The Miami-Dade County Commission could hit the rewind button on the Miami Beach monorail project, aka Baylink, because of details that have come out about secretive meetings Mayor Carlos Gimenez had with Genting two years ago during his China trip.
Those business meetings — which just happened to be left off the itinerary given to journalists covering the county “trade mission” — were arranged by lobbyist and Gimenez pal, Ralph Garcia-Toledo, who has come a long way from driving a county 
commissioner around on a mayoral campaign almost 10 years ago.
It isn’t enough to have a consulting job at Miami-Dade Water and Sewer making $200 an hour to file paperwork and go to meetings. Garcia-Toledo is a principal at Aqualand Development, one of the partners with Genting in the Miami Beach Monorail Consortium that Gimenez is supposed to “negotiate” with for the $770-million project along four miles connecting downtown Miami to the Beach. You know who else is a principal in the company — becoming so only in 2019, a year after the China trip? Former Gimenez campaign manager Jesse Manzano.
Manzano and Garcia-Toledo were the only ones among two dozen business people on the China trip that were included in the Genting meetings.
They used burner cell phones just for the trip. Burner cell phones.
How could anyone not know this is an inside deal? The Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust — better known as the Jello Justice League — may have found insufficient evidence to support that there was a conflict of interest or that the county broke any public records laws. But Inspector General Mary Cagle said she had “serious concern” about the insider access given and the cloak of secrecy under which the sweetheart deal was born.
Read related: Corrupt Carlos Gimenez caught by ethics commission covering his tracks
This is so obviously cooked that people are responding kind of like shell-shocked veterans with PTSD. But, hey, Corrupt Carlos, 
who has gotten away with this pay-to-play for friends and family for years, only has five months left to give away as many millions as he can and ingratiate himself with companies that might want to aim for a federal piece of the pie, now that he is a congressional candidate. He doesn’t really have time to dot the Is and cross the Ts.
Of course, this was an inside deal. There’s no question of that. The only question is which commissioners will say no deal and vote to start the process anew (and, by the way, these companies should be barred from bidding) and which commissioners will do the mayor’s, um, bidding. Ladra couldn’t find it on the agenda for Tuesday’s virtual meeting, but it’s bound to come up in conversation.
And the forecast is cloudy.
Ladra has to think that each of the mayoral candidates will vote no deal. Commissioners Daniella Levine-Cava, Esteban 
Bovo and Xavier Suarez cannot afford the hit pieces that would come with a vote to leave the mayor’s inside deal in tact. It would mean that they could lead the county the same way, or at the very least tolerate it. And Commissioner Eileen Higgins has already said she doesn’t like the smell of this and was the first to ask county attorneys if she could call a revote. She’s also running for re-election and can’t afford this becoming a wedge issue. Especially since the project is in her district.
That’s four that common sense says will vote to rescind the directive to have Gimenez negotiate with the Monorail Consortium.
Let’s add Commissioner Joe Martinez. He likes to question every little thing that sounds suspicious so why would this be any different? Ladra would be very disappointed in Martinez voted to stay on the inside deal. That makes five.
Read related: New, secret Carlos Gimenez ‘Baylink’ proposal benefits pals
On the other end, we have a few commissioners who are ardent Gimenez lackeys and pocket votes who are termed out anyway and don’t have much to lose — except the Grimenez support for their next political endeavor — and so could actually support this 
inside deal. They could argue that this was the only bidder that came back when it was opened up to everyone — which is laughable because who would bid on something that has obviously already been ironed out in secret meetings in China?
That includes, principally, Commissioners Jose “Pepe” Diaz, Rebeca Sosa and Javier Souto, who has shown more frequently recently why he should have been termed out a while ago. It also could include Commissioners Dennis Moss and Sally Heyman, who have no horse in this race, no immediate political ladder and have already talked about wanting to leave some kind of “legacy” behind.
That makes five who would support the sweetheart negotiations. Commissioner Audrey Edmonson, who was on the China trip and might run for Miami city commissioner, could also vote with the mayor’s connected project. So that’s six.
The other two are toss ups, but Ladra thinks — or maybe I want to believe — they lean toward a no deal vote. Commissioner 
Barbara Jordan may want to make Grimenez pay for forcing the Formula 1 racing down her throat, or she might easily be convinced with promises for the 27th Avenue north-south corridor. Commissioner Jean Monestime (left) is known as a straight up, do-the-right-thing kind of guy. Ladra wants to believe he would err on the side of transparency.
That makes seven votes to suspend the negotiations for the monorail and six to continue.
Sosa could switch over, if she is mad enough at Gimenez for insisting on the contested $160 million Siemens contract to provide traffic light synchronization. She was pushing for the second ranked company to get a second chance. It would then be 8 to 5, But it would be a major deviation of her track record to vote against the mayor.
It really should be a unanimous vote. The commission should try to restore the public’s trust in government by voting unanimously to throw this tainted deal out and starting a new and entirely transparent process. Anyone who votes to stay on track is aiding and abetting in what should be investigated as a possible criminal situation.
County commission should rescind mayor’s sweet insider monorail deal added by Ladra on
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