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Miami Commissioner Angel Gonzalez to resign amid probe

Miami Commissioner Angel Gonzalez will resign Friday as part of an agreement with prosecutors looking into a job obtained by his daughter.

 

City of Miami Commissioner Angel Gonzalez, left, has agreed to resign before the end of the year, several sources say.
City of Miami Commissioner Angel Gonzalez, left, has agreed to resign before the end of the year, several sources say.
C.M. GUERRERO / EL NUEVO HERALD FILE PHOTO

dovalle@MiamiHerald.com

Miami Commissioner Angel Gonzalez, facing a criminal investigation, has agreed to resign as early as Friday as part of a deal with prosecutors, several sources say.

Reached Wednesday, Gonzalez's lawyer stopped short of saying his client would resign but said he didn't believe he would be arrested.

``At this point, I'm constrained. I cannot answer any questions,'' lawyer Jack Blumenfeld said.

A Miami-Dade state attorney's office spokesman declined to comment Wednesday and would not discuss the nature of any inquiries.

Word of the Gonzalez investigation spread on the same day a new mayor was sworn into office and the police chief's resignation became public. And they may not be the only shoes to drop -- with a long-running inquiry into a second Miami commissioner, Michelle Spence-Jones, ongoing.

Rumors at City Hall have been in full churn in recent weeks, and news of Gonzalez's pending departure spread Wednesday as more than 1,000 people paid witness to the official handover of the mayor's office to Tomás Regalado. But the swearing in of Miami's 33rd mayor quickly took a back seat to the political turmoil engulfing the city.

The Gonzalez inquiry involves a job obtained by his daughter, several sources said.

Regalado said Gonzalez asked to meet with him Thursday; the mayor declined to say what the discussion was about. However, Regalado told The Miami Herald that he has agreed to hire Gonzalez's secretary.

Gonzalez was a civic activist who first caught the attention of law enforcement in the 1990s when he served as director of the Allapattah Business Development Authority, which was partly funded by the city of Miami.

The agency became a major player in the fraudulent 1997 Miami election. Gonzalez and four other authority employees were convicted on felony vote-fraud charges.

They pleaded guilty to falsely swearing that they witnessed absentee ballots being signed by voters. A judge ultimately overturned the election because of the ballot fraud, putting Joe Carollo in office as mayor.

Gonzalez was sentenced to one year's probation and fined $800. Because he was a first-time offender, his felony conviction was withheld, which made him eligible to run for office.

But by 2001, Allapattah voters moved past Gonzalez's legal trouble, helping him easily defeat Liliana Ros to claim the District 1 seat. He won reelection in 2003 and 2007.

In March of this year, Gonzalez admitted he failed to report about $135,000 in rental income he had collected since 2005 when he filled out financial disclosure forms.

Miami-Dade's Commission on Ethics and Public Trust investigated Gonzalez for receiving $3,800 a month in rental income since 2005 but failing to report it from 2005-07.

His lawyer said Gonzalez had misread a form. Gonzalez eventually paid a $2,500 fine and amended his disclosure forms.

Gonzalez could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Gonzalez is not the only Miami commissioner under investigation.

Miami-Dade investigators have long been probing Spence-Jones' involvement in tens of thousands in county grant dollars to a company owned by the Spence-Jones family in 2004, before her election.

Her attorney, Michael Band, said Wednesday that he doesn't believe Spence-Jones -- reelected in a landslide Nov. 3 and will be sworn in Thursday -- would face any charges.

Part of that inquiry centers on her pastor, the Rev. Gaston Smith, arrested last year and facing trial for allegedly misspending a county grant.

Reached late Wednesday, Spence-Jones said, ``I'm not even sure where this is coming from.''

The state attorney's office in May cleared Spence-Jones in a separate investigation involving allegations of bribery, illegal kickbacks and inappropriate influencing of personnel decisions.

Spence-Jones has long denied wrongdoing.

After her election win this month, Spence-Jones said: ``Basically, the people have spoken. I'm just looking forward to four more years of serving the folks that elected me.''

Herald staff writer Scott Hiaasen and Manny Garcia of El Nuevo Herald contributed to this report.

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