Post-scandal League of Cities conference could be fun

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The Florida League of Cities annual conference in Orlando this week has got to be an interesting place.

Remember, this is the same event at which, last year, then-League President and then-Sweetwater Mayor Manny Maroño  was going around introducing his political bigwig buddies to two businessmen that could help them graft thousands of dollars from the federal government in what authorities say Maroño knew was a scam.

Of course, now he and we know they were really undercover FBI agents posing as businessmen on a sting looking for some more willing politicians for their little fraud.

But all the stars of this scheme were at the conference last year, which was in Hollywood and which became one of the more surreal locations of this bizarre bribery sting story: The FBI guys, the mayors, lobbyist Richard Candia, who made everything happen, and lobbyist Jorge Forte, Maroño’s right hand-out man.

I can’t imagine that any of them would dare show up this year to the conference, which begins Thursday. Maroño won’t likely be hanging around this year. Pensacola City Council president P.C. Wu, who would have taken over during the conference, got promoted a few weeks earlier after Maroño’s arrest last week and is heading the conference.

But there is still so much to do. And it could be such fun.

I don’t mean the legislative policy committee meetings or all the social media hoopla. I don’t mean the likely canned speeches by Florida Gov. Rick Scott and Sen. Bill Nelson. I don’t mean the session on homelessness — “Are Cities Solving the Problem?” they have to ask — and the mayors board of directors meeting at 12:30 p.m. tomorrow. Though, yes, I’ll admit I’d love to be a fly on the wall of the Crystal Ballroom at the World Center Marriott for that one.

And I noticed that it seems by the list of presenters, moderators and panelists on the three-day schedule that South Florida is not all that represented.

Maybe that’s an improvement, considering.

But Ladra would look forward to the other stuff that goes on in the coffee shops, the lobby, the restaurant and the bar where the now uncomfortable introductions will be made.

While the name of the game last year seems to be “Let’s Make a Deal,” some electeds I know are going to play a new game this year called “Find the Fed.” Whoever spots the most number of undercover FBI agents in disguise, posing as scummy businessmen, wins.

Then they might play a round of “Who’s Wearing a Wire”– to see which lobbyist they believe will be the next to turn into a federal chivato.

I proposed that the organization — which represents more than 400 cities, towns and villages in the Sunshine State — capitalize on this controversy and start a fundraiser called the “Closet Cocktail Party” wherein electeds go into the closet with someone else who hands them something. When they come out, the audience has to guess what they were given. A cellphone? Dolphins tickets? Or $3,000, perhaps?

Orlando is the Magic City, home to the “most magical place on Earth.”

But I bet that, this week, it is Planet Paranoid.

Oh, how I wish I was there.

  Florida League of Cities, Manny Marono, public corruption