Courthouse clean bill of health begs questions, investigation

Well, well, well. It appears that there is no huge, life-endangering emergency at the downtown Miami-Dade Civil Courthouse after all. You know… the health and safety hazards like mold and crumbling columns that lawyers and judges told us were killing them slowly day by day or quickly any day now.

They lied. The county’s assessment found that no emergency ever existed.

“At this time, there are no known existing conditions at the Dade County Courthouse that may affect the life, health or safety of the judges, employees, visitors or users,” says a memo issued late Tuesday from Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos “Cry Wolf” Gimenez, adding that the longtime leaks that caused much of the damage should be repaired by February and the mold and other issues mitigated by next summer — at a cost of $35 million.

That’s far less than the $400 million that the judges and lawyers supporting a bond referendum last year wanted to take from us to build a 600,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art facility. The measure was voted down Nov. 4 after critics — namely Miami-Dade School Board Member Raquel Regalado (who might want to run against Gimenez in 2016), Miami-Dade Commissioner Juan Zapata, TV and radio journalist Roberto Rodriguez-Tejera, and yours truly — raised questions about the rush (read: railroading) and the lack of details on both the alleged “emergency” and the alternative site.

Now we know that the claims of a “sick building” were just scare tactics.

“If that bond item would have passed, there would have been a fantastic case for undoing the question,” Regalado told Ladra Wednesday. “Because they lied to the voters. You can’t lie to the people.”

Oh, but yes, it seems that you can.

Two months after voters rejected the measure, the Miami Herald’s Doug Hanks reported that All Aboard Florida — which the public was told was no longer part of the conversation — had been in talks with county officials about developing a new courthouse up until at least mid August. That’s less than a month before the county commission voted on the last day possible to put the measure on the November ballot. At the time, people were told that All Aboard was no longer an option. But after the referendum failed, they’re back on, as Hanks also reported, when a county facilities manager provided All Aboard with some plans and renditions of a new courthouse drawn up by the architects of the new Children’s Courthouse. Sure, that was in December. But when did Leland Solomon, who asked that the emailed information be “kept confidential” — first have those renderings?

Why? If there were plans and even drawings of a new proposed courthouse — the details that we thought were nonexistent at the time of the referendum — why didn’t we know about it? Was it because there was an inside deal being cooked up? That’s sure what it looks like.

This is why there is no public trust in government. In fact, the whole thing put together looks like a political conspiracy. It’s like the players here first intentionally ignored the escalating damage at the courthouse for years and years until a $2 million fix turned into a $35 million job, so that they could create a false sense of urgency and present their desired solution/ultimate goal — $400 million in new public money to spend — at the last possible minute for a low turnout election in three months time. They didn’t count on any questions or opposition.

As I’ve said before, it was always about the ka-ching.

There really should be a criminal investigation into this. Maybe the Inspector General should dig. Maybe there should be a Grand Jury inquiry. That might be difficult, seeing as how our esteemed Miami-Dade State Attorney Kathy Fernandez-Rundle advocated for the passage of the referendum. Although Ladra thinks she was also lied to and should be highly motivated to find out what we all need to know: Who knew what when?

Among those called to testify or to be deposed are the big advocates of the referendum who went on radio and TV to push people to vote in favor before someone died. It’s a tough job, because the list includes some heavy hitters: Chief Judge Bertila Soto and attorneys like Eugene Stearns, who led the PAC that spent $1 million on the effort, Joe Serrota, Robert Martinez — the former U.S. Attorney who went on Michael Putney and said the “dangerous” building may even be torn down.

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Carlos Gimenez, Miami-Dade Courthouse, Raquel Regalado

Courthouse clean bill of health begs questions, investigation added by Ladra on January 14, 2015
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