Sound the trumpets and break out the champagne! Our Miami-Dade State 
Attorney announced another public corruption arrest of someone stealing the taxpayers’ dollars, a public official on the take.
But instead of looking into the lobbying connections at County Hall and kickbacks or the half a million in PAC money from Miami Beach vendors and special interests, or the Sunshine Law violations in Hialeah and Doral, our watered-down public corruption squad has nabbed a county parks employee stealing gallons of gas.
Less than $20,000 worth of fuel in all.
After a tip off — it’s not like investigators developed this information on their own, pffft! — they watched Siul Delgado pump gas into tanks and containers in the bed of his county truck and take it home to dispense it to, we assume, friends and family members. Customers, probably. He’s supposed to be driving that gas around to different parks to fill up the tanks on county equipment. Instead, he is selling it.
But hey, he’s learning the friends and family plan from the public officials above him.
Read related story: Miami Beach $500K+ PAC tied to vendors, city contracts
Total cost of this scam: Under $20,000. That’s probably less than the cost of the investigation, which is almost the real crime here. The tip-off came in April. Who knows how many hours of investigation and surveillance it took to make the case. It looks like a smokescreen. Like an easy “A” to score so the public corruption watchdogs can pat themselves on the back and say, “See? We are fighting corruption after all! Look at us! 
Look at how great we are! Working for you!”
And it looks like State Attorney Kathy Fernandez-Rundle only wants to go after the small fish. Today it’s a landscape supervisor. In February, it was a facilities supervisor who filed false sprinkler reports and a nobody candidate with zero chance in the last Miami mayoral election who plead guilty to campaign violations. I’m certain I remember another facilities manager arrested for some piddly little thing last year.
Can’t you see what they’re doing? This makes them look busy so they don’t have to do any of the real work and can turn their eyes the other way with the more hardened public corruptors.
I mean look at how much stuff happened under their nose with former Sweetwater Mayor Manny “Maraña” Maroño before the federal authorities stepped in cuando ya no se aguantaban más.
In fact, just a few hours after the SAO announcements the feds trumped her again with self-absorbed trumpets of their own. After almost five years — five years, people — the U.S. Attorney’s office got guilty pleas Thursday from former Congressional candidate Jose Arrojo and his campaign candidate Jeffrey Garcia (more on that later). This investigation stems from the 2010 District 26 race eventually won by former State Rep. David Rivera, who has always been the alleged target of multiple investigations that never go anywhere.
It’s insane how these investigators and prosecutors spend their time — which, by the way, is on our dime. It almost stinks of corruption in and of itself. At the State Attorney’s office, they would rather question private investigator Joe Carillo a dozen times about his uncovering of absentee ballot fraud than question Sen. Rene Garcia or Hialeah Councilwoman Vivian Casals-Munoz, both of whom went to boletera Deisy Cabrera‘s home with a “pan con bistec” (wink wink) the night after she was released from custody.
The best they can do is former Homestead Mayor Steve Bateman?
But I guess the bread and butter are guys like Delgado, a $34,000-a-year employee who also stole a couple bags of fertilizer.
Read related story: SAO scores campaign plot plea deal with a political nobody
Ladra is not excusing this fuel thief. But I think we can do much better. And the back-patting, self celebrating remarks are uncalled for.
“Individuals who feel that they are entitled to use and steal county property have no place in our county workforce. A public salary never allows anyone to become a public thief,” KFR said in a statement in which both she and Inspector General Mary Cagle beat their chests pretty hard for this paltry arrest.
“We value our continuing partnership with the Miami-Dade Police Department and the State Attorney’s Office. Confidential complaints from honest employees and citizens sent to us enable our agencies to root out those who violate the public’s trust,” Cagle said.
Are you telling me you don’t have any information on the bigger fish? Do you need to have an anonymous tip or a call in from an honest employee or can you just observe the shenanigans yourself? You don’t have to be watching local politics too long or too closely to connect the dots and see and hear about the graft and corruption and kickbacks going around.
The kitchen that was totally renovated using county crews and vendors.
The contributions made to a PAC solely because you are going to vote a certain way at a commission meeting. The jobs for electeds’ kids in exchange for no-bid contracts and insider deals. The absentee ballot scams run out of taxpayer-paid county offices. Questionable campaign expenditures and “reimbursements” for whatever for candidates’ relatives want without so much as a batted eyelash.
That’s what should be investigated. Oh, what Ladra would do with subpoena power. Can you imagine, Kathy? Then do it. Please. Get those phone records, mileage readers and GPS trackers, even bank records. Question witnesses and the many electeds and public employees who know stuff and are willing to talk. They are everywhere. Plant an undercover if you have to.
But get those big fish.
Public corruption watchdogs let the big fish swim free added by Ladra on
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But we keep them in office at all levels of government ad infinitum by voting for them in every election or simply no voting at all. I will admit that there are very few candidates who inspire our trust.
True. Not to mention that Dade voters vote for name and ethnicity over competence and substance.
Rod Vereen, her 2012 challenger, possesses both defense attorney and federal prosecutorial credentials, and should have won. He took only 40% of the vote.
One Rundle voter told the Herald that she voted for the incumbent because “I like Rundle. She’s been around.” Yep. That sums up too many of the brain-dead voters here.
Buena Para FULANITO ! The corruption in #OURCOUNTY like the Commissioners say (Nustro Condado )is Total and the Investigations are manipulated By The Ones O TOP. El CAO writes the Code, Interprets,Enforce, and is Also In charge of The possible Regulators Ethics and OIG and Is THE Same Person .
¿Do You Think He Will Investigate Himself ? When he wrote The Code was full of Discrimination’s and Today He Doesn’t Know HOW ,When Or Who Got them into the Code 31-113(k) , Protecting Super Shuttle at MIA Exclusive Contract W/O Permits, Inspections , Enforcement , Hack license short changing the Tax Payers $ 750,000. over the Years . The only Not Regulated For-Hire Transportation in Miami Dade County ! We Have Complained to MDPD, SAO , Corruption ,OIG. BCC and Mayor . A CODE OF SILENCE.
I agree with Joe
2016 has a big surprise coming
The corruption engine in this county is fed by Kathy Fernandez Rundle. As State Attorney she has been elected time after time with the assistance of powerful lobbyists, politicians and consultants for the sole purpose of protecting their corrupt interests.
Fernandez Rundle was influential in selecting Joseph Centorino as head of the Ethics Commission and Mary Kagle as head of the Office of Inspector General (both former employees) to oversee the two other agencies aside from the State State Attorney’s Office that are supposed to weed out corruption and graft. While holding the reins of all three entities Fernandez Rundle is able to dictate who and when anyone is investigated and/or prosecuted. Typically, it is the menial public sector employee who is selected as a sacrificial cow.
The corruption does not end there. Fernandez Rundle’s right hand man and heir to her throne, Jose Arrojo, is as corrupt and willing to do Fernandez Rundle’s deeds as he seeks to position himself for a future run at the office. The prosecutors at the State Attorney’s Office are just as corrupt for knowing the type of game their bosses play and failing to tip and work with the Feds to put them in prison. The heads of MDPD and FDLE are just as corrupt for failing to point out the same issues to the Feds while trying to keep their jobs and preserve their benefits and juicy retirements.h
At the end of the day we are left with a community where only money and power matters. Where Fernandez Rundle and Mayor Carlos Gimenez were able to use campaign manager Al Lorenzo in 2012 and through the use of Hialeah ouncilwoman Vivian Cassals’ absentee ballot collectors pulled of the biggest fraud in elections in the history of this state. And where were the Feds on this? They were supportive of breaking up MDPD’s Anti-Corruption Unit claiming that “from now on our joint efforts will reduce corruption” RUBBISH. Since 2013 how many corruptors in this county have gone to prison? Jorge Luis Lopez, Ralph Garcia Toledo, Llorente, Ferro, Korge, Balsera, Armando Gutierrez, etc., etc. are still running around making a mockery of our system and destroying our community with grand schemes intended to steal public sector properties and dollars.
As long as Fernandez Rundle is in office the corruption in this county will continue to occur. As long as you have strong mayor tyrants all powerful and caring little about our community and as long as you have puppet directors at MDPD and Special Agents in Charge at FDLE, corruption will continue to occur without regulation.
Shame on the 83% percent of voters who stay at home on Election Day or those who fail to read and realize the game these elected officials play. They are as part of the corruption as well. They permit all the listed vermin to run around unchecked and without due care for the future of our community.
Fulanito, yours is the best — and most spot on — elucidation of the Rundle/SAO dysfunction that I have read in years.
Unfortunately, Rundle, who has been SA for 22 years, has all the potency of fizz-less soda pop. It will take another SA to clean up the mess she has created and shine the flashlight where she dares not.
She definitely needs to be replaced in ’16, but I have no faith in the brain-dead voters of Dade to do anything but return her to office, confirming the sad, age-old truth we all know: that Dade voters tend to vote for name and ethnicity over competence and substance.
Which leaves as our lone savior the U.S. Attorney for Miami, Wilfredo Ferrer. Unlike Rundle, he has a demonstrated willingness to go after the corrupt. My only bone to pick is that he needs to crank it up a notch and accelerate his investigations and indictments of local figures, for any diligent and doggedly-determined federal prosecutor need only lift more rocks to find more of these slimy characters among us. They’re there all right. They just haven’t been arrested yet.