Miami-Dade County Commissioner Daniella Levine Cava, who is expected to win her re-election bid without much trouble, is thought of as the soft-spoken, bespectacled progressive who starts many of her sentences with an apology and stays away from negative politics.
But to Ran Gimeno and his family, she is “a monster.”
Gimeno and his husband, Justin Polga, have been embroiled in a legal business battle with the commissioner’s husband for almost two years and say the Cavas have maligned and harassed them — so far as to stalk their then 8-year-old son.
“It’s psychological warfare,” Gimeno told Ladra. “They have made our lives miserable.”
He said that at one point, Dr. Robert Cava and an employee went to their son’s Spanish school on Kendall Drive to take photographs and were actually chased out into the parking lot when the administrator started asking them questions. “How the hell did they even know where my son’s Spanish school is?”
Polga took Cava to court to get out of the non-compete … and voila, he won his case. Or partially, anyway. Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Bronwyn Miller would not throw it out completely, but he agreed that the restrictions went too far.
“The scope and breadth of the restrictive covenant, as it fails to limit its application to identifiable patients, create an unnecessary restraint on trade, thus, under Florida law, must be more narrowly construed, rather than invalidated,” Miller wrote in his July 2017 ruling.
Dr. Cava wanted Polga to be unable to do business within a five mile radius for two years. But that included assisting patients who were to be admitted to area hospitals within that distance, like Baptist and South Miami — which are where Polga is accredited — or teaching or advertising. The judge said he definitely could assist his patients with admittance to those hospitals and assist patients at those hospitals who are not current or former patients of Cava’s.
Polga could also teach anyone except current or former patients of Cava’s. And the judge only found that the non-compete on advertising applied specifically to targeting an audience within a five mile radius. But an ad in the Herald or on the internet would be okay, Miller said.
However, the case really got ugly outside of court, Gimeno said. And he has the police reports from four different municipalities to prove it.
According to one police report from Coral Gables, Gimeno went to the station about 5 p.m. Feb. 21 to report “he felt he was being stalked.
“A man by the name of Mr. Robert Cava and his wife Mrs. Daniella Cava had been following him, his husband Justin Polga and their son Jacob Polga,” reads the report. “He, his husband and his son have seen Mr. and Mrs. Cava on several occasions at different locations, such as the Gulliver Academy that his son attends, which is located at 12595 SW 57th Avenue, as well as the St. Thomas Episcopal Parish School, located at 5692 North Kendall Dr.”
The report also says that Polga had seen the Cavas at Doctor’s Hospital, where he works, and that both Dr. Cava and the commissioner ride their bikes down the street they live on in Pinecrest.
“Mr. Gimeno says he feels as if it is no coincidence that he, his husband and his son continually see Mr. and Mrs. Cava at their son’s school and at their jobs,” reads the police report. “Mr. Gimeno expressed concern for his safety as well as the safety of his family.”
This report was filed after they got a call from Gulliver stating that Jacob “had been behaving differently because, as he reported to a counselor, ‘a bad man is following me.’” The boy was taken out of school that day.
Ran Gimeno and Justin Polga at a charity event
Gimeno said that they were also harassed by Commissioner Levine Cava at the annual St. Thomas Episcopal Alumni 5K Run, where they had sponsored a table benefiting Breakthrough Miami. He said the commissioner “approached us as we were speaking among a group of fellow attendees/sponsors, including heat of schools for Gulliver Schools. She attempted to intimidate us in public.”
This was a month after a 400-guest function at the new University of Miami Lennar Foundation Medical Center, where Dr. Cava “approached us as we were speaking among a small group of fellow attendees. He forced himself into our personal space and attempted to intimidate us in public. We did not engage with him.”
Furthermore, Gimeno said that Commissioner Cava is using her influence to try to get their attorney, who teaches art time at the University of Miami, fired from her UM gig.
Gimeno — who told Ladra that Commissioner Levine Cava also approached and berated him and his son at an Apple store — said he and Polga did file a compaint with the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust, which dismissed it. And Chris Brown, an attorney for Dr. Cava, says that the commissioner has nothing to do with the lawsuit and that Polga and Gimeno simply do not have a case for harassment.
“If they did not want to be unnerved by a county commissioner, they probably should not have made her a witness in his case against her husband,” Brown said.
Really? That invites harassment?
Reached over the weekend, the commissioner said she had nothing to do with the legal battle. “I’m doing everything in my power to stay out of his business,” Levine Cava told Ladra. “I’m not involved in the lawsuit.”
She said that she has had “no contact” with Polga and Gimeno or their son. “Twice I have laid eyes on this man,” she said. Once was when she gave a proclamation to a medical group and another time was when she was at the Apple store and Gimeno came in, she said. “And he came up to me! I avoided him. I left right away.”
Levine Cava also said that no police officer from any agency has ever interviewed her. “Anyone can call the police and file a report,” Levine Cava said. “This has nothing to do with me. This is really a person who is desperate for attention.”
Desperate for attention? What attention have they gotten, besides, well, mine now? And why?
“Of course, I’m sure Gulliver wanted the attention. My son had to go to a psychologist for the attention,” Gimeno said.
Levine Cava insists that neither she nor her husband have been to Gimeno’s son’s schools.
A bunch of people, including someone from the Step by Step Spanish school and someone from St. Thomas Episcopal Church, have been subpoenaed for a motion of contempt that Cava has filed against Polga for apparently advertising within the five-mile radius he was supposed to stay out of.
As part of the discovery, there is a photograph taken of Dr. Polga’s pamphlets on a stand on a table. Inside the school’s front office.

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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.