The Three Amigos are no more.
Miami commissioners Joe Carollo and Alex Diaz de la Portilla traded sharp barbs at a commission meeting Thursday — publicly accusing each other of ethical and maybe criminal lapses — in the wake of a scandal about a ghost employee at the Omni CRA who is ADLP’s longtime lackey and bag woman.
Diaz de la Portilla — who had forged a new power shift at the city about this time last year — was stripped of the Omni CRA chairmanship and Carollo got a measure approved on first reading that prohibits commissioners from hiring or contracting with anyone who is on probation. It passed 4-1.
It could block Diaz de la Portilla from rehiring Jenny Nillo, a “community liaison” who reportedly never showed up to work at the CRA where she was being paid $53,000 a year. She was stopped last week by police and was not allowed to keep driving the city-issued car that Diaz de la Portilla gave her.
She wasn’t arrested. One of the pressing questions is what was Nillo stopped for? Ladra has been asking for the incident reports and any video that may have been taken — which Carollo kept referring to — but has gotten nada so far. The press is being told there is no incident report.
But that traffic stop caused the lid to be blown on an ongoing investigation into Nillo’s bogus employment at the CRA after a complaint that she was a no-show employee.
Read related: Alex Diaz de la Portilla is investigated on ghost city employee at Omni CRA
According to sources at City Hall and the CRA with first-hand knowledge of the investigation — including someone who spoke to investigators — CRA Executive Director Jason Walker was forced to hire Nillo for what we can only assume is a made up job. Diaz de la Portilla said she worked out of the Curtiss Park office, mostly, and did things like distribute COVID relief food and keep tabs on the CRA, which he has accused of “improprieties.”
He said at Thursday’s meeting that she worked from his office or offices in Allapattah and at Curtiss Park and that she was working on his plan to expand the CRA. ¡Dios now libre!
But Diaz de la Portilla really had her working on myriad political errands in his plan to gain more power. Plans that have stalled indefinitely..
We learned Thursday, from Joe Carollo, that Nillo showed up — in the city car? — to his and Marjorie’s home to deliver checks for Renier Diaz de la Portilla‘s failed county commission campaign. Carollo was buying Renier’s media. The first time he ever saw Nillo was in July. He had no idea she was a CRA employee.
We also learned Thursday, from Alex Diaz de la Portilla, that Nillo was out last year trying to get people who had signed the recall petition against Joe Carollo in District 3 to rescind them or say they were coerced. So she was involved in the petition shakedown! But it was certainly at ADLP’s behest.
Ladra counted two or three illegal or unethical schemes which came up and hopes investigators and prosecutors were taking notes. They should get a recording — something Carollo instructed the city attorney to furnish them. In almost three decades of government reporting, Ladra has never seen anything like what happened at Thursday’s meeting.
Yeah, it got pretty intense.
“You make me want to vomit,” Carollo told his one time BFF in a loud voice. “You have no conscience. You have no heart. You are the lowest thing that I’ve seen in politics. You do not deserve to hold public office.”
ADLP shot back: “Why are you losing control?”
Carollo told Diaz de la Portilla that he has been “the biggest single disappointment of my entire political career.” And that’s saying a lot. Carollo once worked with former Doral Mayor Luigi Boria.
“And you’re sitting there because of me,” he said.
“No, you’re sitting there because of me,” Diaz de la Portilla responded.
They certainly deserve each other.
Thank you Chairman Ken Russell for just letting it roll on.
Crazy Joe is crazy but he ain’t stupid. He didn’t do anything wrong. But if Nillo was using the city car to deliver checks for Renier’s campaign — or take him to events in Miami Beach, for instance — then that’s a problem.
Read related: Omni CRA ghost employee fired, could be rehired by Commissioner ADLP
Before he shut up and got an attorney, Walker said that Nillo had bragged to other CRA employees about working for Renier’s campaign full time. It’s illogical that Alex wouldn’t have known that. So he gave her city resources to campaign for his brother. This would not be out of character. Remember PaellaGate? That’s when Carollo used city funds and staff to have a voter outreach event at elderly city housing. These guys are used to the grift.
Now, ADLP wants everyone to believe that he planted Nillo — who did time on a federal charge of condo mortgage fraud (and could be on probation) — as a spy to gather information on Walker and other CRA workers and casts unproven accusations against them. Something about benefitting from a position. In the same breath as Diaz de la Portilla scolded Carollo for accusing Nillo — who he hilariously described as “an innocent, a defenseless person without one ounce of evil” — he accused Walker of abusing his position and asked the auditor general to inspect the last four years of CRA business.
People who have worked with Walker and know about the investigation say that the CRA director is a straight shooter who was the original complainant about Nillo’s no-show status. He is said to be cooperating with authorities.
Diaz de la Portilla also wants an audit of transactions at the Bayfront Park Management Trust, where Carollo is chair and where he allegedly strong-armed the board to accept a no-bid $850,000 contract for an art installation pitched by and through his wife, Marjorie. “I want to know who the single bidder is, why you were spending $800,000,” ADLP said.
“Bayfront Park is not your personal fiefdom.”
Read related: Bayfront Park board member resigns on Joe Carollo’s $1 million no-bid giveaway
The Dean wants to see the last four years of transactions. Ladra asked for that last week. She was told it would cost almost $3,000. Maybe we should do a GoFundMe.
These accusations against Walker are classic misdirection, one of ADLP’s favorite tactics. He used it a lot on Thursday, but he couldn’t pick a path. He tried to muddy up the executive director of the Overtown CRA, who works also in the office of Commissioner Jeffrey Watson, comparing him to Nillo.
The “big difference” between them, Carollo said, was that “you’ve been seeing Neil Shriver and that’s exactly the point. No one in the Omni CRA has seen Jenny Nillo.”
“That’s a lie,” Diaz de la Portilla said. “Jenny Nillo has been to my office every day and even on weekends.”
Then why was she being paid from the CRA budget?
Diaz de la Portilla said that CRA and other agency employees often use city cars, but City Manager Art Noriega said not that he knew of.
Like a desesperado grasping at straws, ADLP also raised questions and claimed double standard employees with criminal records he said work in commission offices. Ladra wonders how many of those are still on probation, though.
Diaz de la Portilla said there were three in Carollo’s office and one in Manolo Reyes office. “Sometimes with bullies you gotta fight back,” he said.
The old man got offended.
“You are low. This is the last thing I say to you now, or ever,” Reyes said. “Yes, I have a person that works with me who, when he was 20 years old, he made a mistake. And since that time, that person has more decency and honesty in one hair than you have, commissioner.”
Then he got up from the dais in disgust.
“You’re a walking comedy,” Carollo told Diaz de la Portilla.
“You’re a comedy — and a tragedy,” ADLP shot back.
He may as well be describing the city.
Miami city commissioners point fingers at each other amid expanding scandals added by Ladra on
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