Miami Lakes: Michael Pizzi thisclose to being mayor again

Former, arrested, suspended and acquitted Miami Lakes Mayor Michael “Muscles” Pizzi is one step closer to sitting back in his office at Town Hall after a judge ruled Tuesday that his acquittal on bribery charges — and the subsequent, if forced, revocation of the governor’s suspension — means that he should get his old elected seat back.

Oh, and all the back wages he’s missed since he was suspended by Gov. Rick Scott following his August 2013 arrest on federal bribery charges that prosecutors couldn’t make stick.

Pizzi was arrested on the same day and in the same sting operation that netted former Sweetwater Mayor Manny “Maraña” Maroño, who is doing 3.5 years for the same basic crime. The case against Maroño, who boasted of his exploits on wiretap, was always better than the one against Pizzi, who took $3,000 from a lobbyist/bagman in a closet but was careful enough in his lawyeresque wording that he could always cast a tiny shadow of a doubt.

So, he was acquitted a year later last August. And, when Scott didn’t immediately revoke the suspension, Pizzi’s dream team of seven attorneys led by legal eagle Benedict Kuehne sued the governor and forced him, via the Supreme Court, to sign a revocation in December. Then, they had to sue again, because the city didn’t immediately evict Mayor Wayne Slaton, who won the seat in a special October election two months after Pizzi’s arrest.

Tuesday, Circuit Judge Cardonne Ely — “validating Mayor Pizzi’s principled stance in favor of democracy and the rule of law,” Kuehne said in a statement — declared that Pizzi is the rightful mayor of Miami Lakes and is entitled to resume the office of Mayor through November 2016, which is the term he was elected to in 2012.

“Mayor Pizzi has now prevailed in every challenge to his mayoral leadership,” Kuehne said. “He is excited to begin again to restore the Town of Miami Lakes to prominence and prosperity, as he continues his work serving the people of Miami Lakes. He calls on temporary Mayor Slaton to cease and desist from his senseless litigation that only serves to cost the town and its citizens untold dollars in legal fees.”

The judge did give the city 30 days to appeal — or move Mayor Slaton out. So Ladra is not necessarily expecting Pizzi to be answering the phone at Town Hall today. Even though he certainly would if he could.

“This is a time for unity and joy,” Pizzi said in the statement. “At this special time of year when many members of our community are preparing to join with their friends and family to celebrate the joy of freedom and justice at Passover and Easter, we should embrace this decision that allows all of us to look forward.”

Tuesday afternoon, Pizzi told journalists and TV crews that he was the mayor of Miami Lakes, gosh darn it, and characteristically — and almost cartoonishly — pumped his fists into the air.

Maybe his new nickname ought to be Popeye.

“This is a victory for democracy, a victory for the constitution, a victory for the people of Miami Lakes,” he told WSVN Channel 7, adding, incredibly, that he was the “victim of a political coup.”

Ladra guesses Pizzi is now going to argue that political enemies forced him to consider a bogus grant deal that was an obvious scam to anybody with any sense, never mind an attorney who is also the mayor of a municipality and also forced him to do it without going through the council process.

Still, for all of the sins that Pizzi seems to be getting away with, it also seems inevitable that he’ll be back. And that is the right thing to do. Because — like him or not, whether you think he’s guilty or not — it seems that the rule of law and democracy does, indeed, dictate that he be returned to office.

Otherwise, think of how easy it would be to get rid of any elected. If you can get someone charged with wrongdoing, whether she or he did it or not, they would get suspended. And nobody would have to win at the ballot box anymore.

Slaton — Pizzi’s longtime nemesis who lost the 2012 election to Muscles — should just give up already, before this battle costs the city one more dime than the $180,00 or so of the taxpayers’ money spent so far on this big boy’s political pissing match.

But he won’t. He issued a statement Tuesday saying that, as the judge had said they could do, the city planned to appeal and be successful in that process.

Or maybe he can’t. Because if he does that will automatically give Pizzi and his attorneys the upper hand in recovering legal fees for the past 20 months — which Ladra bets are upwards of $2 million.

Although, really, they ought to be suing the FBI and Gov. Scott.

Meanwhile, who do the people of Miami Lakes get to sue?

Manny Marono, Michael Pizzi, Wayne Slaton

Miami Lakes: Michael Pizzi thisclose to being mayor again added by Ladra on April 1, 2015
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