Fearless in the face of irony, the ethically suspect Michelle Spence-Jones wants to name a park in Little Haiti after the ethically suspect Art Teele.
Imagine a bronze plaque in one corner of Teele Park listing the federal charges pending against the suspended Miami city commissioner when he killed himself in 2005. Of course, 26 counts of wire fraud, mail fraud and money laundering would eat up a lot of bronze.
The parks department could erect a statue of Teele lugging shopping bags stuffed with cash -- memorializing the 2004 state charges that the commissioner collected $100,000 in kickbacks from a sleazy contractor in a city redevelopment deal.
Teele's career in city and county government inspired a whirlwind of corruption investigations. As far back as 1993 when he was on the County Commission, investigators discovered a peculiar $85,000 loan from the Port of Miami to Teele -- funneled to the commissioner through a bank account in Puerto Rico.
ARTFUL DODGER
Teele dodged criminal charges in the port scandal, but it was pretty obvious that his political career was unlikely to become a monument to good governance.
Unless the person proposing the monument is someone like Michelle Spence-Jones. In less than three years on the City Commission, Spence-Jones, who represents Teele's old district, has become something of a monument herself to unseemly allegations, questionable ethics and criminal investigations. In the latest twist of Spence-Jones irony, the Miami-Dade County ethics commission charged that she had failed to disclose $46,168 worth of free legal work in 2006 and 2007 performed by a Miami law firm -- a violation of gift disclosure laws.
The law firm had represented Spence-Jones during an investigation of her 2005 campaign by the Florida Elections Commission. Disclosure seemed to have slipped her mind when she filed her disclosure form in 2007. But who could remember a piddling $46,168 legal bill?
If the ethics commission complaint is upheld, Spence-Jones will have managed the nifty trick of committing an ethics violation during an investigation into an ethics violation.
Despite the free legal work, Spence-Jones agreed to pay an $8,000 fine to settle the election complaint. Spence-Jones, like some politician from a bygone era, had violated election laws by doling out $24,000 in cash to campaign workers on election day.
SHAKEDOWN SUSPECTED
But ethics and election violations are small beer compared to the Teele-sized criminal investigations dogging Spence-Jones. The Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office has been looking into a shakedown allegation in connection with Spence-Jones' decisive vote to approve a controversial condo tower in Coconut Grove. Investigators noticed that the condo developer paid more than $100,000 to two ''consultants'' with no construction expertise but with very close ties to Spence-Jones.
Investigators also want to know a bit more about questionable county grants that financed a salon and spa owned by Spence-Jones' family. Then there's the investigation into another hunk of public money that she procured for her pastor's church. The minister, who has been charged with grand theft for frittering away $10,000 of the $25,000 grant, some of it in Las Vegas, told investigators he had been pressured to pay Spence-Jones an $8,000 ``consultant's fee.''
With a career arc like this, Spence-Jones ought to have her own version of Art Teele Park. She's already good for a couple of bronze plaques.
