Three stories over the last few days illustrate some of the reasons so many people are totally fed up with South Florida politics and governance. From the Miami Herald this weekend, a tale of how influence is traded -- carefully:
The two-year corruption probe of Miami Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones yielded no criminal charges, but it did offer a rare glimpse of influence at work behind the scenes at Miami City Hall.
Witnesses told investigators how developers hired -- and fired -- consultants to curry favor with Spence-Jones when crucial votes were on the line, records show. Spence-Jones asked a developer to hire a former campaign staffer, and tried to steer another consultant to the firm, witnesses said.
Beyond the commissioner's role, the papers spotlight how private companies try to win votes by deploying the right mix of politically-connected consultants -- while treading gingerly around lobbying laws.
The Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office dropped its probe of the development deals last month, after investigators said they could find no evidence that Spence-Jones received any money or traded her vote for favors.
... Confounded by contradictory witnesses, the investigation unfolded like a children's game of telephone, with the whispers often leading back to one man: former City Manager Joe Arriola. In the spring of 2007, he recommended a Spence-Jones ally for a consulting job with a builder -- then called prosecutors weeks later with his suspicions of possible kickbacks.
''You know, you have no proof of this, but those are the rumors,'' Arriola told Assistant State Attorney Joe Centorino in an August 2007 interview, explaining why he came forward.
Over the course of the investigation, prosecutors chased vague rumors of payoffs and cronyism dating back to Spence-Jones' days as a City Hall staffer, the records show. Most tips were dead ends. Some leads were left unexplored.
''There were many inconsistencies -- which is code name for lies,'' said Spence-Jones attorney Richard Alayon. So did the commissioner do anything wrong? Well, she didn't get caught doing anything wrong, so technically: no. then again, I'm sure it's not easy to get people to talk, even to prosecutors, when their bread and butter is city contracts. If you strike at the king (or queen) and miss, they're liable to apply the guillotine to your head at their next available opportunity. Financially speaking, of course ... But the overall theme of "pay for play" politics -- the all-encompassing search for government "contracts" and for financial gain, often with not a dime going to actually improve the community the money was ostensibly earmarked for, is way, way too familiar, particularly in the Black community, which is hurting like hell in Miami-Dade. You just get the feeling that's the way things are done around here, and that it will never change. That's depressing as hell, and it will also be true if the residents of that county don't stand up and start fighting for themselves, even if that means fighting their own Black "leaders." Read the rest here (pdf). If you're at all familiar with Miami politics, the names will be familiar.
The second story is about one of Commissioner Spence Jones' mentors, former Commissioner Barbara Carey Shuler, who left office a few years ago without ever being charge with a crime:
A confidant of former Miami-Dade Commissioner Barbara Carey-Shuler has told prosecutors that he delivered cash payoffs to her from a prominent developer during the late 1990s, according to a newly released report.Antonio Junior, 51, made the revelations to Miami-Dade public corruption prosecutors last fall -- too late to levy any possible criminal charges against Carey-Shuler because the statute of limitations had long run out, state attorney's office spokesman Ed Griffith said. According to the report: • Junior, a longtime Miami International Airport businessman, admitted to repeatedly accepting cash from late developer Lowell Dunn starting in 1997, with instructions to pay Carey-Shuler for her support of Dunn's projects. Junior said he gave the commissioner much of the cash -- including part of $30,000 Dunn gave him in the restroom of a Design District restaurant. • Junior also said he funneled money to the commissioner after he landed -- with her help -- a piece of a controversial $25 million county contract to build the Martin Luther King county office building in the heart of Liberty City in 1999. The payments continued until about 2003, he said. • Junior said his payments from the MLK deal to Carey-Shuler started when she began scribbling dollar amounts on small notes. Junior said he purchased so many money orders for Carey-Shuler that postal employees knew him on sight. Junior detailed his relationship with Carey-Shuler in interviews with assistant State Attorney Richard Scruggs and investigator Robert Fielder late last year, just before pleading guilty to his role in an unrelated racketeering scheme at MIA. Their report was recently released at the request of The Miami Herald. Ah, the good old statute of limitations ... Read the rest of that story here. And if you care to read more about the airport case in which Junior was implicated, here's a story from the Miami New Times back in 2005.
Now, a lot of folks in the Black community in South Florida are going to dismiss both of these stories as just further evidence that the Miami Herald hates Black elected officials, and is determined to take them down, one by one (you often here that from supporters of the late Art Teele, who famously believed that the Herald was out to get him.) And Carey-Shuler remains both popular and influential in Black Miami. That too, is the way things work 'round here.
Story three is a simpler tale -- of what looks for all the world like greed, and county collusion in screwing the little guy on behalf of a rich golden goose. It's long, published recently in Aviation Week, but well worth the read. Here's a clip: The Miami-Dade County Airport and Seaport Committee meets once a month on Thursday mornings at 9:30 a.m. Present on April 16, 2009, was attorney Willie Gary, a famed trial lawyer whose victories in the courtroom (one of which, against Disney, brought in $240 million, according to a press release) provide him with the wherewithal to travel the world in a Boeing Business Jet named "Wings of Justice II." On this day, Gary graciously sought a few moments of the committee's time in the interest of saving them some money. "These five minutes could save years of litigation," he said, along with "millions of dollars." His press release, issued later that day, upped the ante, citing "billion-dollar litigation." Gary told committee chairman Dorrin De Rolle and the assembled commissioners, "Nobody needs this kind of fight" by way of informing them that a fight was what they would get. He was there representing his client, "Opa-Locka Flightline . . . the only African-American owned and operated FBO in the nation." He was there because his client was "not being treated fairly, plain and simple." Gary noted that if an airport receives federal funds, the law says there can be no discrimination. "We don't come seeking special privilege, but there should be no discrimination or favoritism, and that's the case we bring today," Gary said. "We must all operate under one set of rules."
What's at stake here are a group of vendors currently leasing space at the airport, and a big, well-off company, the Adler Group, run by a wealthy real estated developer named Michael Adler, who along with his company, is a major, major Democratic Party donor. The county gave Adler's company, AA Acquisitions, a 240-acre, 70-year lease at Opa-locka airport by the county, essentially making him the new landlord. Now, Adler wants the existing tenants out, so he can do some big time development at the airport, and the article alleges AA (with the county's blessing, or at least wihtout their resistance) is using rather ... let's say creative ... tactics to force them out. Of course, the deal means big money to the county at a time of economic hardship -- big, as in hundreds of millions of dollars. It's a sad story, and one in which it's doubtful the little guys will win.
Labels: corruption, Florida, local politics, Miami, Miami-Dade |
