When a code enforcement inspector showed up at an illegal after hours club without a liquor license in Allapattah after midnight one recent Sunday, she didn’t expect to find a city commissioner there.
Let alone get into a physical altercation with him.
The Three Amigos are no more.
Miami commissioners Joe Carollo and Alex Diaz de la Portilla traded sharp barbs at a commission meeting Thursday — publicly accusing each other of ethical and maybe criminal lapses — in the wake of a scandal about a ghost employee at the Omni CRA who is ADLP’s longtime lackey and bag woman.
There could be money laundering involved here
The news that disgraced former Sen. Frank Artiles was arrested last week on charges of campaign finance fraud has Miami’s political underbelly scurrying for cover. Because he was not alone, dear readers. There’s no way.
Political observers knew it was a bad idea to give Miami City Commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla the chairmanship of the Omni CRA. Now he is under investigation for having hired a longtime lackey as a ghost employee.
Jenny Nillo, a onetime state senate plantidate and longtime campaign and legislative worker for ADLP, is making around $53,000 as a community liaison. She was hired as soon as The Dean made chairman.
Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo got his way Thursday when the commission voted to throw all the unused COVID19 relief money for grocery gift cards from the CARES federal funding into a new pot and divide it between four of them again.
Commissioner Jeffrey Watson and his $360,388 balance will stay in District 5 because, officially, it’s the neediest zone and because Watson was appointed in November and may have gotten a late start.
In these “unprecedented times,” we keep hearing from our electeds, as the COVID19 pandemic and economic crisis stretches into 2021, people need help paying the rent, staying in business and/or feeding their families.
So why are city of Miami commissioners sitting on somewhere between $700,000 and almost $1 million in COVID relief grocery and/or Visa gift cards?
