After a one-sided, well-funded campaign that went pretty much unchecked and unchallenged by anyone — including yours truly — the $830-million bond referendum (read: public tax) for the modernization of Jackson Memorial Hospital passed overwhelmingly Tuesday. Some might be surprised that this ballot question passed in an anti-tax community still reeling from the proposal to […]
Millionaire Philip Levine‘s considerable campaign investment was apparently another smart business move, as evidenced Tuesday when the political neophyte media mogul won the Miami Beach mayoral race outright, without a need for a runoff, with just over 50 percent of the vote. Fifty point 48, actually. At one point, it was 52.44% when it was […]
Score one for Homestead mayoral candidate Mark Bell, whose campaign attorney filed an ethics complaint against former Councilman Jeff Porter for what they called a “maliciously false” mailer focused on a $25,000 CRA grant given to Bell’s Redland Hotel earlier this year. The Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust found probable cause Wednesday that […]
Former Homestead Mayor Steve Bateman might have thought the worst was over, but today he faces additional charges of public corruption for misuse of campaign funds. In August, Bateman was arrested on charges of unlawful compensation for using his position as mayor to secure a secret lobbying gig he never disclosed. Then he is suspended […]
Oh, the irony! Millionaire businessman Philip Levine, who wants to be mayor of Miami Beach, had a press conference Wednesday to refute accusations that he seeks to silence critics and quash questions he doesn’t like, deciding for himself (read: decided for him by his handlers) who is a journalist and who is not. Or at […]
Miami Beach millionaire candidate Philip Levine and his campaign people have repeatedly tried to silence any criticism of his platform and hush legitimate questions about his motives or agenda. Levine’s attorney and former State Rep. JC Planas — who told Ladra his principal job is to ensure that laws are adhered to by both his […]
DEVELOPING STORY: Looks like Miami Lakes Mayor Wayne Slaton is going to try to make good on his threat to fire Town Attorney Joseph Geller. It comes as no surprise. One of the first things Slaton told people he would do as the new mayor of the small town was change the city attorney. On […]
DEVELOPING STORY: A group of community activists in Doral have asked Florida Gov. Rick Scott to intervene in the city’s mess. The Doral Community Coalition wrote a letter to Scott last week asking him to appoint a special prosecutor to look into the allegations about possible public corruption and conflicts of interest that have arisen […]
The deadline to request an absentee ballot for the Nov. 5 election is on Wednesday and with a week to go before Election Day, the county has already received more than a quarter of the ABs it has mailed out. Miami-Dade voters get to decide whether or not to fund $830 million worth of modernization […]
A probable cause hearing has been scheduled on what was a questionable ethics complaint to begin with, filed against one of the candidates in the uglier-by-the-minute Homestead mayoral race, looking very much like a campaign move made simply to bolster Mark Bell‘s chances in the heated runoff against former Councilman Jeff Porter. Note that the […]