Former Miami City Manager Emilio Gonzalez, who resigned after Commissioner Joe Carollo tried to fire him and ordered an investigation into the permit for his backyard deck, has been cleared of any wrongdoing by the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust.
When Carollo failed to get the votes he needed to fire Gonzalez in December — a month after his ally, former Sen. Alex Diaz de la Portilla was elected to the city commission — Crazy Joe accused Gonzalez of using his position to 
expedite a repair permit he needed so he could replace some broken planks on the deck and that he somehow submitted a forged or fraudulent survey of the property to get it.
Ethics investigator Susannah Nesmith, a former Miami Herald reporter, interviewed Gonzalez and former Miami Building Department Director Jose Camero and found that Gonzalez did not abuse his office or violate the conflict of interest and code of ethics ordinance, according to a close-out memo dated March 16.
Camero “made very clear that for a repair permit like this, his department ‘would have accepted a blank piece of paper on which [Gonzalez] had sketched his yard, home and deck,'” it reads. Furthermore, there was “no indication that Mr. Gonzalez ‘altered a survey’ or in any material manner tried to create a fraudulent document in order to obtain this permit by artifice.”
Take that, Carollo. Case closed.
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Well, not really. Because the city’s Inpector General, Ted Gupa, has also been directed by the city commission to investigate the matter of the deck permit. It might seem a bit strange if he comes up with a different result. But it’s not entirely impossible. Gupa — whose office deals almost 
entirely with fiscal matters — works for the commission (read: Carollo), who sets his salary and his department budget.
That’s why Mayor Francis Suarez vetoed the vote to have the IG investigate the issue, saying it should be done by an independent party. It’s one of the vetoes that City Attorney Tricky Vicky Mendez has voided in what seems like part of her job, which is to do Carollo’s bidding.
The complaint was received by the Ethics Commission, or the investigation was begun, on Jan. 3, according to the investigative report. By the end of the month, Camero — who retired in February and said he had planned that well before the allegations (though las malas lenguas say the timing is curious) — had been interviewed:
Mr. Camero said the Manager, Emilio Gonzalez, came to his office back in May and said he was repairing old boards on his deck and needed to know what to do. Mr. Camero told him he needed to pull a repair permit. No plans or survey are required for a repair permit when it comes to decks, Mr. Camero said.
Mr. Camero said he helped Mr. Gonzalez get an old copy of the survey that was in his file. When the two of them looked at the 1999 survey that was done before Mr. Gonzalez owned the home, Mr. Camero said Mr. Gonzalez told him the current deck is larger.
“He did the drawing in front of me,” he said. “He said, this is my deck.”
Mr. Camero said the department also would have accepted a blank piece of paper on which Mr. Gonzalez had sketched his yard, home and deck. After the survey was corrected to show the current deck, Mr. Camero helped Mr. Gonzalez file the application for the permit.
“I would have done the same thing for a member of the public,” he said. “This morning I walked a contractor through something like this.”
Mr. Camero said he has the ability to choose the priority of the permit application. He said he chose the highest priority, “because he’s my boss.”
Gonzalez didn’t ask him to prioritize it. But he didn’t have to. That’s on Camero. Still, Ladra would like to know why Camero got Gonzalez and old copy of the survey if it’s not needed to repair an existing deck.
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Then Nesmith interviewed Gonzalez by phone on March 16, the investigative report says:
He said that he needed to repair his deck so he asked the Building Director, Jose Camero, what he needed to do. He
said Camero gave him the documents he needed to fill out and told him that he needed a “scope of work,” and that a drawing would suffice.
Mr. Gonzalez said he filled out the required paperwork and his secretary notarized it. He made a copy of the last survey done of his property, which was done by a previous owner, and he sketched a drawing of his deck on that to show the scope of work.
Mr. Gonzalez said he only pulled a repair permit because he thought that the guy who built his deck back in 2008 or 2009 had pulled a permit.
“As City Manager, I have so much on my plate,” he said. “This was a very brief part of my life.”
Mr. Gonzalez said he has since learned that there two different copies of the drawing on the copy of the survey and both are scanned into his file. He said he doesn’t know who did that or why.
“Look, I don’t know how to scan a document,” he said. “I used to handle nuclear codes. Do you really think I’d cheat on a deck permit?”
Gonzalez was once director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, an under secretary position within the Department of Homeland Security, as well as director for Western hemisphere affairs within the White House’s National Security Council. He also served in the U.S. Army, retiring with the rank of colonel and worked as the head of Miami-Dade Aviation before becoming the city manager after Suarez was elected in 2017.
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So, basically, what happened, it seems, is that the previous owner of his house built the deck or expanded the deck — which is not the deck pictured above — without a permit and Gonzalez had no idea when he bought the house. He found out when he asked about needing a permit for repairs. The survey that Camero showed him apparently had a smaller deck on it and Gonzalez simply drew a larger deck over the smaller one on the survey to reflect the truth. That’s not doctoring a document.
Even the city attorney’s office went against commissioner Carollo and said that the alterations were not material enough to make a difference. And hell did not freeze over.
In short, Gonzalez was more honest, not less. Maybe that’s what Carollo doesn’t like.
After the allegations were levied against him at a public meeting — while Gonzalez was on family leave tending to his ill wife — he resigned and hinted at Carollo’s antics in his resignation letter.
“Our city commission meetings have devolved into a circus. Personal discussions have given way to the politics of personal destruction. As a city manager and more importantly a resident, I think it is best for our city if I remove myself from this spectacle,” Gonzalez wrote then.
In much less dramatic language, likely because there is still an open investigation at the city level, Gonzalez told Ladra this week that he was glad an independent agency had reviewed the facts and found nothing.
“I’m most gratified that the Miami-Dade County Commission on Ethics and Public Trust, after conducting its investigation, concluded that the allegations leveled against me are without merit,” Gonzalez said.
Several calls to Mayor Suarez went unanswered and unreturned for more than 36 hours. He has also chosen not to respond to seven texts about this closed investigation sent to him since Wednesday. The last text he responded to was on Wednesday morning, in which Ladra told him that he did good on a radio interview. Guess this news about Gonzalez is just not as important to him as his media tour is.
Ladra can’t wait to see what the non-independent inquiry has to say — and what this frivolous and obviously politically motivated complaint has cost the city taxpayers and the county taxpayers, who pay for the Ethics Commission investigators. Just add that to the costs that Carollo and his many lawsuits have cost citizens.
“People make complaints to the Ethcis commission for a variety of reasons,” said Ethics Commission Director Jose Arrojo. “We hope they are in good faith but I’m not naive to the fact that complaints are made sometimes in something other than good faith. I am not saying this is the case here. But we are obligated to investigate anyway.”
And now, can we have the Ethics Commission investigate Carollo’s true intentions and how he made crap up about Gonzalez so he could get rid of him? Just add that to the dozen or so complaints and investigations that they already have on the commissioner.
Ethics board clears former Miami city manager Emilio Gonzalez in deck case added by Ladra on
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