Miami deserves better than a mayor, manager out to enrich themselves. Show them the door | Opinion
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, the focus of the revelatory Miami Herald corruption investigation “Shakedown City,” doesn’t see any reason he should quit.
After all, it’s not like being a public relations agent for a human rights abuser like the Saudi Arabian government is a problem. As long as it’s not Cuba that Suarez is peddling to the American public and profiting from, we’re all good here. See no evil.
But Suarez is using his public office and powerful profile to profit and that ought to enrage voters — whether he helps the Saudis buy their way into U.S. institutions, the subject of a congressional investigation, or he smooths the way for a local developer who paid him a $170,000 “consulting” fee, the subject of an FBI investigation.
And, perhaps, the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which mandates public disclosure by those representing foreign interests, will catch up to the mayor, too.
READ MORE: The kingdom and I: How Miami’s mayor helped Saudi Arabia rehab its bloody reputation
Likewise, City Manager Art Noriega also doesn’t think he should lose his City Hall job after a WLRN investigation disclosed that his wife’s company has been awarded no-bid contracts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars during his almost four-year tenure as city manager.
We all know Miami culture demands that we share windfalls from our jobs with family, right?
Who better to furnish a husband’s office with all that taxpayer money than his esposa? Nothing to see here, either, ethics investigators and the pesky journalist who tracked the $440,000 dolled out to Hialeah-based Pradere Manufacturing.
Cesspool of corruption
Both city leaders — Suarez handpicked Noriega, CEO of the Miami Parking Authority for 20 years, and commissioners unanimously voted him in — are knee-deep in dishonorable ethical violations and possibly prosecutable shenanigans.
They’re two peas in the cesspool that is Miami’s city government, notorious before these latest scandals for Commissioner Joe Carollo’s act of political vengeance against two Little Havana businessmen, leading to a $63 million guilty-verdict award.
Corruption isn’t a victimless crime.
It’s costing taxpayers, and also leaving the city with leadership gap. No matter how many cafecito counters the mayor poses in front of now hoping for social media glory, he has been largely an absent mayor.
Suarez’s failure to explain himself, acting as if nothing is happening, only makes the situation worse. His and Noriega’s failure to acknowledge and/or answer questions about their wrongdoing — showing they feel they owe nothing to the public — says it all.
READ MORE: Shakedown City: Investigations, lawsuits and the anatomy of Miami’s political scandals
City at a crossroads
The city is at a crossroads and there’s only one thing for Miamians to do: Get serious about finding a way to move forward, with or without the action of law enforcement agencies and the slow-moving county Ethics Commission’s verdict on violations.
Both men appear to have engaged, at the least, in blatantly unethical behavior and, at worst, have committed acts that merit law enforcement scrutiny and criminal charges.
The city commission must censure Noriega, if not all-out fire him, for giving his wife contracts that should have been publicly put up for bidding by all office furniture manufacturers. The rules under which city managers operate are no mystery. Local and state ethics laws forbid people in top government posts from handing over taxpayer funds to relatives.
One has to conclude that Noriega must have been awfully comfortable with his job security to have made the unilateral decision to pay his wife from city coffers. He also underestimated the investigative talents of Miami journalists and the willingness of City Hall sources to do the right thing when they see wrongdoing: talk to the media.
As for Suarez, given his newfound mayoral wealth as a millionaire, he should have no trouble moving on and letting someone who really wants to serve, run for mayor.
