Miami Joe Carollo Bayfront scandal snares Coral Gables pal Javier Baños

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A whistleblower lawsuit filed last month against Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo for abusing his power as the chairman of the Bayfront Park Management Trust and paying friends exorbitant fees to get alleged kickbacks has snared onetime Coral Gables commission candidate Javier Baños, who is now the editor of the Gables Insider and a frequent critic of Mayor Vince Lago.

So, of course, it has already become political fodder in the City Beautiful, where there’s going to be a contentious election in April.

It took Lago less than 24 hours after the Miami Herald broke the lawsuit story to send an email from his political action committee that calls Baños the “spin master” for his political opponents. Funny enough, when Commissioner Ariel Fernandez was the editor, he was Lago’s “spin master.” Lago has admitted as such.

Read related: Miami politics creep into Coral Gables election via Javier Baños, Claudia Miro

Carollo and Baños are accused of having “threatened” two employees — the new Trust director Jose Suarez and the new finance director Jose Canto — and having forced their departure after the men began to question the “lack of proper accounting practices and procedures that enabled Carollo to (a) use the Trust’s funds to pay for Carollo’s own political ventures; (b) use the Trust’s funds to support Carollo’s District 3 Political Office (c) use the Trust’s funds to pay and overpay Carollo’s political allies; (d) use the Trust’s funds to overpay Carollo’s District 3 Social Media provider, (e) waste the Trust’s funds on a 2007 Vet mobile that was never used and that had a suspicious and seemingly untraceable past; and e) seek to use the Trust funds to pay for Carollo’s Holiday Party.

“Together, these wrongful expenditures totaled hundreds of thousands of dollars of misused and wasted Trust funds in less than one year, and Carollo has Chaired the Trust for the past eight years without any legitimate oversight,” the complaint states.

Finally. Everybody knows that Carollo’s handling of the Trust was shady AF for years. Ladra has barked about nearly $1 million spent on the Dogs and Cats Walkway that never went through a competitive process that led to the resignation of a board member the outdoor gym that was put in place without the proper permitting or process. There was a petition to remove him as chair of the Trust.

Read related: Bayfront Park board member resigns on Joe Carollo’s $1 mil no-bid giveaway

Almost every page of the 23-page lawsuit could be another story here. And we might get to them. But the reverberations were felt in the City Beautiful right away because of Baños involvement.

Within days of the lawsuit being filed, Lago’s political action committee sent an email blast calling him the “spin master” for Menendez and the two other commissioners who have been consistently voting against him. He said that the Gables Insider had been “spreading misinformation and disinformation” since Baños took over after the election of Fernandez.

Gables Insider has “shamelessly cheered and advocated for the 101% pay increases that Menendez and Fernandez gave themselves in 2023 without resident approval, for denying increased voter participation by moving our elections to November (which Mayor Vince Lago and Vice Mayor Rhonda Anderson have supported — saving the City $200,000 per election and raising voter turnout), and most recently, for the disastrous appointments of two city managers in less than 11 months without notice, due process, or our resident’s input.”

This is going to be Lago’s drumbeat until April.

“Whatever credibility Baños and Gables Insider might have had left should be gone as a result of these serious allegations,” the PAC email states. “However, unlike Gables Insider’s brand of ‘reporting,’ we don’t want you to take our word for it. Instead, we are providing you with the links to the stories published  for you to decide whether Menendez, Ariel, and Baños deserve the trust of our community.”

The email proceeds to list four excerpts and links to local TV stories and a Miami Herald story about the lawsuit, which is also linked. It calls Gables Insider a “local propaganda machine.”

Read related: Kirk Menendez runs for Coral Gables mayor against city bully Vince Lago

Baños told Political Cortadito that his involvement in the Trust was limited and that he never threatened either man. He said he had spoken to Suarez no more than seven or eight times since he was made the executive director last March.

But the lawsuit makes it clear that Baños’ financial role may be key to building a case against Carollo.

In the complaint, the attorneys — Jeff Gutchess, who represented the Little Havana businessmen in the first amendment lawsuit against Carollo that won a jury award of $63.5 million, and Jay Rhodes, who used to work in Carollo’s office– claim that Baños not only “ominously warned” Suarez that he “would rather Canto not express any issues with the accounting at the open board meeting,” but is also protecting an outside accountant who just happens to be another in-law.

Their relationship extends beyond the Bayfront Park Trust and Baños, who lost his Gables commission race because of his ties to Carollo, may know more than he’s letting on. In fact, Ladra is surprised he wasn’t deposed in any of the other cases against the commissioner.

  Bayfront Park, Joe Carollo