Another day, another local mayor arrested: Homestead Mayor Steve Bateman was taken into custody Wednesday on charges of taking unlawful compensation.
That’s police code for bribes and kickbacks and, in this case, taking secret jobs to use your political influence on other government officials.
The mayor has been under investigation for a multitude of things in recent weeks. He has been accused of using his position as mayor to land a hush-hush $125-an-hour lobbying job and then using his position or political influence to lobby for his boss, without registering as a lobbyist, to get county and city approvals needed for construction projects, and for having referred (wink, wink) real estate transactions in the city to his wife, who has seemingly made some lucrative land deals.
According to sources, Bateman — a former Golden Gloves boxer — did not go with authorities easily. When investigators went to pick him up at his home, he initially refused to come out, say two sources inside City Hall. Homestead Police had to be called in, they said, to convince him to surrender, even though other sources say he knew he was about to be arrested and perhaps was surprised he had not been yet.
Yeah, us too, buddy. We’ve been hearing about your imminent arrest for a month now.
Bateman becomes the third mayor to be arrested this month. On Aug. 6, Sweetwater Mayor Manny “Maraña” Maroño and Miami Lakes Mayor Michael “Muscles” Pizzi were arrested on federal bribery and extortion charges after a two-year investigation by the FBI.
Bateman, 58, didn’t need a set-up sting for bait. He got busted after he volunteered to take a job — or, as prosecutors contend, create a position — with Community Health of South Florida Inc. as a consultant to help them get the government green lights on continued expansion of the company’s health clinics. The mayor allegedly pushed county officials to approve permits for a new sewage pump station that was needed for a CHI project — even meeting with Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez to personally beg him to fast-track the project, which would allow CHI to build a proposed children’s clinic in downtown Homestead.
Gimenez told the media he thought Bateman was acting in his capacity as mayor of Homestead. Turns out he was acting in his capacity as CHI’s $125-an-hour political influence peddler.
Bateman, who only makes $6,000 a year at the city job, was fired from that other, more lucrative “consulting” job last week. He will likely be fired from his elected position by the governor, like the other two mayors were.
According to the extremely compromising details of the arrest warrant, first published by The Miami Herald’s David Ovalle, Bateman billed the company for the time he spent with Gimenez and other top county officials. That was in February, when he earned $3,625 –more than half of his annual salary as mayor — for 29 hours of consulting work.
The obvious conflict of interest started shortly after CHI proposed Children’s Crisis Center and the project — which was to receive $1.9 million in county funds, according to the arrest warrant — was delayed. The problem: The company could not connect to the city’s sewer pump station and would have to build its own, an unplanned expense. The solution: In January, CHI reached out to the mayor. In February, the company hired Bateman as “advisor and construction manager,” the warrant reads. His $125-an-hour fee was joined by a $300 car allowance.
Weeks later, the company issued an internal purchase order allotting $120,000 to pay Bateman for his work for the next year, Ovalle reports from the warrant, adding that CHI President Brodes Hartely told prosecutors that Bateman was the one who boasted about his, um, skills, and “pressed for the consulting gig.”
“He came to talk to me about his ability and his experience as a contractor to assist us in moving our projects forward,” Hartley is quoted as saying in the warrant that supported Bateman’s long-rumored, any-day now arrest.
Another CHI official apparently went so far as to say that Bateman was retained specifically “to make the wheels turn faster” in obtaining approvals of permits from both Miami-Dade and Homestead. They even gave hired an assistant for him at $40-an-hour to help him “oversee and manage numerous” company projects.
The warrant alleges that the mayor never disclosed the fact that he was working for CHI in any of his dealings.
In addition to a statement from Gimenez, who told prosecutors that Bateman “comes to me as the Mayor of Homestead, he doesn’t come to me as a lobbyist from Homestead” — a Homestead city employee said the mayor pressured him about getting the sewer permit approved.
Looks like Bateman’s goose is cooked. Well-done.
But,other than the delicious details that illustrate what can go wrong with public servants are also private entrepreneurs, this one didn’t catch anyone by surprise, like the arrests earlier this month. Rumors have been flying for days — no, weeks actually — that the mayor would be arrested “any day now.” Yesterday, the buzz got a little louder and certain people (read: Vice Mayor John Burgess) started acting funny.
Naturally, coming just two months before the city elections — and one month before the primary — this will only serve to help Mark Bell, the hotelier and husband of Commissioner Lynda Bell, who is running for the mayor’s seat.
Or it could help Burgess, who is rumored to be thinking about jumping in. This could make up his mind.
Either way, Bateman might as well save his breath and campaign money for his defense fund since Ladra highly doubts he can be elected now. This case looks about as solid as it can get. He is cooked.
Let him try to get a job in the real world without his political post.
Another mayor goes down: Homestead’s Steve Bateman added by Ladra on
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