Sink, along with two state lawmakers who specialize in overseeing the state's mortgage regulators, wants to change that.
Sen. J.D. Alexander and Rep. Carlos Lopez-Cantera said they'll file legislation in March to revamp accountability in Commissioner Don Saxon's Office of Financial Regulation to end sweeping breakdowns in oversight of mortgage brokers exposed in a recent Miami Herald investigation.
Alexander, a Frostproof Republican, and Lopez-Cantera, a Miami Republican, said problems revealed by the newspaper underscore the need to hold Saxon's office more accountable.
The Miami Herald found the agency allowed more than 10,000 people with criminal histories -- including bank robbers, racketeers and cocaine traffickers -- to sell home loans in Florida. More than 4,000 of those passed state background checks despite many committing crimes of fraud, dishonest dealing and ''moral turpitude'' -- crimes that state law specifically requires the office to screen.
Convicted criminals went on to steal at least $85 million from consumers and lenders, the newspaper found.
Because of a rare compromise in 2002 when lawmakers revamped the state's financial offices, Saxon's department is housed in Sink's office but he has four bosses -- the governor and three-member Cabinet.
Lopez-Cantera, who has chaired the House Business Regulation Committee, said he will press for a law to ''create one person responsible for the Office of Financial Regulation'' and put an end to the divided authority that has created too many bosses to have anyone in charge.
Alexander, who has chaired the Senate's General Government Appropriations Committee, wants to strengthen the power of Sink's office by allowing her to hire and fire the commissioners of the Office of Financial Regulation and Office of Insurance Regulation, permitting the governor and Cabinet to retain oversight but make the CFO the controlling vote when there's a tie.
NO `ALARM BELLS'
For the past two years, Alexander's committee had been concerned the members ''weren't getting alarm bells'' out of Saxon's agency on mortgage issues, from lax lending standards to the subprime market woes.
''None of us in the Legislature are in the financial regulatory realm and I believe those appointed regulators have a responsibility to tell the Cabinet, and to tell the Legislature, when they see trends that are potentially adverse to the people of Florida,'' he said. ``If Saxon was seeing felons were being registered, he should have been beating the drum.''
Sink, who wanted to remove Saxon at the July 29 meeting of the governor and Cabinet but didn't have the votes, agrees the issue has underscored the need to ''reevaluate'' the system.
''These Cabinet agencies don't really have one boss. They have maybe four bosses and a lot of the proceedings are kind of perfunctory,'' she said.
As chief financial officer, Sink said she has tried to be ''very attuned to these issues of mortgage fraud'' and expected Saxon to keep her, the governor and her Cabinet colleagues informed when he sees problems.
''He did not,'' she said. ``You don't wait until some newspaper writes about it. He should have been screaming and hollering, putting notes on the desk and say we've got a problem here.''
Former Comptroller Robert Milligan, who has made reforming the Cabinet system his personal crusade, helped design the current system but calls the existing structure ``a negotiated arrangement.''
Milligan, a former Marine Corps general, was first elected comptroller in 1994 when he upset then-comptroller Gerald Lewis in a race in which he says he ``didn't get a dime from the industries he regulated.''
Because of the conflict, Milligan vowed he would work to separate the regulated industries from the elected officials.
One Cabinet officer, Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson, said he has few objections to placing Saxon's office under the CFO because ''she handles financial matters. I don't.'' But, Bronson said, he would only want a change ``if it was more efficient and better for consumers.''
Attorney General Bill McCollum's office said he would comment once he sees a proposal.
In 1998, voters approved the constitutional amendment to dramatically reshape Florida's Cabinet, cutting it from six to three members, with the commissioner of education and secretary of state offices cut and the insurance commissioner-treasurer and comptroller offices combined into an office of chief financial officer.
It took the Legislature four years to decide how to structure the new chief financial officer's department -- in part because of a philosophical difference between then Insurance Commissioner Tom Gallagher, who wanted the office to oversee regulation of all financial services, while Milligan believed the position should be devoted to the state's financial health and the regulation handled by separate departments under the governor.
HYBRID SOLUTION
The final solution was a hybrid that left some regulatory jobs, such as licensing insurance agents, under the CFO, while others, such as licensing brokers were given to the new Office of Financial Regulation.
But with four bosses and no single elected official in charge, Saxon's office became more adept at regulating banks than mortgage brokers, Alexander said.
''They need to be the canary in the coal mine to alert us to issues early on and I don't believe they have done that,'' he said.
After several meetings with Saxon in which he would 'cajole, beg and demand Mr. Saxon to take more regulatory control of his office, his answer was always: `That's not my job. My job is to take care of banks,' '' Alexander said.
Saxon's four bosses will discuss what immediate changes to make to his office to increase oversight of the mortgage industry at the Aug. 12 Cabinet meeting.
