Fact check: Coral Gables candidate Carmen Olazabal on the defensive

Voters might not be sure if Carmen Olazabal is running for a commission seat against three other candidate — or if she is running against activist Maria Cruz and little ol’ Ladra.

The girl has gone off on Maria and I, wasting precious campaign ink on our distaste for her unethical behavior and her role in covering up for former city manager Pat Salerno, instead of concentrating on the issues.

And I do believe she doth protest too much.

In a recent email missive — because that is all Olazabal can afford, no real mail — she tries to deflect attention from her own failures and unethical acts by calling any and all criticisms about her smears and falsehoods.

How convenient.

Olazabal, who can’t spell my name right even once, also lashes out at the Gables Good Government — which paid me to write a completely unbiased piece, which I still sometimes do — and Commissioner Vince Lago, who she said I interviewed to lend the post more “credence.”

First, the GGG came to me and after much initial discouragement, I took on the job because it seemed easy enough. If she didn’t like that one, Carmen should have seen my original version before they edited all the good stuff out.

Secondly, I don’t make electeds say what they say. Or, wait, is Olazabal suggesting that its irrelevant what Lago — perhaps the most respected elected there and future Gables mayoral shoe-in — thinks of her? By the way, it’s what a lot of people think. They either don’t want to be named or aren’t as relevant.

Earlier, Olazabal issued a “fact checks” section on her website that sounds a lot more like a fairy tale than anything resembling the truth, which Olazabal apparently has a distaste for. But since Olazabal likes to play with the facts, and voters need more than she said, she said, here is Ladra’s fact check check.

Fact 1: She was part and parcel to the lie that got her boss and mentor, former City Manager Pat Salerno, fired. She doctored the document that was prepared by the Police Chief for the commission about a 170% increase in accidents on North Ponce de Leon Boulevard related to some palm trees that caused some line of sight issues for drivers.

Carmen check: Ms. Olazabal, — as she calls herself to lend credence to the argument because it is presented as third person verification — says she simply edited the police memo. She and Salerno “discussed the numbers presented …and they determined they did not accurately represent the issue because the statistics covered a wider area than the median construction and included inaccurate construction dates,” she quotes her own excuses from a Miami Herald article. “Ms. Olazabal’s professional determination was that “if [she] would have forwarded [Hudak’s memo] to the commission, it would have been wrong.”

Reality Check: Um, no. It was wrong to change Hudak’s memo and present it as his own work. Is she really defending that. What she should have done, if she and Salerno thought the numbers were wrong, was add their own memo to the memo, explaining the accurate dates and median locations, which, by the way, did not end up being “wrong.” That’s just cover.

And this photograph of an overturned car on Ponce de Leon Boulevard is not propaganda. It is real, it is really someone’s car and there was somebody in it when it really turned over. Nobody placed this car upside down on the street as a prop. It was taken during the time frame that the report looked at. The photo is not Ladra’s. It was provided by someone in Coral Gables at that time. It may have been part of the report. It was an example of an accident caused by a line of sight issue that Olazabal not only failed to address but denied even existed. There is no reason not to use it to illustrate a point. Of course, she doesn’t like it. It’s hard to look at. Especially since she tried to cover it up. She doesn’t want to be reminded of her mistakes.

Like…

Fact 2: Giving herself a 10% raise.

Carmen Check: “Rather, the Coral Gables City Commission approved her contract as Interim City Manager on May 5th, 2014, and her salary reverted back when a new city manager was appointed.” she writes, back to third person for validity.

Reality Check: Rather, the commission approved the interim manager’s agenda item on her own pay raise. Oh, and she asked to keep her 10% raise when the city hired the permanent city manager.

Fact 3: So inept at her job, Olazabal had to hire former county and municipal manager everywhere Merrett Stierheim to hold her hand.

Carmen Check: “Rather it was the Coral Gables Commission that directed the hiring of Mr. Stierheim.”

Reality Check: Again, the commission certainly approved the hiring of and payment for Stierheim’s services, up to $50,000, but the item was a recommendation from, guess who? The interim city manager. In fact, Commissioner Frank Quesada congratulated her on the idea at a public meeting.

Fact 4: Carmen Cason was identified as Olazabal’s campaign manager.

Carmen Check: “Rather, Mrs. Cason is an active and valued volunteer in the campaign.”

Reality Check: Mrs. Cason was described early on as the campaign manager before Olazabal brought FIU Professor and pollster Dario Moreno on board. But most people close to the campaign would say Carmen Cason, showed in a supervisory role in this photo, is a little bit more than an “active and valued volunteer.”

Fact 5: While she was acting as city manager, Olazabal decided to name Maj. Theresa Molina the acting police chief, against the wishes of the commission, which had called a special meeting to make the decision themselves. An email to voters from Cruz questioned her judgement, noting that Molina was the major who was later forced to resign when she was caught spying on the activist and commissioners.

Carmen Check: First, Olazabal said that the spying incident happened two years later. “Ms. Olazabal could not have known that Ms. Cruz’s incident would occur. This is a standard misleading association common in propaganda materials,” she says, adding that Molina had “no prior violations or internal affairs investigations in her personnel file.” She said she had every right, as the city attorney said she had, to name an acting chief.

Reality Check: Nobody said you didn’t have the right, Carmencita. But it was kind of a shocker to the commissioners when she did that after they asked her to wait until the special meeting, which I believe was the very next day. So when Ms. Olazabal says in the meantime, she means 12 or so hours. Also, it was left unsaid but should be noted, that Ms. Olazabal also took it upon herself to fly former Maj. Scott Masington in from Tennessee or somewhere like that even though at least one commissioner had told her not to. As for Molina, who was being investigated by the State Attorney’s Office at the time, all Cruz and Ladra were saying was that, even if the spying incident was years later, it could serve as example of Olazabal’s terrible judgement of character.

The truth is that Olazabal needs to rewrite her history. And remember, she likes to edit. As assistant city manager, she cut and paste information from a police report to take out important data about public safety that didn’t jive with the administration’s perspective. Today, she cut and pastes — or juts cuts — comments from her Facebook page that call her out.

And she attacks those who recall her real history and she cries foul and calls them names, all the while saying her campaign is the cleanest. Tsk, tsk.

Maybe it is because she needs to deflect from the fact she is totally lost on the issues.

Carmen Olazabal, Ralph Cabrera

Fact check: Coral Gables candidate Carmen Olazabal on the defensive added by Ladra on March 26, 2019
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