Mitch Perry
Next week the Florida Cabinet meets in Tampa for the first time since they unanimously approved Rick Swearingen as the replacement for Gerald Bailey to lead the Florida Dept. of Law Enforcement.
Bailey announced his resignation in December, but told members of the media after Swearingen’s appointment in early January that in fact he had not resigned, but been forced out by Governor Scott. After initially denying that claim, the governor acknowledged that he had asked Bailey to resign, saying that it was important to get new people into government positions of leadership. He also says that members of his staff informed Cabinet staff members on that decision in December.
But those three Cabinet members – Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam – have since said they were blindsided by Bailey’s announcement that he had been fired, and had not known about that when they went ahead and approved Swearingen without any public discussion whatsoever.
While Scott continues to be besieged almost daily about the Bailey affair, he has an ally in the Legislature who think that it’s the members of the Cabinet who have some serious explaining to do.
In an interview on Bay News 9’s Political Connections program that will be broadcast on Sunday morning, Clearwater state Senator Jack Latvala uses the term, “three little monkeys” to explain their behavior.
“It kinda reminds me of the cartoon of the three little monkeys, one of them with their hand over their eye, one of them with their hand over their ears, and the other with a hand over their mouth,” Latvala says in responding to a question posed by Tampa Bay Times editorial writer Joni James.
“What we’ve got here is a situation where on December 16, Gerald Bailey was asked to resign as chairman, or as commissioner of the FDLE. By the end of the day of that day I knew all the particulars of that story and how it happened and I’m 250 miles away. Fast forward to four weeks to January 13, and the Cabinet voted on his successor, and nowhere in that period of time did that Cabinet member raise an issue. At the meeting, nobody asked any questions at the meeting. Nobody indicated any objections at the meeting. So that’s four weeks later. Two more weeks pass by and then all of a sudden there are calls for an investigation. I think it’s disingenuous, I think it’s political, I think it’s piling-on, and I just think it’s uncalled for. If they had questions about it, they should have asked them when it happened.”
Following the uproar about Bailey’s CFO Jeff Atwater asked the governor to reopen the search for a new leader of the agency.
Adam Putnam told reporters earlier this week that, “We were misled about the timing an the processes of how that would be handled,” referring to Bailey’s dismissal.
Meanwhile Pam Bondi said at that same day that she didn’t believe that Scott approved the sudden dismissal of Bailey, suggesting that it was done by the governor’s staffers.
The video excerpt was featured on the Times’ Buzz blog this morning.
