NMB commissioner didn’t improperly ‘opinion shop’ about mayor’s term limit, probe finds
A North Miami Beach commissioner didn’t exploit his position or violate city rules amid questions over whether the city’s mayor is eligible for another term in office, Miami-Dade County ethics investigators found.
The county’s ethics commission got a referral in February from an attorney who represents Mayor Anthony DeFillipo, alleging that Commissioner Michael Joseph abused his power by seeking outside opinions from non-city attorneys about the mayor’s term limits. DeFillipo is currently the only candidate for mayor in this November’s election, according to the city website.
Joseph denied asking anyone for legal opinions that would have challenged DeFillipo’s ability to seek reelection, including from Weiss Serota Helfman Cole & Bierman, a law firm that now works for North Miami Beach but did not when the conversations allegedly took place last year. Even if he had done so, said county ethics advocate Michael Murawski in a May 27 ruling, the conversations wouldn’t have been improper.
“There is no prohibition preventing a sitting municipal commissioner from making inquiry about a particular legal issue,” Murawski wrote in his two-page decision.
DeFillipo’s attorney, Michael Pizzi, had also suggested Joseph violated the city’s “cone of silence” rules because Weiss Serota was bidding to represent the city. But while a request for quotation (RFQ) was issued Oct. 16, 2019, the alleged conversations between Joseph and other firms happened prior to that date, Murawski said.
“Therefore, the cone of silence had not gone into effect,” Murawski’s ruling said.
The charter for North Miami Beach, a North Miami-Dade city of about 45,000 people, bars elected officials from serving more than two consecutive four-year terms. DeFillipo first became a commissioner in 2013 and was elected as mayor in November 2018, which came midway through his second term after George Vallejo agreed to resign from office as part of a plea deal for violating state campaign-finance laws.
In an opinion provided to the city last summer, an attorney said that, under the city charter, DeFillipo’s current term as mayor isn’t technically part of a consecutive four-year term. Instead, he pointed to a provision saying that, if an official is elected to back-to-back terms of any length, he can serve one additional term — as long as one of the two terms was less than 50% complete.
DeFillipo’s second consecutive term, from November 2018 to November 2020, “does not exceed 50% of the subject term,” the lawyer wrote.
This story was originally published July 28, 2020 at 6:53 PM.
