Republican Attorney General candidate Holly Benson came to Creative Loafing's offices in Ybor City last Wednesday, May 27, and sat down and spoke with us for about 20 minutes. Here's the complete Q&A of our discussion with the former Panhandle representative.
CL: On your website you write that “We can’t let government regulation continue to be a drag on Florida’s economy. So I will also use the office of Attorney General to eliminate onerous laws and regulations that stifle small businesses and impede prosperity.” Is there any law currently on the books right now in Florida that you consider "onerous" and that "stifles any small businesses?"
Holly Benson: There are actually a lot of them. What I found out at both BPR (Department of Business and Professional Regulations) and the Agency for Health Care Administration is that over the years, well meaning state employees just add one layer after another, after another of regulation. Even having notary pages on these forms create a real problem. Because most of these agencies would like to go to an online license renewal. But you can do all your things online but if you have a print out notary page, you know what you have to do? You have to mail it in. And so, just to figure out electronic fingerprinting as opposed to paper finger printing cards save people time and money, because you have all sorts of error rates, but there are, lots of little ways that we add regulation to the little guy where you ask him to get former employers to vouch for his credentials, as a professional. Now, their former bosses might not like them or they might not want the competition, so why would they sign off? So there are a lot of little hoops that we make business people jump through that may have been well intentioned, but really don’t help the public and don’t insure that these are better quality professionals or businesses and so we need to figure out how we peel those back off the books.
CL: Let’s talk about the criminal justice system, that’s a big part of being the Attorney General. Florida now houses more than 100,000 prisoners in its criminal justice system, but the costs to build new prisons run over a $100 million. Would you like to see any changes in our criminal justice system?
HB: We must be tough on crime. So our first obligation is to put the bad guys behind bars. And if that means funding new prisons, well let’s fund them. But I think that even state attorneys and law enforcement around the state are figuring out how you do make sure that you monitor the bad guys and keep tabs on them, but you sure don’t want something where you turn somebody loose and they go commit another bad act. So that is a very…you’d walk down that path very carefully. But I think you’re first priority is making sure that you keep the bad guys behind bars.
CL :What about using more drug courts?
HB: When I served in the Legislature I worked to help reorganize the court system as part of a constitutional amendment. So I visited lots of courthouses around the state, and what we found out was that drug courts and mental health courts can be very successful. What you find particularly with the mentally ill is they stay 3x as long in jail, and they cost 3x as much, where most of the time if we could figure out we could treat the underlying cause you would be able to solve a lot of the problems. There are a lot of partnerships around the state where law enforcement, mental health professionals, court system, they’re all working together to target those problems.
CL: We asked you last week about Florida’s policy on gay adoption, where we’re the only state that does not allow gays to adopt. You said you support that. Can you please elaborate? Why is Florida the only state that does it this way? Are we somehow smarter than everyone else?
HB: It’s just been a deliberate policy decision by the Legislature not to go down that path. They as policy makers have made the decision that we ought to…that the best home for every child is a two-parent household where there’s a father and a mother. And so that’s been their priority in instructing the adoption program.
CL: And you’re comfortable with that?
HB: Yes.
CL : Well let me ask you about the controversy about Bill McCollum using Dr. George Rekers, and paying him $120,000 for his testimony, which was considered pretty unreliable before McCollum brought him in. In his defense, McCollum said that there weren’t too many other so called experts out there to testify on why it would be bad for gays to adopt. Doesn’t that tell you something about the law itself? If the best professional you can have to defend this is George Rekers?
HB: I wasn’t part of selecting him…..I haven’t read the particulars about what Rekers did so , what I’ll tell you is I’m sure that General McCollum trusted his team to identify the best possible expert. They made a mistake. A bad mistake. So you have to figure out if there are other better experts that will corroborate that two parents, male or female, are..
MP: I would think Holly Benson that if you were Attorney General, if it was George Rekers, or anybody, would you have to pay $120,000 for their testimony?
This article appears in May 27 – Jun 2, 2010.