Carlos Gimenez is not the man I voted for in 2011.
The man we once considered an outsider on the dais, the voice of the people,
has turned into the consummate inside deal broker, a man so entrenched in special interests and corrupt that his best friend and campaign finance chair has a $200-an-hour county contract worth $18 million over the next 12 years.
Gimenez went from being Ladra’s “Golden Boy” to a “Tainted Boy” — after he hooked up with the Hialeah hoodlums — and then “Cry Wolf Carlos,” after he kept threatening to lay everybody off, to “Mr. Giveaway,” when he started just giving millions away to millionaires.
It’s been a slippery slope. And as he faces the first real challenge to his dark and arrogant rule, it’s time to remind everyone why Carlos Gimenez should not be allowed to have another four years, what would be his last four years as mayor.
2011 — The Year of Setting Up
The descent started right after being elected in 2011. The new mayor asked the Commission on 
Ethics and Public Trust for an opinion on deals that were brought to the county by one of his two sons — the red light camera lobbyist or the project manager for a major construction firm. He was told to keep an arm’s distance. So he created an arm. Or, rather, five of them.
The deputy mayor system was created specifically to insulate Gimenez from his sons as well as his lobbyist friends and their special interest and still be able to wheel and deal at arm’s length. But it’s all a show. Because don’t think for a minute that dealing with Alina Hudak or Ed Marquez is any different than dealing with Carlos Gimenez. They will do what he wants them to do.
He also cut taxes by 12 percent, without really considering how that would impact the county in the following years. He did this 19 days after being sworn in July 1, 2011. And we’ve been paying the consequences ever since. Talk about inexperience and mismanagement. It was irresponsible. But, heck, it sounds good in robocalls and radio ads.
2012: The Year of the First Taste of Power
In the summer of 2012, Mayor Gimenez got the commission to approve up to $5 million in funding to meet the county’s insurance deductible for damage done by heavy rains that year to the Ziff 
Ballet Opera House at the Arsht Performing Arts Center. Somewhere around 2,500 patrons had to be evacuated after water came gushing through the roof during a May performance of The Lion King. Though the $5 million comes from county coffers, the independent Performing Arts Center Trust was charged with hiring the contractors to make the repairs. Normally the PAC gets the county procurement department to request bids for its projects, but this was an emergency, county staffers told Ladra. And the job went to the company that hired the mayor’s son, Julio Gimenez.
In August that year, his campaign against a challenge from former Commissioner Joe Martinez gets 
caught up in an illegal absentee ballot operation. One of several people caught and arrested with dozens of absentee ballots was seen walking in and out of his Hialeah campaign office. He may not have known about it, but he certainly didn’t do enough about it after he found out. The man who told me personally in 2011 that he would reform absentee ballots to cut down on fraud was now looking the other way because it benefited him.
Nothing happens. Investigators later say they were stopped from going into Gimenez’s Hialeah campaign office because the State Attorney, whose campaign manager was also working for Gimenez, would not seek a subpoena. Nobody got jail time. And nobody followed up on the investigation, even though there was evidence that there were more people involved.
It’s never been spoken of again.
2013: The Year he “saved” Libraries
An obsession with sports stadiums started when early in 2013, Gimenez proposed a tourist bed tax 
increase to fund renovations and a roof at Dolphins Stadium, something he needed the state legislature to pass. He thought the idea was so revolutionary and fantastic — “best idea ever,” he called it — that he went so far as to having it put on fast track for a referendum and having the Miami Dolphins pay for it. The measure failed to get any support in Tallahasee and died.
Not to get too depressed about it, Gimenez flew to Paris for the air show and then later met his pal, lobbyist Jorge Luis Lopez, in Italy so they could get backstage passes to the Vatican.
When he came back, Gimenez proposed fire rescue cuts known as “brown outs” that would have some units at some stations out of service for several hours or days at a time. It wou
ld have severely impacted neighborhood service and response times. After firefighters had several street protests, the idea was dropped and money magically found (one of several times) to keep the fire rescue staffing levels.
But to fix the broken budget — which he had broken two years earlier, folks — Gimenez also proposed closing libraries and drastically cutting library programs and services. After much protest at County Hall and a number of budget town halls around the county, money was magically found again and the administration ended up only closing some branches on some weekdays and cutting staff.
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I have been a life-long resident of the South florida for many decades, being born here. I have watched corruption take place in many of the cities in the County, with millions of dollars in outright thefts, nepotism, insider contracts, and payoffs. There are 35 municipalies in the County and every one of them have property tax rates three to five times what the County tax rate is, except for Aventura and Sunny Isles Beach. As a property owner of multple single family properties located in the County, my tenants and I appreciate the comapritively low tax rate that helps make rents affordable to those renting. The fact that he actually cut the millage rate during his term in office shows us that he is a fiscal conservative and we need that with the $4 billion dollar budget of the County. He has had numerous requests to expand departments and County services but has kept all expansions to a minimum, something lacking in most municipalities.
While Gimenez has had some questionable issues as commenters and yourself have mentioned, we could do a lot worse than him. Remember Carlos Alverez? Would you like to have him back? Sure Gimenez has done a certain amount of pandering to stay in office, but he also has stood up to the employee unions and gotten concessions from them; like getting the fire boat and fire trucks at the Port of Miami to be serviced by the same crew rather than three seperate 24/7 crews like the fire union wanted. This was a huge savings to the taxpayers.
Whenever PBA President John Rivera is endorsing somebody, you should ALWAYS vote for the opponent of who he is endorsing as whoever is receiving his endorsement has made an under the table deal with him to pay him back for his support, at the Miami-Dade County taxpayers expense. In this case, since he is endorsing Regalado, I voted for Gimenez.
[…] her? What Lladra said: Why Carlos Gimenez should not have four more years. […]
Mosquito Control is with Solid Waste and helicopter was sold. Just make a records request. I agree with Got A Point, re-advertise all Non-competively selected senior management positions and let’s see who gets hired based on merit. Regelado is another crony queen, that’s her culture and family upbringing, so she would no better. Either way, she has no chance but that name recognition sure could help for the City of Miami #realisticgoal, #realgoal, #allRegaladosAreTheSame.
Ladra,
Similar to you regarding the Presidential election I don’t like my choices regarding the Mayoral race. If you really would like for me to reconsider my vote -no seriously- then I would need to hear the following from Raquelita.
That she will fire all supervisors, managers, assistant directors, and directors that have allowed politics or played politics while performing their jobs. If she does commit to firing people like Alica Bravo, Jennifer Moon, Ed Marquez, Lester Solas, Miriam Singer, etc. and has no desire to try to remove Carlos Migoya from being the CEO, then I much rather stick to the same old bullshit we have with Carlos Gimenez.
The reason being that Alice Bravo and Carlos Migoya were at one point in time hires of Mayor Regalado at the City of Miami. One might say that the Mayor of Miami per charter is prohibited from making personnel decision. WE ALL KNOW BETTER!
I need to feel that it won’t be the same old crap wth a different name. Regardless whether it is Carlos Alvarez, Carlos Gimenez or even Raquel Regalado, the one constant thing has been the Administration. If they are simply around catering to the politicians and not doing their jobs, I want them out. Separation of powers must be guaranteed.
While we have had no conversation about who would stay and who would go, I can say with 100% certainty, based on other conversations, that at least some of the people you named will be retiring early or resigning for other reasons once Raquel is elected. And probably some others that you have not named.
That said, I believe that the employees are following orders and example. You cut off the head of the monster and the monster dies.
So now you can go and vote for Raquel. Yay! Pardon me if I don’t hold my breath.
Love, Ladra
LETS MAKE THIS FAST AND THRUTHFULL “GIMENEZ AND HIS BUNCH OF RENOWNED ARE LIARS, CROOKS AND ARROGANT UNDESIRABLES” LETS GET RID OF THEM NOW!
My second reply: I just had a frustrating experience with Miami-Dade County. I am convinced that the mayor’s budget cuts contributed to my waste of time and bad experience. I tried calling the number listed on a zoning notice to get more information on the application. The first time I dialed the number it rang and rang. A few hours later, I dialed again. This time I got a menu that went round and round. I would push the button on the menu that applied to my inquiry and instead of getting anyone or anything, I would get another round of the same menu. I then called 911 which rang a whole bunch of times. When I explained to the operator who finally answered what the problem was, I waited and waited for her to come back. Finally, a robot answered and said, I kid you not, “City of Miami zoning department.”
This is so unbelievable. I am retired and have time to be given the run-around, but how would a working person, who probably isn’t allowed to make personal calls during the day, ever have a chance to get an answer to a county question?
As President Truman said, “The buck stops here.” It lands right at the feet of our totally incompetent and dishonest Mayor. When you refuse to raise taxes and instead cut taxes, you get what you pay for
Excellent writing Ladra and excellent explanation. I now know even more about Mr. Gimenez and I hope the county constituents do too.
The problem is not whether Gimenez deserves another term – he clearly doesn’t.
The problem is whether Regalado is (a) competent/numerate/careful enough to run the County, and (b) whether, even if she is–and especially if she isn’t–she’ll sweep in her dad’s cronies, who let us say do not have a sterling record of either honesty or competence. “Team Regaldo” has not made the case that they are a safe set of hands, more’s the pity.
When your best defense against allegations of misbehavior is “I didn’t know” or “It was just a careless error in complex circumstances” it doesn’t tend to make a strong case. And it’s hard to beat an incumbent without one.
I understand, Michael. But I disagree and also need to clarify something.
She didn’t say it was a mistake, or oooops. She did not get the notices for those two years because the bank had already gotten possession of the property. THE BANK WAS THE ONE that paid the taxes both those years. She did not. She had stopped paying the mortgage payments, why on Earth would she pay the taxes. The BANK paid the taxes. The bank failed to tell her or her husband that the Homestead Exemption status was still there. Maybe they looked the other way on purpose (to pay less) or maybe the bank staffer was overworked. But it was not Raquel’s mistake. What you are saying is that she should have KNOWN that it was still there after she turned the house over to her husband and he turned it over to the bank. But should have known is subjective. This could happen to anybody. It was taken care of the MOMENT that she found out about it. And the property appraiser’s office has said there was no fraud. She did not benefit from the Homestead exemption status. She did not rent her home. She did not claim Homestead exemption in a new place. She simply abandoned her home and thought that was that. It actually makes her a better mayor because she can now work with the property appraiser so that cases like these do not fall through the cracks.
I don’t know anything about her dad’s cronies but I sure know Carlos Gimenez has a bunch of them living off the public trough. I’ve been hanging around Raquel now for the better part of eight months and I never see any of her dad’s people… I mean, I wouldn’t know who they are but the people who I do see around her are certainly not his cronies. She is definitely her own person, not a copy of her father. Why wouldn’t you let her prove that to you? Give her the benefit of the doubt.
Because here is the biggest issue of all: How much worse can she be? Was it competent to strike a deal with the Frost Museum that they couldn’t live up to so the county had to bail them out? Was it competent to mess up the special taxing districts so that some people were overbilled to cover the under billing of others?
Look, there are whole departments and staff people to deal with these things. Raquel is not going to be balancing the county checkbook. That’s Jennifer Moon’s job (no, seriously). What Raquel is going to be doing is ensuring transparency and accountability, getting us more state and federal dollars, create live/work/play hubs all over, not just in Brickell, and invest in our community so that our quality of life improves.
There is NO CHOICE. Because four more years of Carlos Gimenez are awful enough but the NEXT four years… when whoever is elected mayor doles out BILLIONS in transit and water and sewer infrastructure… would be criminal. Talk about cronies… did you read the stories about Ralph Garcia Toledo making $200-an-hour for clerical work on a contract worth $18 million over 12 years. This is part of a $139-million water and sewer contract? How much of the rest of those $121 million are being thrown at the Gimenez friends and family plan?
I could go on and on and I did, in the post…
And we’ve never had a female county mayor. I, for one, want to give it a try. I think she is the right person for the right time.
Love, Ladra
Ladra,
Some of things you cited in thi article is similar to what Hillary has done with the Clinton Foundation. So why the double standard? Why are you anti-Gimenez and not anti-Hillary Clinton?
I know you will not post my comment. But I will continue to post so you can read it directly. You are a hipocrite. You should run for office. Because most politicians are disposable waste and so are you.
Just this once, Got-A-Point, because your attack is on me and it’s not that bad. Mostly because it is ridiculous. EVERYONE who knows me knows I am anti-Hillary. Just because I do not like Trump does not mean I like her. In fact, I’ve told everyone that I am voting for Gary Johnson because I can’t vote for either of the party candidates.
So, as usual, you know absolutely nothing of which you speak. Now, back to banishment. Either stop making outlandish and false statements that are offensive or stop posting already. It’s an exercise in futility.
Woof!
I see you have your regular haters, too, some of whom are as equally uninformed as mine. Oh, well. Goes with the territory, I guess.
Thanks for the great info on this race. Gimenez turned out to be a huge disappointment. I hope Regalado wins!
I don’t see anywhere in the article of his Cozy relationship with Uber and how that has destroyed an industry and ultimately will do harm to the public
WOW! I knew Carlos was a bad mayor, but now I know more about his terrible record. I think you left out his cutting of the Parks budget. That resulted in our neighborhood Kendale Park left with grass so high that the kids couldn’t play. We complained and the mowing was increased. Gimenez is a fraud and should be replaced. No wonder we see more ads and today’s stickers on our Miami Herald with his fake smile on page 1. I hope that enough voters turn out for Regalado. Talk about needing change! Good job, Ladra.