Hialeah Mayor Carlos Hernández may be termed out, but his political action committee raised almost a quarter million since he was re-elected, including more than $200K was last month alone — most of it on a single day.
What’s it for, if he’s termed out in 2021?
Sources say Hernández, who rules Hialeah with an iron fist and retaliates against his political enemies, wants to have a referendum on the ballot this year allowing him to serve another term. There’s even an item on Tuesday’s agenda to form a charter committee that would — guess what? — consider just that.
And it’s on the consent agenda, no less, which also has an alarming number of competitive bid waiver requests. The meeting starts at 7 p.m. at City Hall, 501 Palm Avenue.
The resolution — which is certain to pass the Seguro Que Yes council — would provide for a charter committee to review the city charter “and propose any amendments or revisions that may be advisable for placement on the upcoming election ballot of November 5, 2019.”
Oh, really? How transparent is this guy? How much do you want to bet that ending term limits is on the list?
Read related: Hialeah mayor quietly moves to turn school property into housing
And does Hernández really think that the voters in Hialeah are going to let him get away with this? They certainly didn’t buy the “public safety” tax increase he pushed last year.
Hernández — who served previously as councilman for six years — will already have been mayor for 10 years, two longer than allowed by term limits approved by voters in 1995. He served two years, 2011-2013, when he replaced his mentor, Mayor Julio Robaina, in the middle of his term — Robaina had resigned to run for Miami-Dade mayor in the famous recall election — and Hernández is now in the middle of his second four-year term. He will have been in office 16 years by the time his rule ends in 2021.
In 2017, former Mayor Julio Martinez sued the city to enforce the charter, arguing that the mayor had already served two terms because terms were not defined by length of time. A part of a term was a term, his attorney argued.
Read related: Lawsuit aims to take Carlos Hernández off Hialeah ballot
They didn’t win, obviously, and now Hernández wants yet another term.
Pero por supuesto. What else is he going to do? That way, he can more easily raise money from city vendors and developers for his 2025 run for county sheriff, which would coincide with the end of his third term.
There is simply no other reason for him to be raising this kind of dough.
The larger contributions to the Hialeah For Progress PAC, according to the latest campaign report, include:

$40,000 from two Miami Lakes real estate companies tied to Robaina
$30,000 from Leon Advertising and Public Relations
$25,000 from a construction company called M&R Enterprises
$25,000 from a Coral Gables real estate company called CC Devco
$25,000 from a Hialeah Gardens real estate company called World Property Services
$20,000 from a Sunny Isles Beach company called 1101 E. 33 Holdings
$12,500 from Gonzalez & Sons Equipment
$10,000 from Miami Beach real estate developer Fredric Karlton

There is also at least $10,000 from amusement companies that run the maquinitas so ubiquitous in the City of Progress and at least $2,000 from companies tied to Rolando Blanco, the Hialeah power broker who accepted hundreds of thousands in loanshark money for Robaina from a now-convicted Ponzi schemer.
Read related: Who protects the maquinita mafia in Hialeah? Guess
There are also contributions from vendors to the city — reminding Ladra of the Ready For Progress PAC set up in Miami Beach that was all city vendors and contractors — and which had to be shut down.
But this is Hialeah.
The Tampa-based PAC has raised a total of $487,700, but a lot of it was used for the 2017 re-election. But Hernández has raised $228,000 in just February and March. More than $181,000 was collected on Monday, March 4.
The PAC has also spent $186,554 of its bank, almost half of it on the 2017 election. But since then, it also spent $12,500 last year on Imagen Magazine — probably to put Hernandez on the cover again — $20K for another PAC, run by former Chief of Staff Arnie Alonso, to promote a tax increase last year that failed miserably, and, most recently, $19,000 last month to McLaughlin and Associates, a polling firm based in New York.
Ladra hopes they asked if voters wanted to have someone in office for 20 years. If that’s what they intended when they passed term limits in 1995.
But chances are they won’t ask that.

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It’s good to be the king.
We’re used to the mayor coming in late some mornings or taking off early to play nine holes of golf at The Biltmore Hotel. But on Friday, while the rest of us were trying to finish our work week, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez ducked out early to stump for Ron DeSantis in Hialeah.
Guess all that talk about switching parties and supporting Hillary Clinton two years ago was pandering for his own Democrat votes.
Gimenez was one of several mayors at a “mayors endorsement” event Friday for the Republican gubernatorial candidate and his running mate, that State Rep. Jeanette Nunez tweeted about that morning: “Join Miami Mayors, @RonDeSantisFL and I at Chico’s Restaurant at 3:00pm. We look forward to sharing exciting news!”
But the only other mayor with him at Chico’s was Hialeah Mayor Carlos Hernandez.
Oh, there were plenty of other electeds: County commissioners Jose “Pepe” Diaz and Esteban “Stevie” Bovo, a one-time Hialeah city councilman, along with current council members Lourdes Lozano, Katherine Cue and Pablo “Pablitiquito” Hernandez as well as Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart, State Rep. Manny Diaz Jr., who is running for senate, and former Miami Lakes councilman Frank Mingo, who is running for state rep. Diaz and Mingo are the two with the similar facial landscape.
The event started at 3 p.m. On a Friday. In Hialeah. On 12th Avenue in Hialeah. Knowing Miami-Dade’s traffic and the trouble one can have finding a space in Chico’s parking lot, Gimenez must have left County Hall by 2 p.m. at the latest.
Mayoral mouthpiece Myriam Marquez said it wasn’t on his daily calendar because it was not an official county event.
“Our communications office does not handle political campaign events or scheduling,” Marquez replied when asked why the event was not on the mayor’s official calendar. “He handles personal outings — that do not have public duties involving the county — independently.”
Too bad he has to do it on our dime and can’t do it on his own time independently.

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Hialeah Mayor Carlos Hernández may be on the verge of another backroom deal — unless the Miami-Dade School Board stops him.
Last year, Hernández sent a letter to School Superintendent Alberto Carvalho with an idea: Let’s rezone the vacant 12 acres of land adjacent to Hialeah Middle School — a vacant field that was used for football and soccer programs for decades — so it can be redeveloped into more absentee voting centers, er, we mean public housing.
But neighbors are opposed, collecting at least 600 signatures so far against any rezoning.
“I’ve lived across the street from that field my whole life,” said Michael Horgan, 47. “That field was always a football and soccer field for groups and for all of us to use.”
Then, suddenly, about three years ago, a chain link fence and no trespassing signs appeared from one day to the next. Now we know why. Ladra bets it took that long for Hernández and his hoodlum pals to get all their ducks in a row and figure out who gets what.  Even if it goes out to bid, like he said on Channel 23, the eventual winning bid will have “custom made” qualifications and other advantages that come with palanca. 
Las malas lenguas say its gonna go to the people who are building his new house in Coral Gables (yes, I am looking into that, too). But Ladra’s money is on former Mayor Julio Robaina, Hernández’s hero, and his real estate partners.
Hernández — an admitted loanshark suspected of insider deals with the reverse osmosis water plant and the privatization of solid waste collection –is a longtime friend and protege of Robaina’s. He wants this soooo bad, he said the city will waive $12,800 in application fees — how nice of him — to process the land use and zoning changes. It will still cost the school board (read: taxpayers) about $30,000 for assessments and what not. This is all spelled out in the unsolicited letter Hernández sent to Superintendent Carvalho sometime last year.
“I am reaching out to you to bring to your consideration an innovative approach to one of MDCPS sites within the city of Hiaeah,” Hernandez starts out. “I envision a residential development on the twelve acres owned by MDCPS on the northern portion of the site of the Hialeah Middle Community School, which will benefit the community, parents and students.”
He goes on to say new housing would attract young families and keep the schools filled with students.
“My vision at this site that is currently underutilized is a residential development with diverse unit types ranging from low to high density, designed to be compatible with the existing low density residential neighborhood to the west and scaling up as it extends east on Le Jeune Road,” and one can’t help but think that those are someone else’s words.
“To market the land at its highest and best use, the land would have to be re-platted, the land use changed to the maximum allowed density and rezoned consistently. The city of Hialeah is willing to take by initiating the land use changes and rezoning and facilitating the re-platting process,” the mayor wrote. “I look forward to working proactively together and in directing my staff to work with MDCPS staff, to ensure the successful implementation of this idea and make it a reality in the very near future.”
This letter was part of the October school board agenda at which the board recommended Carvalho “further explore a possible collaboration between the Board and the City of Hialeah, collectively the Parties, through which a Board-owned asset could be moneytized for the Parties’ mutual benefit and bring back an item to the Board at the appropriate time.”
How about never?
Board Member Lubby Navarro told Ladra she voted in favor because the property is not utilized and selling it would provide a source of revenue. But the secretive way this was started has tainted the process and the school board should put on the brakes, at least for now until a full study can be done on multiple options and best use of that land.
When Horgan learned what was going on, he and a group of neighbors went to the city council meeting Feb. 13 to ask questions and make their opposition to the housing development known. “Right before we spoke, the mayor left the chambers,” he said. “When I spoke not a single council member had a clue about what I was speaking about. They all wanted to see the mayor’s letter.”
Hmmm. Could it be the mayor was acting alone, without the authorization or even knowledge of the city council?
Interestingly, the undated letter is not on city letterhead — repeat, it is not on city letterhead — but rather letterhead that looks like it came directly from Carlos Hernández’s deep state office, his shadow office at City Hall. Instead of the city seal, it has a wheel with the mayor’s name on it and the words mayor and alcalde, which is mayor in Spanish.
Further proof that Hernández is doing this on his own behalf, as a businessman not as a city ambassador. Or, even less, as a public servant.
 

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In a sick plot twist worthy of M. Night Shyamalan, Hialeah Mayor Carlos Hernandez flipped the script on the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust Tuesday and announced that his city had been investigating the agency’s possible expenditure of public taxpayer dollars on a seminar this past March about doing business in and with Cuba.

“I am concerned because this is my government,” Hernandez, who is Cuban-American, told the county commission in an unannounced visit to the county commission meeting. “This is what our tax dollars pay for? Are we going to do business with Cuba?”

While it is three weeks before his city’s election, it doesn’t seem like a campaign trick… Even though he showed up at the county commission meeting with his campaign consultant. Yes, this will play well with Hialeah’s stock voter, which is the 65 and over Cuban American.  But Hernandez has really only a token challenge. Ladra doesn’t think he’s sweating it.

Read related story: Hialeah’s Carlos Hernandez is fined for loanshark lies

More likely, and even though he may genuinely be offended, the Cuba seminar is just an excuse and this is part of his war on the Ethics Commission. Hernandez, who has been the subject of quite a few investigations, has blasted the Ethics Commission on a regular basis, claiming that it has overstepped its authority and paying a $4,000 fine — levied for having lied, twice, on his loansharking activities (but not on the loansharking activities themselves, of course) — in buckets filled with pennies and nickles.

Ladra doesn’t really know what his beef is. He’s gotten away with, well not murder but loansharking at the very least and a bunch of other ethical lapses. It’s not like the Ethics Commission has come down very hard on him — and, boy, have they had the opportunity. Sure, there was that fine. But they had to do something. Ethics Commission Director Joe Centorino will confirm that Ladra has, more than once, become frustrated with his excuses and told him he was being too soft on the Hialeah hoodlums and turning the other cheek to way too many shenanigans: Absentee ballot fraud through the Hialeah Housing Authority, pancake breakfast campaign events paid by city funds, retaliation against city employees for political reasons, sending paid goons to harass candidates who challenge him or any of his Seguro Que Yes City Council, using the police department as his own little security force to harass and silence critics (and follow bloggers and illegally trespass them from public meetings), campaign checks to pay credit cards without itemizing the charges, diverting federal dollars for needy children to give his goons the political payback of a publicly paid Las Vegas vacation, doling out departments to his cronies (and at least one side hoe), violating the Sunshine Law on the regular and I’m sure I forgot something.

Read related story: City paid for campaign pancakes

Now, he’s using city resources for his personal vendetta against the Ethics Commission.

Hernandez is a walking, talking ethics violation. So, por supuesto, he suggested the Commission be defunded and dissolved.

“This is an agency that hasn’t been checked for some time… a department that’s costing taxpayers more than $2 million,” Hernandez said, suggesting the money be diverted instead to the State Attorney’s Office or the FBI — two other agencies that have also been soft on him (some political observers speculate that Hernandez is an informant because he gets away with so much).

And while I uncomfortably agree with him (just this once) on the fact that public tax dollars should not be spent on promoting business with a murderous dictatorship that has caused this community so much pain — even if it is just in staff time for planning and manning the event — I don’t agree with dismantling the agency for it. Because while the Ethics Commission is certainly not as aggressive as I would like, it’s better than nada. Especially since Hernandez’s pal, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez, dismantled the Miami-Dade Police department’s public corruption unit in 2014. At least it brings these transgressions to light.  And whatever county time and dime went to planning the Cuba seminar — as wasteful and disrespectful as using my Cuban parents’ tax dollars for that may be — its probably a tiny fraction of the funds stolen and wasted by electeds at the county and several of our municipalities.

Read related story: Hello, FBI? Abuse of power continues in Hialeah

And, really, Ladra swears this Cuba thing is just perfect political cover. He’s been salivating after Centorino for a while.

Unfortunately, however, it looks like our county commissioners, some of whom have also been stung by the agency — most recently about their VIP escorts to and from flights at MIA — are willing to entertain Hernandez and consider removing this thorn in their side. Commissioner Rebeca Sosa already threatened to remove funding in March after she and some colleagues were chided for the police escorts to the airport. On Tuesday, Chairman Esteban “Steve” Bovo, a former Hialeah councilman whose district includes most of the City of Retrogress — and who has tried to get the county to pass a ban on contracting firms that also do work with partners in Cuba — asked county lawyers to bring the commission a report on the ethic board’s mission at a future meeting. He also wants a reponse from Centorino about the public funds for the Cuba seminar, one of multiple conference events the Ethics Commission hosts with participation from local electeds, lobbyists and government people.

“We will be looking into this,” Bovo said.

Might Ladra advocate for the opposite? Created in 1996, the Commission on Ethics and Public Trust has outgrown its original parameters as the corruption in Miami-Dade has gotten more creative and, dare I say, rampant. Perhaps it is time the agency evolved and got more funding with an independent, dedicated millage all its own like the libraries have. Yes, I went there. While taxpayers may be loathe to raise taxes for Gimenez and the county commissioners — because they give so much of it away to their bffs — they might be willing to separate the $2 million from the general budget they can redirect elsewhere, maybe even increase the funding and create a real Ethics Commission with teeth that can and will watch our electeds more closely since they aren’t tied to their purse strings.

How can we do that? Anyone? We can’t let Hernandez win this war.

We’ve been robbed. Cheated!

The four biggest cities in Miami-Dade have elections next month without a single mayoral race. Not really anyway. The four frontrunners have zero or marginal opposition. That means there will be no debates, no conversation about the direction of these cities, no real choice for the voters of Miami, Miami Beach, Hialeah and Homestead.

Also the commission or council races and the charter questions on the ballots in those cities will suffer from the lack of any real mayoral contest, which is always the main attraction.

In Miami, Commissioner Francis Suarez is the presumed winner after Commissioner Frank Carollo, who is termed out this year, failed to throw his hat in the ring. Everyone held their breath til the last minute on the qualifying deadine because Carollo was supposed to challenge Baby X. But many political observers speculate that his brother, former mayor Crazy Joe Carollo, le tiro la jarrita de agua fria by jumping into the commission race in Group 3 (more on that later), because it would be harder to get two Carollos on the dais and even if he did, then what? Yeah, sure, there are three others who qualified for the Miami mayoral race but none of them have raised any money or are considered real candidates, so they will go unnamed. Expect Suarez to get 93% of the vote.

In Miami Beach, former State Sen. Dan Gelber gets a free ride thanks to Commissioner Michael Grieco‘s self destruction with the secret PAC that he denied having anything to do with but that is now under investigation by a really selective State Attorney who has seemed to look the other way at far more egregious PAC problems (more on that later). Again, three others qualified, but, again, they will go unnamed because none has raised more than $6,000 (to Gelber’s $500K-plus account) and their names won’t matter after Nov. 7 anyway.

Read related story: Mystery Miami Beach PAC goes down, but new PAC is up

In Hialeah, Mayor Carlos Hernandez is apparently not termed out, as an attorney for former Mayor Julio Martinez had argued in court, trying to boot the admitted loanshark and absentee ballot bully out of the race. Alas, a judge ruled with the city’s warped thinking, which is that a half a term is not to be counted. Getting Hernandez off the ballot was the only way to get him out of City Hall. It was the only chance anyone had. There’s a lady challenging him, but while she’s very brave (her husband is a city employee), she stands zero chance of making a dent in the Hernandez election armor. That means that he can use more money earmarked for needy kids to give his needy staff vacations in Vegas.

And in Homestead, Mayor Jeff Porter — who has brought some stability to the county’s fourth largest city after the last mayor was arrested for corruption — is automatically re-elected de-facto after nobody dared oppose him.

Yawn.

If it hadn’t been for Annette Taddeo‘s win last month over former State Rep. Jose Felix “Pepi” Diaz in the Senate 40 race, this would be the most boring local election year ever.

Not that I don’t like Porter or Baby X or even Sen. Gelber (notice I didn’t include Carlitos because Ladra does, indeed, dislike the Hialeah hoodlum). Those three are all fine gentlemen with good track records, it seems, so far anyway. But I miss the process by which ellos se destacan. I want them to lay out their ideas and defend their positions and plans. You should too.

This just handing them over the seat seems like a bad idea.

It’s also a terrible reflection of our community that we didn’t have more qualified people vying for these important posts.

Hialeah Mayor Carlos Hernandez is termed out and cannot run for another term. So says a lawsuit filed Monday by a former mayor that seeks to keep him off the ballot this November.

Hernandez was council president and automatically became the mayor when former Mayor Julio Robaina resigned  in May 2011 to run for Miami-Dade mayor. The city charter says he is to serve the remainder of that term until a special election is called to fill the vacancy. That happened in November of 2011, when voters chose Hernandez over both former Mayor Raul Martinez and former Sen. Rudy Garcia.

Because Robaina won that term in 2009, Hernandez had to run for re-election again two years later in 2013. He won again, handily, getting 81 percent against former Mayor Julio “The Other” Martinez and Juan Santana.

The lawsuit filed Monday by attorney Jose “Pepe” Herrera on behalf of Julio Martinez says the city charter, which states “no person shall serve as mayor for more than two consecutive terms.” It doesn’t say two “full” terms, the lawsuit says. It doesn’t say two whole terms. In fact, it doesn’t have any adjectives at all. Just two conservative terms. Which Hernandez has served.

Read related story: Hialeah hoodlums recruit from the Carlos Gimenez gang

“Simply put, a term is a term, and absent any durational adjective, section 2.01 of the city charter must be construed to its plain meaning and grammatical syntax,” the lawsuit states, adding that Hernandez’s argument that a partial term cannot be counted could be intentionally manipulated to “avoid the intent of the electorate” that passed term limits in 1996 and who didn’t include the word “full” when describing the two terms.

That would indicate that Hernandez, who launched his re-election campaign in March, can’t run again.

The lawsuit was filed against Hernandez, Hilaeah City Clerk Marbelys Rubio-Fatjo and Miami-Dade Elections Supervisor Christina White. There will be a press conference Tuesday morning at Herrera’s office, 2350 Coral Way, Suite 201. Herrera is representing Julio Martinez pro-bono. “I like protecting the public interest and dislike bullies. It’s why I went to law school,” Herrera told Ladra.

Looks to Ladra like he’s got a case. Could we finally get rid of Hernandez based on a technicality?

“He paid Grodnick, but he can’t pay me off,” said former Mayor Julio “The Other” Martinez (photographed), referring to former Hialeah City Attorney William Grodnick, who apparenty provided an opinion to the mayor before he retired some months ago that says he does have the right to run again.

Funny enough, Grodnick had the exact opposite opinion in 2008 when then-Councilman Esteban Bovo wanted to run for a fourth term. Bovo, who was elected to fill out the term vacated by the indicted former Councilwoman Maria Rovira in 1999, had not served three full terms — the limit in the charter — but only two and a half. Grodnick told Bovo back then that he could not run again.

Read related story: Carlos Hernandez lies again — under oath this time

“He contradicted himself.  But when you are three months away from retirement and Carlos tells him to do something… it’s just n opinion. A city attorney can do that and be wrong,” Martinez told Ladra. “You can’t buy me off. Now, we are going to a real judge.”

Martinez, bless his soul, doesn’t want to run for office. “No, I’m not going to run for shit. I just don’t want him to run,” he said, pardoning his own French. “We in Hialeah voted for our mayors to be limited in office to eight years. Now he is going to be there for 11? No. I don’t think so.”

Which of these ballot bandidos will run for Hialeah mayor if Carlos Hernandez can’t?

While Martinez won’t run himself, he has plenty of ideas for who might be interested in an open seat once Hernandez is barred by a court from the ballot: Bovo himself, though Ladra thinks he is eyeing the county mayor’s seat, Sen. Rene Garcia, who is termed out, Council President Luis Gonzalez — who, las malas lenguas say, got peeved that Hernandez wasn’t giving him the seat, as promised — and even Councilwoman Isis “Gavelgirl” Garcia-Martinez, who was on the outs with Hernandez at the end of last year but seems to have patched things up because she won’t return anyone’s calls.

Ladra hears former State Rep. Eddy Gonzalez, who has threatened to run for Hialeah mayor like the boy who cried wolf, is making too much money in the private sector, lobbying and “consulting” in government affairs.

Someone has to be thinking about it already. Herrera, who is on a roll recently, has a case here and Hernandez is due some cosmic karma.

Our only fear is that he would run for county commission or — dare I say it? — senate. God help Hialeah.