North Miami Beach Mayor asks prosecutors to investigate city attorney hiring
The mayor of North Miami Beach is calling for a criminal investigation of his colleagues after they voted to abruptly fire the city’s contract legal team and bring in a new law firm, saying he suspects commissioners colluded behind closed doors in violation of Florida’s Sunshine Law.
Mayor Anthony DeFillipo told the Miami Herald he had reached out to the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office and expected to speak to a prosecutor Friday, though he said he doesn’t have any proof of wrongdoing.
“It smells like s---,” DeFillipo said this week. “It doesn’t smell right.”
On Thursday, the mayor tagged the State Attorney’s Office in a Facebook post in which he urged residents to “speak up now cause the city’s going down the drain,” and accused commissioners who voted for the new city attorney of putting “their puppet” in the seat.
McKenzie Fleurimond, the city commissioner who pushed to change attorneys, said DeFillipo doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
“Those claims are unfounded,” Fleurimond wrote Friday in a text message.
A spokesman for the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office declined to comment on the matter.
DeFillipo’s allegations stem from a Jan. 28 meeting during which the commission voted 4-3 to terminate an agreement with Weiss Serota Helfman Cole & Bierman and extend an offer worth $660,000 a year to Hans Ottinot, a longtime municipal lawyer who was recently hired as interim city attorney in Tamarac. Neither proposal was advertised prior to the vote, and commissioners weren’t afforded time to ask questions about the firm’s qualifications.
“I don’t even know who this person is,” Commissioner Fortuna Smukler said during the meeting. “I can’t be part of hiring someone [when] I don’t even know what they’ve done.”
Commissioners agreed to pay Ottinot’s “boutique” firm $55,000 a month on an interim basis, the same baseline agreement the city had with Weiss Serota, a firm with more than 70 attorneys. DeFillipo, who voted against hiring Ottinot, says he signed an engagement letter with Ottinot five days after the vote.
But DeFillipo now says that was a mistake.
He told the Miami Herald he was under the false impression the document had been vetted by the city’s procurement department, and that Ottinot “shoved a paper on my desk that did not go through a process of ratification” by the city commission. The mayor said he plans to ask the commission to “recall that agreement and go over it with a fine-tooth comb” at a Feb. 16 meeting.
The episode is the latest in a series of controversies in the city of under 50,000 residents in northeast Miami-Dade. City officials have made a habit of trying to walk back controversial commission votes in recent months — including an October vote on the billion-dollar Intracoastal Mall redevelopment taken after one commissioner fell asleep and another logged off.
The vote, and DeFillipo’s allegations, could aggravate racial and ethnic tensions that have plagued the commission. The commissioners who voted to hire Ottinot are all Haitian-American, as is Ottinot. The commissioners who voted against Ottinot’s hiring are all white.
In 2019, the commission voted to censure DeFillipo for suggesting Haitian-American commissioners had voted to fire the city clerk in an effort to replace her with a “person of their own heritage.”
The vote
The Jan. 28 vote originated from a vague agenda item titled “Reference to Charter Officers,” initiated by Commissioner Paule Villard. After Villard spoke broadly about her concerns with the city’s management, Fleurimond turned the discussion to the city’s legal team.
Instead of a corporate firm like Weiss Serota, he said, the city needed “more of a boutique experience.” Unprompted, Fleurimond suggested Ottinot would be a better fit.
“The city of Tamarac recently made a decision that they would hire a boutique firm in the interim. That firm, to me, is a possibility that we can consider, and that I like,” Fleurimond said, referring to Ottinot Law PA. “Perhaps if anyone wants to consider it, that’s something we can look into.”
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Fleurimond and a few other commissioners said they weren’t satisfied with Weiss Serota’s work, pointing to monthly reports the firm has failed to provide, among other concerns. Fleurimond was the only commissioner to speak specifically in support of Ottinot, a former city attorney for Sunny Isles Beach and the only staff lawyer at his private firm, according to its website.
A few minutes later, Fleurimond made a motion to offer Ottinot a month-to-month deal “along the same terms that our current city attorney has.” Villard seconded the motion, which narrowly passed.
Ottinot quickly agreed to the deal. He was at City Hall the next day meeting with the city clerk, according to an email Ottinot sent to city officials on Feb. 1.
In an interview with the Herald, Fleurimond said he didn’t speak with Ottinot or others familiar with his work before proposing that the city hire him on an interim basis.
“I didn’t need to,” he said. “He’s known in the community.”
Fleurimond said Ottinot has “more than one attorney on his team.” He deferred to Ottinot for details. Ottinot did not respond to several requests for comment.
The three other commissioners who voted in favor of hiring Ottinot — Villard, Michael Joseph and Daniela Jean — also did not respond to requests for comment.
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‘It’s completely irresponsible’
Several commissioners said they weren’t comfortable approving a new contract without public discussion or a chance to vet Ottinot’s qualifications. City law gives the commission authority to establish the city attorney’s “term, conditions, and compensation,” but doesn’t dictate the proper process to do so.
“We’re just not gonna pick somebody out of a hat like that,” said Commissioner Barbara Kramer. “It’s completely irresponsible.”
Ottinot was the in-house attorney in Sunny Isles Beach for 13 years. He has also previously served as the interim city attorney in Miami Gardens, city attorney in North Miami and president of the Haitian Lawyers Association.
His departure from Sunny Isles Beach in 2019 to work for RK Centers, a local developer, sparked accusations of conflicting interests. About a week after announcing the move but while still working for the city, Ottinot suggested a controversial development opposed by RK Centers didn’t comply with city laws.
The county ethics commission investigated whether Ottinot violated rules on conflicting employment and found last month that there wasn’t enough evidence to say he did.
The Jan. 28 vote took place before members of the public had a chance to comment on the attorney swap. Dan Espino, the city’s outgoing attorney with Weiss Serota, said the public had already had a chance to comment at the beginning of the meeting, but some commissioners said that was insufficient given the vague nature of Villard’s agenda item.
Florida’s Government in the Sunshine laws bar city commissioners from discussing business with each other in private. Violations can lead to fines and, though uncommon, jail time. Virginia Hamrick, a staff attorney for the nonprofit First Amendment Foundation, which advocates for open government, said a vote at a public meeting “does not necessarily mean the decision was made in the Sunshine.”
The Herald has requested phone call records for the city’s elected officials in the week leading up to the vote.
New law firm, same service?
The agreement DeFillipo signed on Feb. 2 said Ottinot’s firm would maintain a presence at City Hall five days a week, and that Ottinot would be “principally responsible” for working with the city while “other firm attorneys” would be available as needed. It didn’t specify who the other attorneys are.
“The standard of service is not changing,” Fleurimond said when asked why Ottinot’s firm should be paid the same amount as Weiss Serota. He emphasized the agreement was temporary and that a more comprehensive process to hire a permanent city attorney “may be forthcoming in the future.”
Espino, the city’s outgoing attorney, said Weiss Serota had a “core team” of three or four lawyers who worked directly with North Miami Beach, including a dedicated attorney for code enforcement issues and a police legal adviser. At any given time, he said, as many as eight attorneys could be working with city staff.
“What makes you think Ottinot can do the same things [as Weiss Serota]?” Kramer asked Fleurimond during the meeting, without getting an answer. “Name the staff that’s with him. Tell me his staff.”
The city hired Weiss Serota in 2019, a move that was also controversial. The Miami-Dade ethics commission investigated the proposal for the city to switch from an in-house attorney, Sarah Johnston, to Weiss Serota, under a plan that included Johnston being hired by the firm. The ethics commission concluded Johnston had not violated ethics guidelines.
City manager also under fire
The hiring of Ottinot might not have been the only high-profile change at City Hall had some commissioners had their way last month.
After the city attorney vote on Jan. 28, Villard pushed for a separate vote to fire City Manager Esmond Scott.
“I just want to see if there is an appetite. I want to call a motion to also fire the manager tonight,” Villard said.
Joseph seconded the motion, but other commissioners said they preferred to table it. He and Villard also voted against giving the public a chance to comment on the item, but their colleagues overrode them.
Several residents said they were concerned with what had transpired.
“I was in the process of getting ready to go to bed for the evening until I heard this mess,” said resident Saundra Douglas. “You all are doing some crazy stuff tonight.”
This story was originally published February 12, 2021 at 4:15 PM.
