Round 3 for Raquel Regalado: Mayor’s Miami Skyrise subsidy

Round 3 for Raquel Regalado: Mayor’s Miami Skyrise subsidy
  • Sumo

If there’s one thing we can learn for sure from the lawsuit filed Thursday analysisby Miami-Dade School Board Member Raquel Regalado and car mogul and political meddler Norman Braman (more on that later), it’s that esta flaca cubana is not just going to go away.

In fact, it looks like the would-be mayoral challenger for 2016 is ramping it up.

This is round three for Regalado, who took on Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos “Cry Wolf” Gimenez last year by arguably and single handedly defeating the courthouse tax, and on another front last month by getting the school board to consider legal action against the mayor for his lack of action and leadership on the Value Adjustment Board, which is costing the county and raquelcarlosthe school board tens of millions of dollars.

Read related story: Carlos Gimenez on lawsuit about VAB: ‘Not my job’

Now, she is going after the $9 million subsidy approved by the county for the Skyrise Miami project. The lawsuit is against the city of Miami and Miami-Dade County, but she might as well be going after Gimenez himself.

Gimenez was able to persuade commissioners to give $9 million to the would-be so-called “tourist attraction’s” developer — his buddy Jeffrey Berkowitz, who held the mayor’s kickoff fundraiser in 2012 and has personally contributed quite a bit a to his campaigns.

Regalado and Braman argue that voters were hoodwinked because they approved the referendum to approve the waterfront development only as  a “privately funded” project. o-SKYRISE-MIAMI-570On the radio, it was promoted because it would be done without using any public tax dollars.

Berkowitz apparently thinks that means they can’t use city tax dollars, according to a statement he gave the Miami Herald, but that it doesn’t apply to the county. I don’t know how since the residents of Miami pay county taxes as well.

Either way this sure looks and smells like one of those bait and switch scenarios that the county has become famous for.

Read related story: Raquel Regalado hints louder on 2016 mayoral run

The lawsuit asks a judge to either block the subsidy or strike down the referendum. No public dollars means no public dollars, Regalado said.

Skyrise ballotThe mayor didn’t propose the subsidy until October, way after the Aug. 26 primary election in which 68 percent of Miami voters approved this. But, of course, we all know that he knew he was going to do that way before — as the referendum was being debated. Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado, the plaintiffs father, has withdrawn his support for the Skyrise Miami project because of the county subsidy.

Frankly, Ladra would never have allowed my constituency to vote on language that seems so intentionally misleading, referencing a Bayfront Marketplace lease renewal and sticking the $400 million “privately funded” project at the very tail end of all this money we’re going to get in rent and improvements, including additional parking, no less!

In other words, even Mayor Regalado thinks we’ve been hoodwinked by the master of smoke and mirrors bait-and-switch game known as Carlos A. Gimenez.

Mayor Cry Wolf and his very capable spokesman, Michael Hernandez, are going to say this is all another political ploy by someone who wants to take his job. But, of course, it’s political. He is a politician. She is a politician. The mayor was the one to recommend the juicy subsidy to his pal and generous donor… well, after waiting for the right moment. Didn’t he make it political?

And Ladra keeps hoping and dreaming Regalado wants to take his job because I’m pretty sure she could do it better.