‘You make me want to vomit.’ Political alliance implodes as scandal hits Miami.
A year after COVID-19 forced a political ceasefire in Miami City Hall, scandal has obliterated the peace.
Thursday’s commission meeting ended with one embattled commissioner stripped of his power to set the agenda for an agency that controls $68 million in taxpayer funds, demands for audits of multiple agencies and enough barbs that made the city’s center of power resemble the dysfunction of decades ago.
The drama began on Tuesday, when the director of the Omni Community Redevelopment Agency fired Jenny Nillo, a protege of the agency board’s chairman, Commissioner Alex Díaz de la Portilla, amid allegations she was earning a paycheck but almost never showing up to work.
The commissioner, who also serves as chairman of the CRA, vehemently denied the claims, saying she was reporting directly to him at his district office, while making vague references to “improprieties” on the part of the agency’s director.
The controversy lit up Thursday’s commission meeting. Commissioner Joe Carollo called for a series of votes that removed Díaz de la Portilla, a former political ally, from his position at the CRA and possibly prevented Díaz de la Portilla from hiring Nillo for a job in his district office.
Carollo proposed preventing elected officials from hiring people who are under active investigation or on probation. Introduced as an emergency change to city law, the ordinance passed 4-1, with Díaz de la Portilla voting no alone. It’s unclear if Nillo, whose hire is still being processed, would be impacted.
The kerfuffle has deepened a divide between Carollo and Díaz de la Portilla, who worked on each other’s municipal campaigns. On Thursday, they essentially disowned each other.
“You have been the biggest disappointment of my entire political history,” Carollo said.
“You too, for me,” Díaz de la Portilla responded.
After the vote on hiring restrictions, Díaz de la Portilla pointed out that multiple former and current employees in the offices of Carollo and Commissioner Manolo Reyes had arrests in their pasts. Reyes was incensed.
“Yes, I have a person that works with me who when he was 20 years old, he made a mistake,” Reyes said. “And since that time, that person has more decency and honesty in one hair than you have, commissioner.”
Díaz de la Portilla asked for the city’s independent auditor general to launch an inquiry into the Omni CRA’s administrative staff and another inquiry into the Bayfront Park Management Trust, the agency that manages the waterfront space and has a board chaired by Carollo. Díaz de la Portilla criticized a Carollo-sponsored proposal to erect large metal cat and dog sculptures in in the park.
The result of the discussion was a bitter, public dissolution of what was considered a key alliance in city politics.
“You engage in character assassination. You cast aspersions on people. You’re famous for it. You’re known for it. It’s your MO,” Díaz de la Portilla told Carollo. “You’re doing it again, but this time you’re doing it to an innocent. It’s cowardly.”
Speaking over his colleague, Carollo snapped back.
“You make me want to vomit,” Carollo said. “You have no conscience. You have no heart. You are the lowest thing that I’ve seen in politics. You do not deserve to hold public office.”
It was one of several searing exchanges that framed a clear shift in power on the commission. When the tempers cooled, Díaz de la Portilla seemed to be on a political island. Commissioner Ken Russell, who served as the Omni chairman before Díaz de la Portilla, was returned to his post in another 4-1 vote.
“I didn’t ask for this today,” he said. “But despite the circumstances I do appreciate the motion. I care very much about this part of my district, and I want to see it thrive.”
Díaz de la Portilla repeatedly declined to offer any evidence for the aspersions he cast against the CRA staff. Earlier in the week, he said he’d originally wanted Nillo to “keep an eye” on the agency’s senior administrators, a plan that supposedly changed during the pandemic, and Nillo’s work was allegedly moved to his district office. On Thursday, he emphasized that Nillo was instrumental in helping his staff distribute pandemic relief and she studied the potential expansion of the CRA into the Allapattah neighborhood.
He pushed for Nillo to be hired months after she got out of federal prison and while she was still on probation for mortgage fraud. The commissioner also acknowledged that Nillo, who was employed by the CRA and not the city, was using a city vehicle assigned to him — an apparent violation of city policy, according to paperwork in city’s human resources department and City Manager Art Noriega.
“Vehicles assigned to a district office should be used by district employees,” Noriega told the Miami Herald.
Documents obtained by the Herald also show that Noriega and a department director responsible for approving vehicle assignments never signed the form to approve Nillo’s use of city cars. When asked why his signature was not on the form, the city manager responded to a reporter in a text message: “It should have. Looking into it.”
On Tuesday, the Herald confirmed the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office had reviewed a claim that Díaz de la Portilla hired Nillo for an alleged “no-show” job but decided not to open a corruption investigation, according to a spokesman.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is “reviewing” a complaint involving Nillo’s employment, FDLE spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger told the Herald on Tuesday.
This story was originally published March 25, 2021 at 11:24 PM.
