Attorney General Pam Bondi today said she doesn't think Gov. Rick Scott's freeze on new regulations should hold up her efforts to close pain clinics that frivolously dispense prescription drugs. "If it does we'll talk to him about it," she said today at the annual AP Legislative Press Planning Session. Closing down the clinics, she said, is one of her top priorities. Bondi said she believes the Board of Medicine, which is under the auspices of the Department of Health and is developing rules to better regulate the clinics, is not directly under the governor's control and therefore doesn't have to abide by his executive order freezing new rules until he okays them. 

That may be, but on Jan. 7, the Department of Health, at the request of Gov. Scott, submitted its new rules regarding prescription drug monitoring and pain clinics to the governor, indicating their urgency and asking for a decision within seven days. As of this writing, Scott hasn't said if he plans to approve the rules or not.

At the AP meeting, Bondi also said she supports legislation that would allow the public to comment at government meetings and plans to aggressively press BP to pay Florida businesses hurt by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. On illegal immigration, Bondi said the federal government should take the lead on the issue. But if Florida legislators do propose a law to control illegal immigration, her role will to be make sure it's constitutional and doesn't allow for racial profiling and arbritrary stops.