State Senator Dan Gelber and Democratic candidate in the race for Florida Attorney General, on Friday announced a proposal for the establishment of a dedicated unit to combat public corruption in the state. Speaking at a press conference in Tallahassee, Gelber said that Florida has a big corruption problem which must be recognized and dealt with. As Attorney General, he said, creating such a unit would be priority number one.
Gelber said that despite the large size of the government budget, $65 billion and the tens of thousands of state employees, there is no dedicated unit looking at state government, making sure that it is kept honest and forthright.
“We need in Florida a dedicated public corruption unit that is looking over the shoulder of state government, the executive branch, the cabinet and the legislature”, Gelber said.
Gelber, who commended the work of the Leon County State Attorney’s office and in particular, Willie Meggs, said it was unreasonable to expect that office with its limited resources to be responsible for tackling all the broader public corruption issues and still address its primary mission of protecting that county’s residents.
According to Gelber, he envisions a group of career prosecutors, not political appointees, drawn perhaps from the U.S. Attorneys office, the AGs office and any other state prosecutors’ office, based in Tallahassee and dedicated full-time to public corruption issues. The work of such a unit would help restore faith and integrity in government, Gelber said.
To help advance his proposal for a dedicated unit investigating public corruption issues, Gelber said he had recently written to the U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Florida Pamela Marsh, seeking their support.
Calling corruption a “cancer of state government”, Gelber said that he expected some “push back” on his proposal. While hoping that the Republican-led legislature in Tallahassee would lend support to the proposal, Gelber said, “I have no high hopes”.
According to the FBI, Florida leads the nation in public corruption.
Gelber’s opponent in the race for Florida Attorney General is Republican Pam Bondi.
