In what may be the biggest mass violation of the Florida Government-in-the-Sunshine laws in history, video shows every single member of the Hialeah council filing into the Mayor Carlos Hernandez‘s office about two hours before the council meeting in which they voted to pass the budget.
Former Mayor Julio “The Other” Martinez, who is running against the mayor in the Nov. 5 election, pulled the video as a public record and has asked the State Attorney’s Office and the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust to investigate the meeting he is sure happened with all of them on Sept. 9 in the mayor’s office.
“There is sufficient evidence here of a flagrant violation of our Sunshine laws,” said Martinez, who called a press conference Thursday to denounce what he called “an epidemic of corruption.”
But the mayor called a hasty press conference right after to denounce what he called a campaign circus, saying the accusations are part of the typical political punches pulled every election season. He also said that each of the council members met with either him or one of his staff members individually and that there was no Sunshine violation.
Yeah, riiiiiight.
That’s why they all arrived at the same time, more or less, and waited for one another to leave together, even opening doors for one another as they are seen exiting his office and entering the elevator to the commission meeting en masse. Only Councilwoman Lourdes Lozano left early.
The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s office told Ladra that they received the “materials discussed during his Thursday afternoon press conference” at 3:15 p.m. Thursday. “We will immediately begin the process to establish if Florida’s Sunshine Law was violated and determine what can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt,” SAO spokesman Ed Griffith wrote to me Friday morning.
The “materials discussed” include not only the video of the entrance to the mayor’s office but eight other videos from around City Hall he requested as public records. One of those is the video of the hallway where all the council members get into the elevator together afterward.
I guess they each individually decided to wait for one another after they were done individually meeting?
Joe Centorino, director of the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust, did tell Ladra that he had heard of the video and the allegations and that his agency would likely look into them.
“Obviously, there was an event,” Centorino told me. But, he added, the video itself may not prove that anyone broke Sunshine laws, which prohibit elected officials from meeting in private to discuss anything they may vote on.
“It shows them going into an area where the mayor’s office is, but does it show them going into the mayor’s office together,” Centorino asked, posing the main question.
That’s the mayor’s defense.
“I have the right to meet individually with each council member to give them my counsel,” Hernandez told the media. “They do come here to ask questions every Tuesday before the commission meets,” he said.
Council President Luis Gonzalez said Thursday night on the Prohibido Callarse show that he and the others waited in waiting room until they were seen one by one by the mayor. But the video clearly shows the waiting room empty. Did he mean the conference room. “We asked each other about our day,” he said, adding that no business was discussed.
Then why not schedule the meetings at different times or different days and times so there’s no chance a violation can be committed and no problem with perception? And aren’t those questions the council members should ask in public anyway? At the commission meetings? In fact, is that maybe why the budget rife with errors passed in minutes with hardly any discussion? Not one single question was asked at the Sept. 9 meeting. I guess they got a good briefing behind closed doors.
And why does it appear that the city Budget Director Ines Beecher lied about meeting with council members? Beecher had told Martinez in a council meeting weeks ago that she had met individually with each council member from 5 to 7 p.m. on that same day. The video clearly shows that no council members entered her office. They were busy meeting with the mayor.
“They didn’t meet with the budget director at all,” Martinez said. And, indeed, the only city officials seen entering or leaving the mayor’s office for the budget meeting or meetings are the city attorney, Water Department Director Armando Vidal, the mayor’s Chief of Staff Arnie Alonso and Finance Director Javier Collazo.
“She lied to me,” Martinez said, referring to Beecher, who had told him in a public council meeting that she had met with each of the council members individually from 5 to 7 p.m. that same day. Among the public records he asks for are her agenda, which clearly state that the council members were to be meeting with her individually. He also asked for the video tape for that day for all the security cameras on the third and fourth floors. Needless to say, they did not meet with her individually, as she told him at the budget hearing. They were in the mayor’s office. How could they be in two places at once?
“I expected to find nobody because when I asked for it, I thought that they had not met,” Martinez said. “But I found a treasure.”
It also took him about a month to get it because, after delaying it for more than a week, the city provided a recording that nobody could open. Martinez said he had to take it to his son in Boynton Beach, who owns a software company, to be able to view the recording.
“The city of Hialeah gave me a format that nobody could figure out.”
Ladra is not the only one who is incredulous. Jose Garcia Pedrosa, former city manager in Miami Beach and the city of Miami, where he also served as City Attorney, is representing Martinez and said that the individual-meet argument is almost laughable.
“It doesn’t make sense. It’s not credible. The mayor can say what he wants, but I’ve been in that office and so have you. It’s not the size of a football field,” Garcia Pedrosa told Ladra. “The issue here is why were they all in his office at the same time in the first place?”
In all his time in government, decades of experience, Garcia Pedrosa said he has “never, ever, ever seen a situation where six or seven elected officials are in the same room at the same time.”
Like, never.
“The mayor can say he talked to them individually, but, wow, that’s hard to believe,” Garcia Pedrosa said.
Furthermore, we can’t just take their word for it.
There is enough reason to doubt here, enough evidence to cause a problem with perception. I mean, the mayor is always saying he didn’t do anything. He isn’t covering for illegal maquinitas in Hialeah. He isn’t taking 36% interest on illegal loans. He isn’t giving away parks to the highest bidder. He isn’t giving away no-contract city business. He isn’t using his paid goon and the police department to harass and bully critics.
But he is beginning to sound like a broken record. In his paranoid mind, every criticism, every allegation against him is a conspiracy and the brainchild of former Mayor Martinez, on which he blames everything.
So, I have an idea. Let’s put it all to rest. Let’s get sworn statements from not just every council member but also all the staff members that were there. Sure, Arnie is probably willing to commit perjury to protect his boss. He may even get another 62 percent raise out of it.
But I doubt that City Attorney William Grodnick would. He has more to lose. Like his law license. And Vidal and Collazo could lose their pension because perjury is a felony. So everyone will lose their pension if just one person tells the truth. Unless everyone tells the truth.
Garcia Pedrosa told me that it is also laughable that the state attorney’s office would say it needs an official complaint from anyone.
“If they have indication of a crime, they do not have to wait til someone says ‘Hey, a crime was committed.’ It is their duty to investigate,” he said.
I hope the investigation also includes cellphone and email records and look at the original copies of the video in the format given to Martinez, to see if the delay was intentional. There is a pattern of governmental abuse here, not just one incident, and this needs to be taken seriously.
If it is found that the council members did violate the Sunshine law, they could be removed from office by the governor. All of them. He’s done it before. In December, Gov. Rick Scott suspended three commissioners in South Bay, a city in Palm Beach County, for having violated Sunshine laws when they met in private to approve the town manager’s vacation pay. In 2011, Scott removed a city commissioner in Wauchula, a city near Lakeland, in a case where four others who violated the Sunshine laws resigned from office.
Sure, I would rather the Hialeah hoodlums be taken down for dirty backroom deals, absentee ballot fraud and other shenanigans, but I will take this Al Capone moment in an Okeechobee heartbeat.
Whole Hialeah council may have violated state Sunshine law added by Ladra on
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