Ethics panel finds ‘probable cause’ that Miami commissioner abused power with city car
Miami-Dade’s ethics commission has found probable cause that Miami Commissioner Alex Díaz de la Portilla abused his power by allowing a friend to use a city-owned car to run personal errands for him.
On Wednesday, the Miami-Dade County Commission on Ethics & Public Trust unanimously agreed to charge Díaz de la Portilla, elected to represent District 1 on the City Commission in 2019, with violating county ethics law and exploiting his official position after a friend who did not work for the city used a city car to pick up alcohol for the commissioner, drop off his dry cleaning, and drive him to a property his family owns in Southwest Miami-Dade.
The friend, Jenny Nillo, worked for the Omni Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA), and she should not have had access to the city car, according to city policy. But according to the ethics investigation report, Díaz de la Portilla admitted he viewed her as a city employee, and that she had driven the car to buy alcohol for him and handle his dry cleaning, although he insisted she had “volunteered” to run these errands and had done so on her own time because there are “no normal hours with the City Commission.”
Now, Díaz de la Portilla could face what amounts to an ethics trial where, if found guilty of a violation, he could be fined up to $1,000 and issued a public reprimand.
In a statement to the Miami Herald, the commissioner said he is challenging the commission’s finding, which he called “baseless” and “politically motivated.” He called the investigation “one-sided” and the commission’s work “kangaroo procedures,” adding that he thinks the ethics panel is wasting taxpayer resources.
“I have challenged the Commission’s investigation, and only now will I have an opportunity to present the actual truth and cross-examine the purveyors of falsehoods,” Díaz de la Portilla said.
In statements to ethics investigators, summarized in a memo released Wednesday, Díaz de la Portilla acknowledged that multiple staffers ran personal errands for him, but he denied directing them to do so.
“He maintained that staff simply anticipated his needs and that he never directed them to do any of this,” reads the summary of the commissioner’s sworn statement.
According to the ethics report, Nillo told investigators that Díaz de la Portilla had asked her to take his clothes to the cleaners and buy him alcohol — chores she said she did for him several times.
The city has strict regulations regarding who can drive municipal vehicles, including a requirement that the head of a department must sign off on which employees are assigned cars. In the ethics report, Díaz de la Portilla denied being the head of his district office, despite being the commissioner — the top decision-maker in his office.
“I’m the commissioner for District 1, but I’m not the head of the commission office. ... There’s the chief of staff,” he told investigators, according to records. Investigators wrote that he later acknowledged that the chief of staff reports to him.
Though Nillo was a CRA employee at the time, she spent most of her time working directly for Díaz de la Portilla while rarely showing up for work at the agency. The arrangement first sparked a controversy in March 2021, when Nillo was fired from the CRA amid questions about her special arrangement.
She was accused of holding a no-show job as a community liaison — a job created for Nillo after Díaz de la Portilla, then the CRA’s chairman, asked the agency’s director to hire her. For many months, Nillo rarely showed up at the CRA office.
In March 2021, when questioned by the Herald about the arrangement, Díaz de la Portilla said he wanted Nillo to be his “eyes and ears” in the agency, although he refused to discuss specifically why he did not trust the CRA’s leadership.
The report released by the ethics commission Wednesday shows that Díaz de la Portilla gave a contradictory statement to investigators. The commissioner “acknowledged he never expressed concerns about improprieties or corruption at the Omni CRA with Jenny Nillo when she was hired at the agency,” according to an ethics investigation memo. “He never further indicated that she never reported any such misconduct to him.”
Nillo’s tenure at the CRA ended March 23, 2021, days after state investigators observed her driving the city car to gas stations, buying beers and drinking them in between errands — activity that was not publicly detailed until an investigative report was released this year. Florida Department of Law Enforcement agents had been following her movements as part of an investigation into her hiring at the CRA and whether he was having her run errands for him on taxpayers’ dime.
After witnessing her consume multiple alcoholic beverages and get behind the wheel, agents from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement became so concerned that they stopped her and brought her in for questioning, where she talked about doing chores for Díaz de la Portilla during work hours.
She was never charged, but her statements to authorities have resurfaced as part of the ethics charges. Details of Nillo’s statements to authorities were first reported by the Herald in May.
Nillo’s dismissal made headlines amid accusations she had a $53,000-a-year no-show job. Díaz de la Portilla promptly hired her to work on his district office staff, where she still works today.
This led to a heated City Commission meeting days later at which Commissioner Joe Carollo, who supported Díaz de la Portilla’s election, told the commissioner: “You make me want to vomit. 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.”
This story was originally published October 12, 2022 at 7:24 PM.
