The bromance in Doral is over: The LuiJoe break up is big and public. Doral Mayor Luigi Boria even tried to have City Manager Joe Carollo fired Wednesday, but he didn’t have the votes.
The love lasted longer than Ladra had predicted, but the break-up is apparently not about their competing alpha male personas and dueling egos. Or at least not entirely.
Although I’ve heard the couple’s been having trouble for a while, the straw that broke the camel’s back seems to be fallout from a shady land deal made by the mayor’s children in cahoots with a Venezuelan businessman that Carollo accuses of being chummy chummy with the Chavez government, which is hated as much in Doral as Caracas, if not more.
Earlier Wednesday, before the mayor failed to get Carollo ousted, Juan Carlos Tovar, the aforementioned Venezuelan businessman, was arrested and charged with filing a false police report. He had told police that Carollo had forced him physically, shoved him into a room at City Hall where he bullied him and insulted his heritage. But video pulled from City Hall cameras show that Tovar walked into the room on his own.
Boria said at Wednesday’s meeting that his desire to replace Carollo wasn’t about Tovar as much as it was about the manager’s consistently unprofessional behavior. He cited petty little things like an unapproved vacation and a trip to Las Vegas that Boria said had never approved but for which the manager later showed documents with Boria’s signature, approving the trip (Carollo was trying to lure the Miss USA contest to Doral).
Boria told Ladra that the manager had simply broken decorum with several city residents and that it could not be tolerated. “We all have to be professional here,” he said.
I reminded him that he had chosen Carollo for the $144,000-a-year job knowing full well who the former Miami Mayor everyone calls “Crazy Joe” is since Carollo helped him with his mayoral campaign. He feigned ignorance.
“Mr. Carollo joined my campaign when we were almost done, with only two months left. Remember, I was working with Sasha Tirador,” Boria told me, referring to the absentee ballot queen that ran his campaign last year, the only one she won, I think. “I didn’t really know who he was. I made a mistake.”
The council apparently did not agree. On Wednesday, only Councilwoman Sandra Ruiz — who also told Ladra that Carollo had acted unprofessionally, yelling at Boria and Tovar in public at City Hall — voted with the mayor. “I don’t think any city employee should be allowed to talk to residents in an unprofessional manner,” she told me.
But Councilwomen Christy Fraga, Bettina Rodriguez-Aguilar and Ana Maria Rodriguez voted against the measure and with Carollo. The latter two votes are significant because these are the two council members that the mayor can usually count on.
And Rodriguez’s comments may indicate she is no longer his ally.”I have a tremendous amount of respect for you, but I think that the pattern of erratic behavior has not been from our manager. I think it’s been from you,” she said.
But let’s rewind a little here. Wasn’t this 17-acre tract to be turned into a luxury residential complex the development that came into question when the mayor was running for office and people, including yours truly, asked whether that presented a conflict of interest? Why, yes, it is.
“I always said that that land was owned by my children,” Boria told me days ago. Um, no sir, you told me that land was owned by your children and that you had nothing to do with it. When it turns out you gave them the $5 million to buy the land, which sort of means it is owned by you and your children.
“I always want to give to my children everything,” he then says.
Including a zoning change that would make their land more lucrative? Because the potential conflict of interest became a real mini controversy after the Grand Floridian project made a zoning request needed to move forward with plans. This came at the same time as the mayor’s children sold their 50 percent of the shares in the project to Tovar, the Venezuelan businessman Carollo says is doing just fine under the Chavez dictatorship.
In May, right before the sale, Boria asked the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust to give an opinion on whether he could vote on any matters regarding the Grand Floridian — and to keep in mind that his children were not going to own it for very long. He was obviously hoping he could vote on it with Tovar as the sole owner.
According to the Miami-Dade Commssion on Ethics and Public Trust, the mayor’s children actually gave Tovar the $8 million he needed in order to buy his shares. Yeah, sure, they gave it to him, not the millionaire mayor who owns The Wise Computer of which, by coincidence, Tovar is a customer of with at least a $100,000 credit line.
To his credit, Boria asked the county ethics commission for an opinion on whether it would be unethical for him to vote and abstained until he got answer, which was of course it is unethical for you to vote on property your children own or even one that is owned by one of your debtors. The ethics commission investigation was delayed, said Victoria Frigo, senior staff attorney at the ethics commission, because they were waiting to get financial documents that tied all the parties together and Boria was being cooperative.
But of course he was being cooperative. He expected to be able to vote on the project once the transfer was made.
What the Ethics Commission really has to investigate is where Alex and Maria Lorena got the money — a whole $8 million — to loan Tovar to buy them out. Was it also a gift from Papi? And is that really their intention. Tovar reportedly provided them with several properties in and out of Doral as collateral. Will those be needing zoning changes?
Or maybe other matters that Carollo — who said earlier he was going to the FBI with information — hinted to at Wednesday’s meeting, saying that more dirt could come out at a special council meeting next week.
You mean, there’s more?
‘LuiJoe’ bromance break-up in Doral stinks of dirty land deals added by Ladra on
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