So, now that people — both investigators and reporters — are looking into her job with Miami-Dade Water and Sewer 
and making public records requests, Barby Rodriguez Gimenez showed up to work Tuesday.
Mayor Carlos Gimenez‘s daughter-in-law was paraded up and down the Coral Gables offices of Aecom, 135 San Lorenzo Ave., by Esther Monzon, president and owner of EV Services, one of 15 subcontractors on Aecom’s $91 million 2014 contract for water and sewer improvements mandated by the federal and state governments.
Barby is one of four public information officers at the company and was hired about a year after the contract was awarded in May, 2014. Before that, she worked as director of client relations (though that title could be a bit inflated) at Genovese, Joblove & Batista, which, by the way, lobbied on behalf of Aecom for the contract.
Read related story: Carlos Gimenez daughter-in-law could need a new job
Rodriguez’s role at EV Services is described in the company’s website.
“Better known as ‘Barby’ throughout the South Florida community, she’s a member of the Miami-Dade International Trade Consortium, Board Member at Voices for Children and member of Florida International University’s Presidents Council,” it says under her photo.
What it doesn’t say is that she was appointed in 2013 to the ITC — which meets quarterly and makes recommendations about trade missions and sister city issues to the commission — which is already after her father-in-law was elected mayor. And she was appointed by Miami-Dade Commissioner Juan Zapata, who she worked for when he was a State Rep in Tally. It was a consolation prize because Barby really wanted a job in his county office when he was elected in 2011 — which Zap couldn’t give her, well, because she is the mayor’s daughter-in-law.
It wouldn’t look right.
She is also not listed, by the way, as a board member on the websites for either the Voices for Children Foundation or the FIU President’s Council. A search for her among the members yields zero results. Barbara Galvez, a communications coordinator at the President’s Council, said Rodriguez is not a current member. Galvez has only been there for three years, so she checked with Director Dania Rivero, who said Barby had not been a PC member in the eight years that she had been there.
Lots of people pad their resumes, but this one uses her mayoral father-in-law’s palanca to live off the county dime.
Read related story: Carlos Gimenez rewards family (again) in $1.6 billion deal
“Barby is our firm’s social butterfly connecting our clients with decision makers for desired results,” reads the last line of her thumbnail bio on the EV Services website. Social butterfly? Is that what we are calling it these days? And “connecting our clients with decision makers for desired results” has never 
meant more than when your suegro is mayor of largest county in Florida and the seventh largest county in the United States. She doesn’t have to do anything but support el viejo. She just has to be.
Records obtained by Political Cortadito show that Rodriguez is paid $21.75 an hour out of a possible $45. There are a total of nine EV Services employees on the county payroll, making a combined $255 an hour. Three of those positions are “public information officer,” but Ladra cannot imagine needing three PIOs on this project. What is their work product? How much public information could there possibly be? There’s apparently also an opening for a social media person, making $25.50 to $31.50 an hour, so if you’re looking and you know Mayor Gimenez…
The other two PIOs make a little more ($28.84 and $25.72 an hour) than Rodriguez, who makes much less than her father-in-law’s BFF, Ralph Garcia Toledo, who gets paid $200 an hour for what he admits is mostly clerical work on a separate $131 million contract awarded to CH2M Hill.
Still, $21.75 an hour is a $45,000-a-year job — nice work if on top of that you don’t really have to show up.
Doesn’t it look in this photo like Barby is flashing taxpayers the bird? The man on the right is her husband, the mayor’s less illustrious son, Julio Gimenez, who works for a company that got a $4 million no-bid contract to repair the performing arts center. Yes, it’s nice to be in the mayor’s friends and family plan.
Classy, huh?
Some people say que la familia de Carlos Gimenez es tan elegante. And then there are those of us who know the truth.
What they are is descarados.
Barby Gimenez shows up to no-show job on county dime added by Ladra on
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