My Word by Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi: Explaining ousters

The desire to make a positive impact on lives, ensure that justice is served, protect citizens from crime and fraud, and to uphold the law and Constitution drew me to my 20-year career as a state prosecutor. The opportunity to continue this service on a statewide level, and make a difference in more lives, drove my decision to seek the office of Florida’s attorney general. Serving in this role is a tremendous honor and responsibility, and meeting the high legal, ethical and professional expectations of this office is something I take seriously.

The questions posed by the Orlando Sentinel regarding the decision and motives of my team to terminate the employment of two employees are important for me to address. The management team I selected is entrusted with ensuring that employees provide exceptional service and results for taxpayers, and I empower them to make the management and personnel decisions they deem necessary.

The Economic Crimes Division provides crucial consumer protection to the people of Florida, and I placed my trusted former colleague and experienced prosecutor, Richard Lawson, to manage that division. During the evaluation of his new team, he determined that two staff attorneys, who had been hired by the previous administration, failed to meet expectations. Richard counseled them on three occasions over several months, and their performance did not improve. When I was informed of the decision to give the employees the option to resign or to have their employment terminated, I supported the supervisor’s decision to do so.

That decision in no way undermines my commitment to investigating foreclosure-related businesses or any other consumer-protection matters. In fact, at my direction, we have considerably increased the resources dedicated to investigating foreclosure-related businesses. We have substantially increased the amount of time and more than doubled the number of employees working on these investigations.

From 2009 to 2010, 1,300 hours were spent on these investigations. From April to July, more than 1,500 hours were spent. We are currently investigating 10 foreclosure-related businesses, including Lender Processing Services. Additionally, my office is involved in multistate negotiations with servicers regarding foreclosure practices.

I am thoroughly committed to fighting foreclosure fraud in Florida, and you can be assured that I always stand on the side of the law and act in the best interest of all Floridians.

SOURCE: Orlando Sentinel

Oh, and BTW, sign the petition calling for an investigation of Attorney General Bondi’s actions:

http://www.progressflorida.org/bondi

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4closureFraud.org

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Couldn’t decide which video was weirder so you get both…