If you live in Coral Gables and you have gotten a code violation notice in the last three years, you might want to ask where it came from before you cast your vote in the April 8 election.
That’s because Mayor Vince Lago, who acts more and more like Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo every day, apparently spends some of his time driving around the City Beautiful and reporting code violations. A public records request for Lago’s text messages produced hundreds of texts to the city’s code enforcement department with addresses and code violations he spotted here and there in just a three month period. Many of the texts came with photos.
A homeowner on the 1400 block of Medina Avenue, for example, apparently placed some black garbage bags where they shouldn’t have been. Lago informed code enforcement that this was a “repeat offender” and asked for the history of citations issued at the address. “This homeowner is not aware of the rules,” the mayor wrote in a text.
Read related: Coral Gables Mayor Vince Lago has a fancy new watch from guess who
So, he’s all about educating the public?
Lago also asked for the citation histories of other “repeat offenders” in the 1500 block of Venetia, the 4800 block of Riviera Drive, the 400 block of Aragon (at the home of a “constant law breaker”),  the 3500 block of Ponce De Leon Boulevard and at the corner of Bird and Mariola Court. What does he do with those citation histories?
The mayor won’t say. He refuses to answer Ladra’s calls and texts.
Among other code violations that were reported by the mayor were a canopy in the 700 block of Anderson Avenue, a “rear temporary car port” in the 600 block of Majorca, a “pallet in the pit” in the 600 block of Blue Road, “paint cans out the entire weekend” in the 500 block of University Drive, another car cover on the 400 block of Velarde and a black garbage bag in front of a house on the 5100 block of San Amaro Drive.

That’s his neighbor.
There are more than 300 texts within a three month period in 2023 and there are complaints lodged against businesses, too.
So what, some may ask. There could be more code enforcement so why shouldn’t the mayor fill in once in a while?
Read related: Ethics board dismissed two Vince Lago complaints against Coral Gables activist
Well, because it could easily be an abuse of power. In Miami, Joe Carollo weaponized the code enforcement department against Ball and Chain Lounge, which had hosted a fundraiser for his 2017 opponent. Carollo tried to put them out of business, but it backfired and the owners of the Little Havana bar sued him in federal court, winning a $63.5 million jury award.
After all, didn’t Lago’s campaign fundraiser, Brian Goldmeier, file an ethics complaint against activist Maria Cruz, a code enforcement board member, because she took action on his code violation (nailing orchids to a tree)? He thought she was retaliating against him. How can we know the mayor is not retaliating against the people he reports to code enforcement?
We can’t. Lago shouldn’t be doing that. And Ladra bets it will stop if he is voted out of office next month.
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Remember when Coral Gables Mayor Vince Lago ditched a city commission budget hearing early last year so he could dedicate a FP Journe clock on Miracle Mile? Remember what he said about not having his own timepiece from the watch company?
“I don’t own one of their watches. I wish I did,” Lago said at the Aug. 24 meeting at City Hall. “Maybe one day I will.”
Well, it looks like that day has come.
Read related: Reward time? Vince Lago promotes clock maker that helped Francis Suarez
Lago is sporting what looks like a fancy, new FB Journe Élégante 48MM Titalyt on his wrist in a photo on page 33 of the latest edition of Coral Gables Magazine.
The watch is listed for sale, new, at $75,000, but you can get a used one for around $60K, according to the internet.
“They only make 800 a year,” Lago said in August.

Was it a gift that he needs to disclose? Was it thrown in with the fancy clock installed on Ponce de Leon and Miracle Mile? Like a BOGO deal? Or did the mayor buy it with his share of the $640,000 commission his brokerage firm got in the sale of that Ponce de Leon Boulevard building to developer Rishi Kapoor, who was later investigated by both the Security Exchange Commission and the FBI.
Lago made a big deal last year of installing the clock, which is, coincidentally (right) made by the same company that hosted a “cigars and cocktails” fundraiser in 2023 for his BFF, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez. He first said that the clock was donated. Then he said that he himself purchased it to donate it to the city. “I paid for a part of it,” he said.
John Bell Construction did the install — he said he paid for the $32,000 installation himself — and he thanked them and several others, including the podcast A Day in Miami, where he is often a guest, in social media posts.
Read related: Coral Gables mayor ducks out of budget hearing for clock unveiling
Lago originally scheduled the installation for Sept. 11 — saying it was “not a national holiday” — and that was later changed to Sept. 12, when he sneaked out of a city commission meeting for the ceremony, where he also shamelessly plugged his handpicked candidate for commission.

But he lied about the value of the clock. The mayor said it was worth almost $100,000, but an email to the Anna Pernas in the city’s public works department from Susan Weisenfeld at Electric Time Company — an American clock manufacturer that seemingly built the clock here, in Massachusetts, for FP Journe — would cost $23,000 to replace it. That’s a whopping $77,000 difference. FP Journe letter lago clock
Another email from an accountant at Electric Time — which also made the clock on Main Street in Disney World — to Pierre Halimi of FP Journe seems to indicate that FP Journe paid them to build the clock. So is it an FP Journe clock or an Electric Time clock with a FP Journe logo sticker slapped on?
As usual, Lago did not return calls and texts to his phone. Maybe he’ll address it in one of his self-aggrandizing Instagram videos. Hopefully, he’ll be wearing the watch and will show us a close-up.

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The Florida Bar last week dismissed two complaints filed by former Miami Commissioner Ken Russell — who later announced that he would run for mayor (more on that later) — against former City Attorney Victoria Mendez and Mayor Francis Suarez, who is an attorney, after the latter gave the Miami Freedom Park developers back the $20 million they had promised to provide for “other green space” and parks throughout the city.
But they still make for interesting reading, hinting at a potential Sunshine Law violation and the possibility that nobody ever intended to make good on that promise.
Russell makes the first disclosure of a 2022 meeting at the mayor’s house where the developers were present and where he was urged to go along with a plan that the public benefit be “under the control” of then District 1 commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla, who was later arrested on bribery and money laundering public corruption charges, which were later dropped.
The mayor, Russell says, threw him out of the house when he would not agree with that. “Get the f— out of my house,” he quotes Suarez as saying.
Read related: Miami Freedom Park gets its full $20 million back for 58-acre public park
Russell has been a loud voice against the switcheroo that passed last month 4-1 on the commission (only Damian Pardo voted no). He has suggested that Suarez be recalled for this, even though the mayor has less than nine months left in office.
He is running for mayor, in part, because he has seen much his work on the city commission undone. This $10 million give away to the developer seems to have been the last straw. Without that promised public benefit, Russell — who was the 2022 swing vote for the Miami Freedom Park lease — has repeatedly said he would have never voted to approve it. He urged commissioners at the Feb. 13 meeting not to approve the Suarez giveaway.

Then, when the commission ignored him and everyone else who spoke against it, he filed the bar complaints.
The incident at Suarez’s $2 million home on Battersea Road takes center stage not just because of the mayor’s foul language, which insiders know he is prone to in private, but because of the sheer blatancy of the Sunshine Law violation. This is the textbook definition of backroom, behind-the-scenes arm twisting. Suarez doesn’t vote so he can talk to all the commissioners about whatever. But here, he was a conduit to a Sunshine violation by communicating that Commissioner Diaz de la Portilla was on board (a yes vote) to try to convince Russell to vote a certain way (to vote yes, too).
Let’s be clear. If what was communicated was open knowledge, something ADLP had said in public or in the media, then there is no violation. But if the conduit is conveying new information in order to cause the crystallization of a vote, behind the scenes, at a secret meeting  in his house with the deal insiders, then that is a violation of the Sunshine Law. He’s creating a predetermined outcome. Handshaking and arm twisting are supposed to be done in public.
“Prior to the vote, Mayor Suarez explicitly expressed his opposition to my amendment,” Russell writes in his complaint. “He invited me to his home, where unbeknownst to me, developers Jorge and Jose Mas were present, and made it clear that his intent was to ensure that all $20 million remained under the control of Commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla (in whose district the stadium project would take place) rather than being allocated for the new parks throughout the city. When I refused to change my position, Mayor Suarez abruptly ended the meeting yelling, ‘Get the fuck out of my house.’”
“For years, I never took a meeting with the Mas brothers outside of the office. I wouldn’t even have coffee with them,” Russell told Political Cortadito. “I think it was inappropriate [of the mayor] to even invite me and not tell me they were going to be there.”
He told Ladra he felt the meeting three years ago was irrelevant. It wouldn’t change his vote. “It’s only relevant now because of the new legislation to undo the tenets I fought for,” Russel said.
Read related: Miami Freedom Park developers want their $20 million parks donation back
The other thing that jumped out at Ladra was that it seemed as if there was never an intention to go through with the $20 million part of the deal ($5 million for the Baywalk has, apparently, not been considered for return). Russell’s complaint also says that the the omission of the amendment that he insisted on was deliberate.
“As City Attorney at the time, Ms. Méndez was responsible for ensuring that the final legislation submitted for the Mayor’s signature correctly reflected the Commission’s action,” Russell wrote in the complaint. “However, when Mayor Francis Suarez signed the resolution on May 5, 2022, the key amendment—explicitly included in the Commission’s minutes—was omitted from the final document.”
Thus, “The legislation did not reflect the Commission’s actual vote.”
Ladra is certain that was intentional and not a mistake.
Suarez himself admitted at the meeting last month that the ballot language on the 2018 referendum was intentionally misleading so the city could have legal wiggle room to switch things up later. Was the legislation also written to allow wiggle room. Was that among the things discussed at the mayor’s house meeting with the Mas brothers after Russell left?
In dismissing the bar complaints earlier this month, an attorney for the Florida Bar wrote in letters addressed to Russell that the actions by Suarez and Mendez “do not constitute violations of the Rules of Professional Conduct” and that the issues raised “are political questions beyond The Florida Bar’s jurisdiction and therefore not reviewable by the bar.”
The letter added, however, that it doesn’t have to end here.
“Appropriate remedies, if any, can be sought through the political process and/or the courts.”
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A total of 6,144 absentee or vote-by-mail ballots were sent to Coral Gables voters last week for the April 8 election. They landed in mailboxes at the same time as several mailers for different candidates — and false attack ads from Mayor Vince Lago, who is fighting his first real challenge, against Commissioner Kirk Menendez.
His political action committee, Coral Gables First, put out a series of “facts” that are very misleading and the same old arguments he’s been making for months, because he can’t run on his own track record.
“Fact 1: Commissioner Menendez gave himself a 101% raise.” Um, well, technically that’s true. But the salary was $36,488 a year, which many might agree is not enough. It had not been increased in decades. Now it’s $65,000 a year, which many think might still not be enough. Lago doesn’t use the actual numbers because they make sense. It’s much more scandalous to say it’s a 101% raise.
Read related: Kirk Menendez strikes back at Coral Gables Mayor ‘Lyin’ Vince Lago’
Another “fact” is that Menendez voted against a millage rate reduction. Of course it would not serve Lago to say that Menendez actually voted against potential service cuts. The millage rate reduction that Lago proposed was tiny and would only result in the saving of less than $100 a year for most homeowners. But the owners of the large projects would get tens of thousands in relief, which was Lago’s intent. Example: The owners of Gables Station would get a $29,400 tax break.
That’s not on the mailer. 

Menendez had a hit of his own. In a mailer where he said the choice was night and day — he’s day and Vince Lago is the night — he reminded voters of the scandals that Lago has been involved in.
“Lago’s brokerage received a $640,000 commission from a deal with developer Rishi Kapoor, under FBI investigation, raising serious ethical questions,” the mailer states. “Lago’s ties to real estate transactions involving Kapoor, a developer with questionable dealings, raise concerns about his use of public office for private gain.”
The mailer also mentions the recall effort against Lago “amid allegations of mismanagement, conflicts of interest and questionable influence,” and also says that the mayor’s efforts to annex Little Gables were rejected by 63% of Gables voters.
He could do better. He could remind voters that Lago misrepresented himself when he swore he had no conflict of interest with Little Gables by leaving his brother out of an affidavit he signed — very dramatically and publicly — saying nobody in his immediate family had any interests there. When, in fact, Carlos Lago once represented the largest property owner in Little Gables, which owns the trailer park that could become a new, enormous construction project. Which is why he left out the word siblings in his affidavit.
Read related: Coral Gables Mayor Vince Lago may have conflict of interest in Little Gables
He could remind voters how Mayor L’Ego almost got into fisticuffs with the former city manager. He could remind voters how he put a restauranteur on Giralda out of business.
But there’s time.

In the commission races, candidates are keeping it more clean, so far.
Rhonda Anderson just touted “a proven record of service and accomplishments,” citing the addition of 15 police officers and two dog parks and tree canopy and “pedestrian safety enhancements” and the under-grounding of power lines in North and South Gables. But she didn’t do any of that on her own. She is one vote on the commission.
“As more than a 35-year resident and having raised my family in Coral Gables, my commitment and priority has always been to improve the quality of life and to ensure that Coral Gables remains The City Beautiful,” her message states.
Ladra hasn’t seen any negative campaigning from Anderson, but it’s hard to hit Felix Pardo and Laureano Cancio, who have not been in office and have no real negative baggage.
Read related: Two more candidates say they will run for Coral Gables commission in April
Cancio has no money in his campaign account for mailers. Pardo has put out at least one of his own. And it’s not a hit piece, but it does raise concerns about overdevelopment and points the finger at Anderson for much of what has been approved. One one side, the registered architect lists his own achievements and service record, which includes stints on several community and city boards, including the planning and zoning board, which he served on twice and was chairman of.
The other side is a letter to voters.

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In the race for Coral Gables mayor, the campaign financing is super lopsided. Incumbent Mayor Vince Lago has out-fundraised Commissioner Kirk Menendez, who has challenged him — more than 16 to 1.
After coming in with a negative total in his December report, Lago’s campaign finance reports show he has raised $263,825 just since January, with $108,750 coming in the first two weeks of February. These last couple of months and the first week of March have doubled his take since last year to $430,925.
A lot of his contributions are still coming in at the $1,000 maximum amount, and a whole lot of it is not from Coral Gables, with addresses in Doral, Virginia Gardens, Hialeah, Sunny Isles Beach, Miami proper and as far away as Minneapolis, Baltimore, and Kirkland, Washington.
A lot of it is also from real estate developers and construction industry folks who know a friendly pol when they see one.
There are also a few bundles, which is one person or group contributing more than the maximum $1,000 through relatives and multiple companies. This includes $15,000 from former Commissioner Frank Quesada and John H. Ruiz, the University of Miami booster whose LifeWallet company was placed under civil and criminal investigations last year amid fraud allegations and billions of dollars that disappeared. The company was also sued by Cano Health, which alleged it was a “Ponzi scheme.”

Also listed is at least $5,000 each from the Agave developers, developer Lissette Calderon, contractor Carlos Marquez, another $4,000 between Jesse Manzano, his campaign consultant, and Ralph Garcia-Toledo — the two have a development firm together. Don’t feel too bad for Manzano, though, because he’s been paid more than $24,000 just since January for consulting and research.
Read related: Kirk Menendez strikes back at Coral Gables Mayor ‘Lyin’ Vince Lago’
This does not include anything raised by his political action committee, Coral Gables First, which hasn’t reported any transaction since last year.
In comparison, Menendez — who does not have a political action committee — has raised nearly $26,000 in total, since January of last year. He raised $8,480 since the beginning of this year. Only 12 of the 67 individual contributions are the $1,000 maximum donation. The great majority are from the Gables. And there are no bundles.
Gables voters are not easily swayed by fancy advertisements and slick videos. Two years ago, Commissioners Melissa Castro and Ariel Fernandez beat better funded candidates who had Lago’s support, which shows the mayor’s impact among voters is waning.
Because a lot of the people who donated to Lago’s campaign, unlike those who donated to Kirk’s, can’t vote in the city election.
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Pero por supuesto.
Former Miami Commissioner Frank Carollo, brother to the current commissioner, has filed to run for the District 3 commission seat that he served two terms, from 2009 to 2017. This was expected and is not good news. He may not be as bad as his big brother, Commissioner Joe Carollo, but Frank Carollo is still not a good role model as a politician.
He took a mysterious free trip to Spain in 2011 and stayed at a swanky hotel (value: at least $1,635) and said it was paid for by AirEuropa, which had gotten a key to the city months earlier.
Frank Carollo also got out of a traffic ticket in 2012 by calling then Police Chief Manuel Orosa when he was stopped for crossing the double yellow line on a street in Coconut Grove. He got off with a warning. The Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust determined that there was probable cause that he abused his power.
And, in 2015, he was questioned by WLRN about the connection between some of his campaign donors and the upzoning (read: gentrification) of Little Havana.
Maybe it’s in the Carollo DNA.
Read related: Frank Carollo pleads ‘no contest’ to ‘call the chief’ ethics charge
Also running for the District 3 seat so far are Oscar Elio Alejandro, Rolando Escalona and Brenda Betancourt, who is president at Calle Ocho Inter-American Chamber of Commerce and a frequent speaker at the commission meetings. She is, so far, the frontrunner by all accounts. And she’s not worried.
Al contrario.
“It was no surprise because he had announced like three months ago,” Betancourt told Political Cortadito. “I think it’s better for me now that he’s in the race, because there’s more reason for voters to choose me. Before, we couldn’t really talk about him. What for? But now, we can remind voters that we had eight years of Frank Carollo and what did he do? Nothing.

“Now, the ‘Why vote for me’ is very easy. We have to stop corruption. We have to keep the city safe and we have to safeguard the tax dollars of our people.
“I’m happy that he’s in the race,” said Betancourt, who has been involved in civic activity for 34 years.
In the mayoral race, it was not expected that former Miami Commissioner Ken Russell would jumping (more on that later). And that is good news. He may get to run against Joe Carollo and/or former Commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla, who was removed from office in 2023 after an arrest on public corruption charges that were later dropped. Other potential candidates include Commissioner Manolo Reyes and former city manager Emilio Gonzalez.
Read related: Long list of potential 2025 Miami mayoral candidates starts to take form
None of them have filed any paperwork, however, to indicate that they have opened a campaign bank account.  The other candidates who have, so far, are Ijamin Joseph Gray, Michael Hepburn, Maxwell “Max” Martinez and June Savage.
Russell announced last week and said that giveaway of $10 million to the Miami Freedom Park developers for the 58 acre park in their property was the deciding factor. He was the deciding vote in 2022 on the lease and only voted in favor because those $10 million had been promised as a “public benefit” to acquire and improve parks in other areas.
He is the first announced candidate who sounds like he could be good for Miami, even though he is also recycled.
Like award-winning filmmaker and activist Billy Corben has said repeatedly: “In Miami, we don’t recycle our trash, we re-elect it.”
The post Recycling in Miami: Frank Carollo and Ken Russell on the November ballot appeared first on Political Cortadito.

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