Miami city manager walks back data on furniture spending. Now he won’t answer questions
Miami City Manager Art Noriega is walking back a report and spreadsheets he released Monday to outline the city’s spending with furniture vendor Pradere Manufacturing, a company owned by his in-laws that employs his wife.
On Tuesday, his office released a short statement acknowledging that it had released inaccurate data.
“An updated presentation/report will be compiled due to anomalies in the tracking system used to retrieve purchase information, as outlined in the recently released report,” reads a statement released by the city of Miami.
In a story about the data and presentation Monday, the Miami Herald noted the inconsistencies in the data released by Noriega, who has denied any wrongdoing.
Noriega’s office on Tuesday canceled a planned interview with the Herald scheduled for Wednesday, a meeting that Noriega himself had requested to discuss the matter.
A city spokesperson said the city manager did not want to do the interview without having the accurate and complete data on hand. The Herald’s request to sit down with Noriega to discuss the ethical implications and other questions not related to specific numbers was denied. The meeting has not been rescheduled, and the city did not provide a time frame for when the new data would be released, only saying that it would be shared “in an expeditious manner” once available.
The report released by Noriega on Monday was a delayed response to questions of impropriety and potential conflicts of interests after Herald news partner WLRN in January reported on how much public money was spent on office furniture purchased from the company owned by Noriega’s in-laws. There was a roughly $211,000 discrepancy between the figures reported by WLRN and the numbers released Monday.
The flawed data were released well after Noriega had initially promised it. On Jan. 11, Noriega told city commissioners that he would present his findings at the “next commission meeting.” But three meetings passed before his presentation was scheduled for last Thursday. By 9 p.m. at that meeting, Noriega still had not presented but said he was ready to do so. Instead, commissioners suggested moving the presentation to April so that more people could be in attendance and have a chance to ask questions.
Noriega ended up sharing the presentation and the faulty data with commissioners, the mayor and the press on Monday morning.
After the Herald asked for further clarification, city spokesperson Kenia Fallat said that the initial report had been created based on a search using the word “furniture” as the classification.
“Upon doing a further analysis, it was determined that Pradere was paid for products and/or services that were not classified as ‘furniture,’” she said.
After Noriega’s report was produced, WLRN found that 22 purchase orders from Pradere Manufacturing between 2020 and 2023 were omitted from the manager’s report, including four direct payments to Pradere Manufacturing.
Commissioner Manolo Reyes told the Herald on Tuesday that this seemed to be a “mistake that shouldn’t have happened.”
“But it happened,” he said. “Somebody messed up. The good thing is they found out, and they’re willing to correct.”
Reyes continued: “The biggest question is did he benefit his wife, and did he do it on purpose?”
Commissioner Miguel Angel Gabela told the Herald on Tuesday afternoon that he had been briefed by his staff about the matter but had not had a chance to go in to his City Hall office to look over the report. He said that he isn’t focused so much on the numbers, but on how Noriega’s office and City Hall used his wife’s furniture company despite the alleged conflict of interest.
“Why would you even take the chance of the optics?” he asked. “They’re not good.”
Commissioner Damian Pardo echoed Gabela’s concerns.
“These conflicts of interest evoke serious ethical issues,” he said in a statement to the Herald. “I share Commissioner Gabela’s quest for transparency and government accountability, and I encourage Mr. Noriega to fulfill his obligation and provide an accurate and fair accounting, as was promised, to the public.”
This story was originally published March 19, 2024 at 1:18 PM.
