Miami Beach Commissioner Kristen Rosen Gonzalez wasn’t getting her phone messages. 
She wasn’t getting invitations sent to her for events. She missed meetings that she wasn’t told about. She wasn’t getting her message out to the senior citizen centers where she campaigned among the seniors who elected her.
And that’s because her aide may have been working against her.
David Zaret was hired by Mayor Philip Levine, who has been bullying Rosen Gonzalez since before she won her seat a little more than a year ago against one of Levine’s plantidates. He tweets more about Commission John Aleman than he does about his boss, who Aleman went after with her since-abandoned kiss-and-tell ordinance.
Read related story: Miami Beach commissioner wants electeds to kiss and tell
“I felt like I had a Benedict Arnold in my office,” Rosen Gonzalez told Ladra. She couldn’t fire him. So she did the next best thing: “I changed my locks and moved that double agent into the mayor’s office.”
Rosen Gonzalez was the only commissioner who was not allowed to hire her own aide. Her choices were vetoed by the mayor, who gets to approve any hires the commissioners make. She has a problem with that. And on Wednesday she will try to convince her colleagues to put a referendum before the voters that would allow them to hire and fire their own staff.
Zaret has ignored her directives, she said. “I tried to fire him six months ago. I told the chief of staff he wasn’t doing anything that I asked him to do,” she said. “She refused.”
Zaret also ignored calls and emails from Ladra. The first email came back with this message: “Your email has reached the office of David Zaret, however, he is no longer the aide for Commissioner Kristen Rosen Gonzalez. If you are attempting to reach the Commissioner, you may do so by emailing her directly.”
He also does not speak Spanish, w
hich Rosen Gonzalez says is important to be able to communicate with her constituents and represent them properly.
“When I get calls from Spanish speakers, my aide can’t help and bounces it over to the mayor’s aide,” she said. She doesn’t get the information or gets it late. “My constituency has suffered and I’ve had to work twice as hard.”
Recently, the commissioner was invited to a cocktail party. The host hand-delivered the invite in a gold box with a purple ribbon. You think she’d remember such a thing. But she never got it. Or sent regrets. Or knew about it — until she ran into the host who said she was missed.
“I was embarrassed,” she said. “I don’t care about not going to the event, but I want to be able to say ‘thank you’ to the person who hand delivered the invitation. And I just happened to run into this person. Who knows how many other things I’ve not gotten that I don’t know about?”
One would think that Zaret would be fired from his job. Anyone who so blatantly fails to perform would be. We will know he’s a spy when he gets rewarded with a new job, instead. Maybe he will be reassigned to Aleman’s office. He’s such a fan, after all.
Read related story: A tale of two aides — Fired and Hired
Ladra bets that Aleman votes against 
Rosen Gonzalez’s initiative. But the other commissioners really ought to take it seriously. In order for commissioners to be truly independent, they need the freedom to hire and fire their own staff — and to be able to trust that their staff isn’t really working for and taking care of someone else.
Don’t forget the word fire. Because the mayor can also fire an aide out of spite or revenge. Anyone remember Alex Fernandez? He was former Commissioner Deede Weithorn‘s aide until Mayor Ego fired him for supporting former Commissioner Michael Gongora in the 2013 mayoral race. Fernandez is better off now, working for a county commissioner.
And last week, the spy may have been in Rosen Gonzalez’s office. But tomorrow it could be in yours, Commissioner Michael Grieco. Or in yours, Commissioner Micky Steinberg.
If Rosen’s item fails — as is likely since Commissioners Joy Malakoff and Ricky Arriola have proven before to be in the mayor’s pocket, as well as Aleman — then she should take the matter to a petition and get it on the ballot despite them. Don’t get comfy just because you got rid of one spy.
There can always be another.
Miami Beach Commissioner’s aide may have been a spy added by Ladra on
View all posts by Ladra →
