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Without naming names he signaled to people in the room he called political ‘insiders’ who benefited from the variation from policy set by the commission and said “this doesn’t pass the smell test.”
Commissioner Jose “Pepe” Diaz‘s agreed with some of his concerns and moved to defer all 14 items to the next committee meeting — though Ladra doesn’t really understand what that does other than delay the discussion for a month. He said he wanted more time to review the many factors.
“This is a little bit outside just this committee. I think this should go before all the commissioners,” he said, moving to defer it to the full BCC. Ladra doesn’t know why he was convinced to bring it back to the same committee. What’s going to change in a month?
“I’m hoping the mayor re-evaluates and makes some changes,” Zapata told Ladra Thursday night. He said that while some of the projects may have been worthy, others were strictly giveaways to people in the know who found out the mayor could deviate from the commission directed policy of having the money go to “game changing” projects and got a leg up.
“I know hundreds, maybe thousands of business people who would want the chance to apply to these funds as well, if we decide to change policy and give the monies out this way,” Zapata said.
Ladra agrees with his general gist that these gifts are political favors doled out to campaign supporters and other connected people with palanca. It’s basically giving away millions of dollars to the private sector. No need to go though any competitive bidding. RFP? We don’t need no stinking RFP! Just “Here you go, pal! Don’t spend it all in one place!”
Where’s the accountability? Out the window. Es un descaro.
I mean, county staffers tried to spin this in a Miami Herald story as an effort to help small business. But some of the beneficiaries from t
hese grants were people like mega developer Wayne Rosen, political sugar daddy to Vice Chair Lynda Bell, who would have gotten a $5 million gift for his investment of tens of thousands of dollars into her campaigns. That might be why Bell was pushing for all 14 items to be considered together.
Certainly Rosen is not what anyone could consider small business. Is developer Craig Robbins, who is involved in the Miami projects? Probably not. Especially since the commission recently approved a criteria that would cap the net worth of small businesses or small business owners at $1.5 million.
That might also not apply to Larkin Hospital, which is the firm that got fined $15.4 million in 2006 to resolve a Department of Justice case against them for kickbacks and medically unnecessary treatments. But the mayor and Commissioner Barbara Jordan — who spoke against a deferral wanted to give them $5 million for some kind of wellness program? Really?
And Ladra thinks that’s why Zap went all Braveheart on the committee and county staff. He practically called the the process tainted and later told Ladra it was “the worst case of political patronage I’ve ever seen.”
On the dais, Zapata said that if the policy changes, then the county should have a competitive process. “It makes me uneasy that we have this pot of money and that somehow some insiders or some folks who have access to information that most folks don’t, saw an opportunity and took advantage of it.
“If we really want to have a good process, we open it up and if it’s about local impacts, we make it about local impacts. But let’s have a true competitive process. There are thousands of good business ideas out there. Let’s have them compete.”
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