to beat President Obama.

“My approach is a fundamental change in the way we’re doing things,” Romney told a dozen Tallahassee-area business officials, who complained to him about the faltering economy, while lunching on fried chicken and steamed vegetables.

On Wednesday, Romney seemed intent on making significant strides with those who can help drive his campaign in Florida, huddling at the state Capitol with Gov. Rick Scott, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and a roster of lobbyists who double as prominent Republican fund-raisers.

Newborns are the latest victims of the prescription drug epidemic plaguing Florida and the country, Attorney General Pam Bondi said today.

That’s why Bondi is asking lawmakers to help her create a task force to find out how rampant the problem is and come up with solutions before prescription drug-addicted babies become a crisis as difficult to address as pill mills.

“We do not want this to become the next crack baby epidemic…and that’s where we’re headed,” Bondi told reporters at a press conference flanked by supporters of the legislation, including Sen. Joe Negron, R-Stuart, the bill’s sponsor and chairman of the Senate Health and Human Services Budget Committee. Bondi was also joined by Stephanie Haridopolos, a family practice physician and the wife of Senate President Mike Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island.

Bondi said she and Stephanie Haridopolos recently visited the neo-natal intensive care unit at St. Joseph’s Women’s Hospital in Tampa. Kenneth Solomon, the unit’s director, said Wednesday that about 25 percent of the babies in his unit are there because they are withdrawing from drugs. The majority of the babies are addicted to oxycodone, Percocet or methodone, Solomon said. Twenty percent of the babies born addicted to drugs in his unit wind up in foster care, he said.

Usually, babies and mothers spend up to 72 hours in the hospital. But babies addicted to drugs can spend up to two months in the NICU at three times the cost, Solomon said. The babies suffer from extreme sensitivity to light and sound, fevers, incessant crying and respiratory problems, are often born prematurely and sometimes must be readdicted to the drug before the withdrawal procedure can begin, he said.

“Instead of getting milk, those babies are getting methodone,” Bondi said. “And it’s got to stop.”

As the Senate’s chief of state spending on health care, Negron said lawmakers need to step in immediately to assess the problem.

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Saying she’s fighting for consumers, Attorney General Pam Bondi asked lawmakers to help her tighten Florida laws to protect vacationers – especially the elderly – from timeshare resale scammers.

The scam involves timeshare resale marketers promising timeshare owners that they’ve already got a buyer, getting a deposit for their “brokering” services, keeping the money – and disappearing, Bondi said.

“That has got to stop,” she said.

So far this year, Bondi said her office has received nearly 7,000 complaints about the timeshare resales – more than the number of all other consumer-related complaints combined.

The most common complaints include false claims that the marketer has a specific buyer ready to purchase or rent the timeshare; unkept promises that the property would be rented within a certain period of time; and failure to honor cancellation policies, Bondi said.

The bill, still in the works, will be sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Andy Gardiner, R-Orlando, and Rep. Eric Eisnaugle, R-Orlando, and has the support of the AARP.

Bondi said the state’s unfair and deceptive marketing and advertising laws need strenghtening to help prosecute the fraudsters.

The bill will likely include provisions restricting timeshare resale advertisers from:
- saying that they have a buyer if they don’t;
- misleading a customer about their sales success rate;
- acting as brokers for actual timeshare sales.

And the bill will also give sellers the opportunity to cancel their contracts with the advertisers within seven days.

Attorney General Pam Bondi took State Board of Administration executive director Ash Williams to task after Williams gave a state senator a bill for more than $10,000 for a public records request.

Appearing before the Florida Cabinet this morning, Williams defended the charges, saying the request was unprecedented in its breadth and depth. Williams told state Sen. Mike Fasano, a New Port Richey Republican who made the public records request, it would take 300 man-hours and more than seven weeks to produce the 6,000 documents Fasano is seeking.

Williams told the Cabinet that estimate was, if anything, a low-ball.

But Bondi, a former state prosecutor who also served as the Tampa state attorney’s spokeswoman, said she’s “lost sleep over the bill” and that her office charged much less for a public records request resulting in more than 25,000 pages of documents. She ordered Williams to provide an explanation for why the request would take so much time and cost so much.

“If you’re going to charge that amount for documents, you need to give a very detailed breakdown as to why you are charging that much, the hours involved,” Bondi said after the meeting. “If it’s a cost that large, you have to better break it down and justify it. It very well may cost that. I’d just like to see a better breakdown. I mean, that’s a lot of money.”

After receiving the bill, Fasano asked Senate President Mike Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, to subpoena the documents or order Williams to appear before a committee.

Williams told the Cabinet Tuesday morning the agency would be obligated to provide the information if ordered and that the SBA previously has given lawmakers un-redacted information on the condition that it remains confidential.

Fasano last month began seeking the information from the SBA related to a $125 million state pension fund investment in a hedge fund called Starboard Value and Opportunity.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said Wednesday that she and the Obama administration agree on little involving the federal health care overhaul.

But both sides agree that the U.S. Supreme Court will ultimately decide the fate of the lawsuit brought by Florida and two-dozen other states.

“We’ve been saying from Day 1, from the day we filed this lawsuit, that the district court and 11th Circuit Court of Appeals were simply going to be a pass-through to the U.S. Supreme Court,” said Bondi, who joined with 25 other states Wednesday in asking  justices to take up the case, which last month ruled that the individual mandate is unconstitutional, but upheld the rest of the law, including a major expansion of Medicaid.

Bondi decried the Medicaid provision as “coersion,” one that justices ought to strike.

The attorney general added, “The Obama administration did not seek a rehearing (in the 11th Circuit)…Therefore, giving us the ability to go to the Supreme Court as soon as possible.”

Without waiting for President Obama’s administration to appeal lower court rulings, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi and 25 other states are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether the federal health care law is unconstitutional.

Florida led the challenge against the Obama administration, arguing that its requirement that most Americans purchase health insurance – also known as the “individual mandate” – is unconstitutional.

Last month, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ruled that the individual mandate is unconstitutional but upheld the remainder of the sweeping health care law, including a dramatic expansion of Medicaid.

But even Obama’s attorneys believe that much of the law relies on the requirement that individuals purchase health insurance.

Although several other cases are working their way through the courts, attorneys on both sides believe that a U.S. Supreme Court decision in Florida’s multi-state case will ultimately decide the matter.

Bondi’s lawyers argued that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act forces individuals to engage in commerce and is an imposition on states because of increased Medicaid costs which they cannot avoid.

“Both features of the Act raise constitutional issues that go to the heart of our system of limited government and the Constitution‘s division of authority between the federal government and the States. Of the various challenges working their way through the federal courts, only this case allows the Court to address both of these fundamental questions,” lawyers representing Bondi and the National Federal of Independent Businesses, wrote in the appeal filed today.

Bondi is holding a noon press conference on the filing today in the Capitol.

Andrew Spark, one of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s assistants in her Tampa office, abruptly resigned Thursday – a day after releasing a 16-page memo harshly criticizing his boss’s administration.

Spark, an assistant state attorney general in the Tampa office of economic crimes, said his memo was motivated by the forced resignations of former state foreclosure investigators June Clarkson and Theresa Edwards.

Spark’s concerns include former Economic Crimes Division Director Mary Leontakianakos taking a job in June with the Law Offices of Marshall C. Watson – a firm that paid $2 million in March to settle a state investigation into its foreclosure practices. Leontakianakos resigned her director’s job in December with an effective date of Jan. 3.

Spark also mentions the resignation of former Deputy Attorney General Joe Jacquot, who went to work for Lender Processing Services – another company under investigation by the state – and concerns he has about his investigations of two companies that serve foreclosure summonses to home owners.

“The people of the State of Florida are entitled to fair and honest government, independent of personal connections and powerful interests,” wrote Spark, who has worked for the attorney general for about seven years.

After Spark’s resignation, Bondi said he was the subject of an ongoing investigation for using the services of a business he was investigating.

“It is exceptionally troubling for the people of Florida that Spark’s memo disclosed information pertaining to active investigations into foreclosure-related businesses that could compromise those cases,” Bondi said.

Read The Palm Beach Post writer Kimberly Miller’s story here.

Attorney General Pam Bondi is taking over a whistleblower’s lawsuit against a New York bank accused of skimming millions of dollars from the state’s pension fund in a foreign currency scheme.

Bondi’s office intervened Thursday in the two-year-old lawsuit filed against Bank of New York Mellon, which was among the investment firms handling the $129 million Florida Retirement System. The lawsuit claims the BNY Mellon bought and sold foreign currency for the FRS, but added mark-ups and other fake charges that cost the state when the investments were bought and sold.

BNY Mellon has denied wrongdoing.

Bondi, however, said Thursday, “Every penny that state and local employees entrust to Florida’s pension fund is hard-earned, and we will not allow Floridians’ money to be lost due to fraudulent activity.

“Overcharging for foreign exchange transactions is essentially stealing, and any company that does so will be held accountable.”

From The Palm Beach Post‘s Kimberly Miller:

Two Democratic state lawmakers seeking federal assistance to investigate the ouster of state foreclosure fraud investigators have expanded their public records request of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s office.

Sen. Eleanor Sobel, D-Hollywood, and Rep. Darren Soto, D-Orlando, say the request is in response to information they received about high-level attorney general lawyer Joe Jacquot going to work for Lender Processing Services, or LPS, as well as a former general counsel for Gov. Rick Scott’s former health care company, Solantic.

The Jacksonville-based company is under investigation by the attorney general’s office for its foreclosure-related practices. Shortly after Jacquot left Bondi’s office and went to work for LPS, Bondi fired two foreclosure fraud investigators.

“A number of troubling questions have come to our attention involving past and current employees of the Attorney General’s office and at least one mortgage processing company currently under investigation,” the two lawmakers wrote in a press release today. “In particular, we are especially concerned with the sudden departure to Lender Processing Services of your former special counsel, Joe Jacquot, and the subsequent dismissal of two apparently top notch foreclosure fraud attorneys _ June Clarkson and Theresa Edwards.”

Lender Processing Services is a former subsidiary of Fidelity National Financial. Both companies gave big donations _ to both Republicans and Democrats _ during the 2010 general election.

The Republican Party of Florida received about $19,000 from Fidelity, while the Democratic Party picked up $6,000. Fidelity also gave $2,000 to Democratic gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink, and $1,500 to winner Rick Scott.

LPS gave $36,500 to the Republican party and an additional $12,500 to the Democratic party.

Read Kimberly Miller’s blog here.

State Rep. Darren Soto, an Orlando Democrat,  kept the heat on Republican Attorney General Pam Bondi on Wednesday over her firing of a couple of high-ranking investigators probing foreclosure practices by banks and law firms.

Soto, joined by state Sen. Eleanor Sobel, D-Hollywood, asked the U.S. Justice Department to look into the May dismissals of June Clarkson and Theresa Edwards.  Bondi on Tuesday said she was confident the actions were warranted, but acknowledged she was asking an “outside inspector general” to examine the case to see if any missteps were made.

Soto, who sought documents last week related to the dismissals, said that was a good move by the first-year attorney general. But it didn’t go far enough, Soto and Sobel said.

“Public records indicate that these terminations occurred while Ms. Edwards and Ms. Clarkson were in the midst of successful mortgage fraud litigation and in spite of prior successful reviews,” Soto and Sobel wrote in their letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. 

 ”As legislators representing areas ravaged by foreclosure fraud and in the interest of our constituents, we believe these terminations present an overwhelming public concern.”

The Democrats also asked Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson to push for a probe of Bondi’s actions by ”an  investigatory agency not directly associated with the State of Florida in an effort to get the most neutral review.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi said Tuesday she is asking for an independent probe of her own office’s abrupt firing of two foreclosure fraud investigators, who had been examining possible corruption by law firms and banks.

The departures in May prompted questions about whether the move was politically motivated, a charge Bondi denied in outlining plans to have an inspector general from another agency review actions by the attorney general’s office.

“This decision was made by, as it should be, three of my top staff members,” Bondi said. “I trust their judgment.”

She added, “This decision was made on job performance, not politics…If there’s any allegation that I knew about this or was involved in this, I’m asking for an outside I.G. to look at this and report back to me if there should have been more documentation.”

 Former Assistant Attorney General Theresa Edwards and colleague June Clarkson had been investigating the state’s so-called “foreclosure mills,” uncovering evidence of legal malpractice that also implicated banks and loan serv­icers.

Despite positive performance evaluations, Edwards told the Palm Beach Post in July that the two were told during a meeting with their supervisor in late May to give up their jobs voluntarily or be let go. Edwards said no reason was given for the move.

“It all happened very abruptly,” said Edwards, who had worked in the attorney general’s office for about three years.

The foreclosure investigations were launched under former Attorney General Bill McCollum, but Edwards said she sensed changes were coming under Gov. Rick Scott and Bondi, who both took office in January.

“I think they wanted to put people in there that were more in line with their thinking,” Edwards told the Post last month.

Rep. Darren Soto, D-Orlando, who last week urged the U.S. Justice Department to look into the firings, praised Bondi’s move Tuesday — but said it didn’t go far enough.

Soto called it a “slow-coming acknowledgement and a step in the right direction.

“ But I believe a truly independent investigation is warranted, which may require a review by authorities outside Florida,” he added.