You know things are bad when Beacon Hill lawmakers can spot the problems with medical marijuana applications before the state officials who are charged with guarding neighborhoods from any potentially seedy weed operators can.

House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo (D-Winthrop) — who has said Gov. Deval Patrick should go back to the drawing board on the pot application process — let slip another troubling reason why the Department of Public Health needs to hit rewind on the whole medical marijuana licensing process.

“I’ve bumped into elected officials who say, ‘Hey, I know that person, you know, who was approved … that’s a bad guy. I know him,’ ” DeLeo said about the 20 provisional licenses given the go-ahead by the state but currently under review by his own team of state lawmakers.

DeLeo told Boston Herald Radio those alerts gave him pause.

“I’m saying to myself, ‘Well, that raises a concern with me. If he knows him, why don’t the folks who are doing the investigation know it?’ ” he said of the DPH team charged with investigating the 20 applicants given the initial green light to run medical marijuana dispensaries.

“Right now there are just so many questions. I don’t know if I can proceed now with what has happened,” said DeLeo. “If you are looking to gain the trust of the people, if you are looking to gain the confidence of the public at large that what you’re doing is the right thing to do, then you better try to get it right the first time, and I’m not sure if that was done here.”

Patrick last week pushed back on DeLeo’s suggestion that the state reboot.

“I don’t think we gain anything by starting over,” Patrick said.

But both DeLeo and Attorney General Martha Coakley have suggested the state scrap the current 20 tentative applications approved and begin the process again — pointing to the fact that applicants apparently have made false claims about support from elected officials and have ties to convicted felons.

Green Heart Holistic Health & Pharmaceuticals, for example, indicated Boston City Councilor Tito Jackson supported the Roxbury business, but Jackson said he doesn’t. The application also failed to mention Stephen DeAngelo, the sole financier of the business, who pleaded guilty in 2001 to marijuana possession with intent to distribute.

“We might have to take a step back and look again,” DeLeo said.