Miami-Dade Mayor’s pal gets $6 mil extension on contract

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Munilla Construction Management — a frequent county bidder doing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of projects — will likely get an additional $6 million and a one-year extension Thursday for “miscellaneous” renovations and repairs at Miami International Airport.

Just like that. No open bidding, no competitive process. Just $6 million more for work that they just didn’t get to and that needs to get done.

Sure, the item is actually before the Miami-Dade Commission’s Economic Development and Tourism Committee, but once it’s passed there it will likely pass the full commission as early as next week. There’s even language in the “change order” ordinance that says Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez can execute the adjusted contract without subsequent approval from the board. Ladra takes that to mean it only needs one reading.

Basically, according to all the whereases on the ordinance, MCM was hired on a “miscellaneous construction contract” for identified projects at the airport, but then got sidetracked — or even reassigned — to different work due to the growth at MIA and was unable to finish all the work it was hired for. So now, their friend Carlitos is giving them a break. Rather than go out to bid again, like the county will have to in a year anyway because the growth is going to continue — and, for some reason, there is another item on this committee agenda rejecting six bids for “miscellaneous construction” — Gimenez wants the commission to give MCM, his pals, another year and another $6 million in airport work.

How long was the original contract? It doesn’t say on the materials provided in Thursday’s agenda. But when Ladra looked up the contract number on the county’s website, we found another change order request from 2014, with a recommendation from Gimenez that the four-year $50 million contract go up by a whopping $30 million. I can’t tell if it was approved or not.

But then last year, on March 8, the mayor recommended that the contract be extended for a year and for $10 million more. So does that mean that MCM, with Thursday’s approval, has gotten two extra years and $16 million more for “miscellaneous” work?

This item Thursday is an emergency, of course, because the contract expired last month and the county could be left with nobody to make as-needed repairs at the busy, growing airport. How can you let this expire? For two years in a row? Will someone please tell me again what a great administrator this mayor is?

Or is it, more likely, that he let the urgency happen because the company is owned by familia.

Munilla Construction is owned by Pedro Munilla and his brothers, who Ladra has been repeatedly told are related to Gimenez through marriage. They give generously to the mayor’s multiple election campaigns and his political action committees. But they give to a lot of electeds, at the county and also municipal levels. I guess it’s a small price to pay for county work.

From 2009 to 2014, according to the change order from that year, MCM had been awarded at least $176 million in county contracts.

One has to wonder how much of that is in change orders.

  Carlos Gimenez, Munilla Construction