Joe Carollo recall effort wins another court round vs Miami city attorneys

The Third District Court of Appeals has decided that the city of Miami must turn over the 1,900-plus recall signatures against Miami City Commissioner Joe Carollo that have been held hostage for almost three months in a massive — and possibly illegal –– effort by the city to stop the electoral process.

A three-judge panel issued its ruling on Wednesday, echoing arguments by attorneys for the Take Back Our City political action committee, that the city clerk has no jurisdiction to decline the signatures and that Florida law requires only a technical role in receiving and turning over the petitions to the Miami-Dade Elections Department.

“The plain and obvious meaning of the language of this statute requires the clerk ‘immediately after the filing of the petition forms’ to ‘submit such forms to the county supervisor of elections.’ The language confers no discretion on the clerk to review the recall petition for facial or legal sufficiency,” wrote Judge Thomas Logue for the panel, which included judges Fleur Lobree and Eric Hendon.

“The use of the word ‘shall’ only reinforces that the clerk’s responsibility in this regard is ministerial,” Logue wrote.

So, basically, the exact same thing argued by recall attorneys JC Planas and David Winker. The judge even used the word “ministerial” (like they did) and cited the same 2000 amendment to the statue removing a paragraph that allowed the city clerk to determine if the petition meets the requirements.

“The deletion of the language granting the clerk the authority to review the petition for legal sufficiency must be read as reflecting the legislature’s intent to terminate that authority,” Logue wrote, sounding very much like Planas.

“We are grateful that one more court once again found that the city of Miami exceeded its authority with these ballots,” Planas said.

Miami City Attorney Victoria “Tricky Vicky” Mendez — who has lost twice in court now — may try to appeal to the full court of appeals or take it to the Florida Supreme Court, but both are long shots because of the criteria. She said they were considering options — and Ladra is certain we haven’t heard the last from them.

And it seems the city may continue to fight the petition in another way.

“In the absence of case law precedent, the appeal had to be taken in light of the public’s interest and the city’s responsibility to ensure that the proper procedures were followed in a recall,” Mendez told Ladra in a text message. “The city has a duty to take steps to ensure that a facially deficient recall petition did not proceed for further processing.

“The Third District Court has now decided that the Clerk does not have the authority to refuse to forward a recall petition, even if it is facially invalid. Now we have settled law,” Mendez continued, sounding like there’s a “but” coming. And there is.

“The Third District did not, however, determine whether the recall petition at issue was facially or timely, which will now be the subject of future litigation,” Mendez said.

Of course, we know there are going to be further challenges. They should, however, be made by Carollo’s personal attorney, Ben Keunhe.

Ladra hopes they do challenge it. Because that would expose how Tricky Vicky and her minions at the city attorney’s office worked for more than a month on ways to stop, delay or challenge the recall, according to a trail of emails and an anti recall “cheat sheet” uncovered by Ladra in March.

“If Carollo intends to challenge the timing of the petitions,” Planas told Ladra, “we intend to depose him and several members of the city attorney’s office to show they purposely tried to deprive the citizens of Miami with the proper time necessary to do the recount and used taxpayer money to do that.”

Meanwhile, it doesn’t stop the process. The county elections department has 30 days to validate the signatures, and will almost certainly take less.

The timing couldn’t be better. Had the city just let the county validate the signatures when they were turned in on March 2, the recall group would have had 60 days to collect three times as many signatures to get the recall on a ballot. During a COVID19 pandemic when nobody was going to answer the door or pick up a foreign pen to sign a sheet of paper that you don’t know where it’s been. It would have likely failed.

So Tricky Vicky actually did the recall group a favor when she appealed the lower court’s ruling. Because after three months of staying at home and social distancing, voters in District 3 will be happy to have some human contact and conversation. If her strategy was to buy more time for Carollo — working on behalf of a single commissioner rather than the taxpayers that pay her salary — she actually bought more time for the recall PAC.

If her strategy was to win, it was an epic fail.

“It is important to remember that City Attorney Victoria Mendez is required under the city Charter to represent the City, not Commissioner Joe Carollo,” Winker told Ladra. “The city attorney’s ridiculous arguments were made in bad faith in order to protect Commissioner Joe Carollo and were summarily rejected by the Court.

“It is a shame that our taxpayer money is going to pay for this effort to protect Commissioner Carollo against the very taxpayers that elected him to office and now want to remove him for misusing his office to target residents,” Winker added.

“This case will do nothing to fight the perception that the city of Miami is a government gone rogue.”

Third DCA opinion on Joe Carollo recall petitions by Political Cortadito on Scribd

Joe Carollo, Joe Carollo recall, Victoria Mendez

Joe Carollo recall effort wins another court round vs Miami city attorneys added by Ladra on May 27, 2020
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