UPDATED: A Coral Gables Police major has been suspended with pay while Internal Affairs investigates an incident Wednesday in which she was caught allegedly spying on a resident at a commission meeting at City Hall.

And Political Cortadito has learned that the State Attorney’s Office may also be looking into it.

Maj. Theresa Molina, who served as acting chief for a short while in 2014, allegedly even took cellphone photos of text messages that Maria Cruz was sending commissioners in which she was asking to speak on an issue they were discussing.

After Cruz spoke about the 30-some police vacancies and her dissatisfaction with the city’s fix — a program where civilian employees and security guards patrol North Gables in fancy golf carts as “eyes and ears” of real police officers — she told Molina to stop watching her.

“Stop texting the commissioners,” Molina shot back, within earshot of everyone in the room.

Watch the Coral Gables City Commission yourself here

It was so loud that City Attorney Craig Leen heard Molina at the other end of the commission chambers and told the resident “You are allowed to text commissioners. Let’s be clear about that,” he said. Commissioner Vince Lago interrupted him and blasted Molina, saying that residents could text or call him whenever they wanted. He then proceeded to give his phone number at the public and recorded meeting.

“This is a problem. I wasn’t going to say anything because… Maria texted me. She texted me,” Lago said. “Now we have a problem. Now we have a big problem. Because the issue here is I take great pride in that resident calls me, writes me a text message, writes me an email…  but I have a concern when the resident comes up to me at the intermission, while we’re in a moment when we are celebrating something spectacular in the city, and the tell me that while they were texting me they were being watched by a police officer.

“If you want to text me while I’m on the dais, it’s very simple,” he said and then read out his phone number. “Call me. Text me… That’s my job. My job is to interact with every single employee and every single resident in this community and business owner. And I will never stop doing that.”

“I never, never thought I would be in Cuba again,” Maria Cruz told Ladra Friday. “I have never heard that in this country people have to be afraid to speak.”

Cruz said she had gone to the commission meeting to speak against the city’s new Neighborhood Safety Aide program, which is basically a bandaid that uses civilians in go-carts to cover the 30-some vacancies in the department and cut into an alleged spike in home and auto burglaries perceived by residents in North Gables (more on that later), including 14 car break-ins over Labor Day weekend. The city has also hired security guards to patrol the area at night.

When she was told she was not going to be able to speak, Cruz started texting commissioners. “Please, please, I need to speak on this. Get me recognized,” is what she texted, she told Ladra. That’s when she got two mysterious texts back from an unrecognized number.

“Maria, stop texting,” said the first.

Then, “Ojos,” which literally means eyes, but is a Spanish translation for “someone’s watching.”

This is how Gables Mayor Jim Cason fights crime — by cutting big red ribbons on fancy go-carts for paid security guards. Photos courtesy Ariel Fernandez

Later, there was a break while commissioners went downstairs and outside to the street level to see the fancy go-carts, which Cruz calls the Mickey Mouse cars. She said someone else from the audience told her that Molina was keeping an eye on her and had possibly taken a picture of whatever she was texting.

So back in commission chambers, she started her two minutes with that bit of Big Sister news.

“This morning, I felt like I was back in Cuba,” she told them. “I was texting someone — actually, I was texting you people — and I found a police major was keeping track of what I was texting.

“Am I under surveillance here? Do I need a security company to protect me? This is not Cuba, Mr. Cason.”

Read related story: Gables police shake-up makes new manager top cop

Two days later, Cruz told me she was still shaken.

“If a high ranking officer in your police department is willing to do this,” Molina asks, “what happens when one of her people that I have offended finds me on my way home late at night and stops me for some made up reason?

“It’s scary.”

It’s also unacceptable, said Commissioner Vince Lago, whose family was imprisoned in Cuba under Fidel Castro’s rule.

“I don’t stand for that BS,” Lago told Ladra Friday. “What happened at that meeting was completely contrary to what our city stands for and how we treat our citizens.”

The commissioner is completely taken with the idea of the safety aides, who he calls city ambassadors. They are not only another set of eyes and ears for the police he said. They patrol only by day, while residents are at work and are supposed to take packages left at homes and leave notes for the residents so they can claim them later. They are supposed to help residents with the groceries if it’s raining. He also said the security guards, hired overnight when a majority of the break-ins happen, have already had a positive impact reducing nighttime car burglaries.

But that did not excuse Molina’s actions, he added.

“Major Molina’s behavior was completely unacceptable. It paints the city in a bad light,” Lago said.

Ariel Fernandez, an active citizen who ran for commission in 2015 and has sent letters to the commissioners about burglaries to his home and on his street, said he saw Molina keeping tabs on Cruz.

“I did see Molina holding her phone up over Maria like someone would to take a picture,” Fernandez told Ladra. “Anytime Maria moved forward, you know how people move when they are sitting and texting, Molina would move forward. When Maria moved back, Molina would move back.”

Read related story: Gables attorney: ‘There can only be one police chief’

He said that when the commission broke to look at the golf carts, Molina stepped aside to speak briefly with Assistant City Manager Frank Fernandez, who City Manager Cathy Swanson-Rivenbark brought to the City Beautiful with her from Hollywood and who has been the bane of the police department’s existence and the citizens of North Gables since.

It was Fernandez’s idea to bring in the nighttime FPI security guards, which may be the same guards he hired in Hollywood, where Swanson-Rivenbark got in trouble for filling too many positions with temporary contractual workers. A Broward inspector general’s report blasted the then Hollywood city manager over spending close to $1 million on temporary employees when all she was allowed to spend without city commission approval was $50,000.

Most of the temps placed by the agency contracted in Hollywood were in the police department.

Some Gables police officers and firefighters — as well as residents — are worried that the same thing is happening all over again in Coral Gables, where Fernandez has apparently changed the criteria for applicants so that it is nearly impossible to fill the vacancies. Among the more drastic requirements: no more than five moving violations in a lifetime and 10 letters of reference.

“If you are leaving your department, you don’t want to tell anybody until you have a job somewhere else,” said one police officer who said there have been less than a dozen hires since Fernandez came on board — which is less than half the officers hired by Chief Ed Hudak the year before.

Hudak started the IA investigation into Molina’s actions before the meeting Wednesday ended. On Friday, he declined to comment pending the outcome.

Meanwhile, the city blew through its overtime budget for the year back in May.

And another officer left the department Thursday.

The head of the Beacon Council resigned last month. But it’s likely he would have been fired anyway when his contract expired in October.

That’s because it looks like Larry Williams has exaggerated his accomplishments.

Williams, president and CEO of the Beacon for the past three years, announced in late August that he was taking a job with Technology Association of Georgia. But maybe someone ought to send them a copy of the memo by Miami-Dade Commissioner “Mayor Sir” Xavier Suarez that shows Williams may have greatly inflated his or the Beacon Council’s achievements.

When the Beacon Council claimed in its third quarter “Key Performance Indicators” report to have brought or helped 10 companies in Miami-Dade with research and marketing, networking and the like, Suarez decided to check on it. He sent eight members of his staff to the companies with the addresses listed in the Beacon Council report. They all came back with reports of their own. And guess what? Not one single company volunteered any information about the Beacon Council helping them or recruiting them.

Not one.

In fact, most gave perfectly organic reasons. Like being close to family, in one case. The attractive diversity of the Miami market, in another.

Alpha Trade doesn’t even exist. Another company occupies its space in Doral and the company is not even listed in the lobby directory. The Suarez staffer who visited the office was told that they could arrange a meeting with someone from Alpha Trade. Like it’s some cloak and dagger illegal thing. Which it might be since the company has been inactive in the Division of Corporations since 2012.

The New York Code and Design Company was a locked office inside Strayer University. Suarez’s office has not been able to contact anyone there.

On a visit to Florida Minerals, an import export predicted to create seven jobs over the next three years according to the Beacon report, the commissioner’s staffer found a residence and someone with no knowledge of the company. George Tsotkas, the CEO of Florida Minerals — which is located in Boca Raton — had moved to Boca Raton.

Suarez was flabbergasted. “I told them I was going to bring it up in committee. I wanted answers,” Suarez told Ladra Friday. “And then the guy resigns. And I guess that’s the answer.”

Yep. Williams, whose contract was coming up next month anyway, figured he’d been caught. He’s not going to get his contract renewed if Suarez starts bringing up the lies he’s been telling. In his memo, Suarez questions whether or not the $3.5 million or so the county gives the Beacon Council every year is money well spent.

There’s more. Please press this “continue reading” button to “turn the page.”

So, now that people — both investigators and reporters — are looking into her job with Miami-Dade Water and Sewer and making public records requests, Barby Rodriguez Gimenez showed up to work Tuesday.

Mayor ‘s daughter-in-law was paraded up and down the Coral Gables offices of Aecom, 135 San Lorenzo Ave., by Esther Monzon, president and owner of EV Services, one of 15 subcontractors on Aecom’s $91 million 2014 contract for water and sewer improvements mandated by the federal and state governments.

Barby is one of four public information officers at the company and was hired about a year after the contract was awarded in May, 2014. Before that, she worked as director of client relations (though that title could be a bit inflated) at Genovese, Joblove & Batista, which, by the way, lobbied on behalf of Aecom for the contract.

Read related story: Carlos Gimenez daughter-in-law could need a new job

Rodriguez’s role at EV Services is described in the company’s website.

“Better known as ‘Barby’ throughout the South Florida community, she’s a member of the Miami-Dade International Trade Consortium, Board Member at Voices for Children and member of Florida International University’s Presidents Council,” it says under her photo.

Barby Gimenez, face circled to the right, after her father-in-law is forced into a run-off. Looks like she’s saying, “Sh**! I may have to find a real job!”

What it doesn’t say is that she was appointed in 2013 to the ITC — which meets quarterly and makes recommendations about trade missions and sister city issues to the commission — which is already after her father-in-law was elected mayor. And she was appointed by Miami-Dade Commissioner Juan Zapata, who she worked for when he was a State Rep in Tally. It was a consolation prize because Barby really wanted a job in his county office when he was elected in 2011 — which Zap couldn’t give her, well, because she is the mayor’s daughter-in-law.

It wouldn’t look right.

She is also not listed, by the way, as a board member on the websites for either the Voices for Children Foundation or the FIU President’s Council. A search for her among the members yields zero results. Barbara Galvez, a communications coordinator at the President’s Council, said Rodriguez is not a current member. Galvez has only been there for three years, so she checked with Director Dania Rivero, who said Barby had not been a PC member in the eight years that she had been there.

Lots of people pad their resumes, but this one uses her mayoral father-in-law’s palanca to live off the county dime.

Read related story: Carlos Gimenez rewards family (again) in $1.6 billion deal

“Barby is our firm’s social butterfly connecting our clients with decision makers for desired results,” reads the last line of her thumbnail bio on the EV Services website. Social butterfly? Is that what we are calling it these days? And “connecting our clients with decision makers for desired results” has never meant more than when your suegro is mayor of largest county in Florida and the seventh largest county in the United States. She doesn’t have to do anything but support el viejo. She just has to be.

Records obtained by Political Cortadito show that Rodriguez is paid $21.75 an hour out of a possible $45. There are a total of nine EV Services employees on the county payroll, making a combined $255 an hour. Three of those positions are “public information officer,” but Ladra cannot imagine needing three PIOs on this project. What is their work product? How much public information could there possibly be? There’s apparently also an opening for a social media person, making $25.50 to $31.50 an hour, so if you’re looking and you know Mayor Gimenez…

The other two PIOs make a little more ($28.84 and $25.72 an hour) than Rodriguez, who makes much less than her father-in-law’s BFF, Ralph Garcia Toledo, who gets paid $200 an hour for what he admits is mostly clerical work on a separate $131 million contract awarded to CH2M Hill.

Still, $21.75 an hour is a $45,000-a-year job — nice work if on top of that you don’t really have to show up.

Doesn’t it look in this photo like Barby is flashing taxpayers the bird? The man on the right is her husband, the mayor’s less illustrious son, Julio Gimenez, who works for a company that got a $4 million no-bid contract to repair the performing arts center. Yes, it’s nice to be in the mayor’s friends and family plan.

Classy, huh?

Some people say que la familia de Carlos Gimenez es tan elegante. And then there are those of us who know the truth.

What they are is descarados.

God help us, but Ladra thinks State Rep. Frank Artiles could very well become my state senator in November.

Yes, he is a homophobic, sucker-punching Fight Club aficionado who looks like Magilla Gorilla (it’s the jaw line), lied about his residency when he was first elected and wants to kill a Florida black bear. The only real thing to admire about him, personally, is that he’s a Marine.

But legislatively — and despite last year’s unfortunate and hateful transgender bathroom ban law that never got traction — Artiles has had some good ideas. Boy, that was hard to say. But he has. He wants to make Florida the 34th state with a cancer presumption law that would make it easier for firefighters to get health and disability benefits — which could be to cleanse his soul from saying in 2012 that they had firefighter/paramedics have cushy jobs. And he wants to make the top cop job at Miami-Dade Police an elected sheriff’s position, like in Florida’s other 66 counties.

And, now, for his first campaign for state senate, Artiles has tapped into another winning issue close to his constituency in Southwest Miami-Dade: Highway tolls.

Read related story: State Rep. Frank Artiles wants to kill a Florida black bear

He’s hit independent voters (like Ladra) at least twice with mailers vowing to take on the tolls in Tallahassee. They doesn’t say how, mind you. Just that “together we can fight excessive tolls on our expressways.”  What the mailer does is offer a “petition” that voters can sign that is really a postcard back to his campaign office — so they can target you again now that they know what pushes your buttons, maybe get you to vote absentee.

UPDATED: Artiles even has this hilarious web video on his Facebook page of people stripping their shirts off their backs — to express how the tolls are affecting us. One by one, they take their tops off for the camera. But don’t worry, there’s no nudity. It’s G-rated.

Whether Artiles can end excessive tolls or not is moot. Just the mere fact that he is willing to advocate against the increasing highway tax is going to be enough for many people who feel politicians have just been completely deaf to them about this issue.

It’s such a good issue that State Rep. Michael Bileca also put it on a mailer. But he actually has ideas about restructuring MDX and forcing it to recalculate the cost of tolls.

Today’s City of Miami Commission meeting is expected to get heated when Commissioner Ken Russell asks for City Attorney Victoria Mendez to be fired for intentionally withholding documents he requested regarding the rezoning of a fast-tracked residential development in Coconut Grove.

And there’s likely to be some push back, specifically from members of the Cuban American Bar Association, of which Mendez, a former state prosecutor, was once president.

There’s still an independent counsel reviewing her opinion, which allowed the development to break ground, and the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust is looking into the withheld emails between Mendez and the developer’s lobbyist — emails that could indicate the attorney was helping the developer get the zoning they needed, in violation of the city charter.

But Russell can’t wait for the result of those inquiries.

“Everybody is trying to make it a matter of a charter violation but it’s become more than that,” Russell told Ladra late Wednesday. “It’s really about a working relationship and having trust in your attorney. I’ve lost that trust.”

Russell had already called for Mendez to be fired earlier this month after he discovered that she had not provided him with the public records he had requested regarding the development of five single family homes on a 50,000-square-foot property the developer wants re-platted into five separate properties.

At first, the developer was told they needed a special permit, known as a warrant, to split the lot. The zoning department denied the request. The developer then sought a new opinion from the city attorney’s office — which, lo and behold, issued one saying no warrant was really needed.

“It was a minor zoning issue, but something wasn’t adding up,” Russell told me. “I thought the city attorney had issued a flawed opinion in regards to zoning. That was the beginning of the rabbit hole.”

Mendez, who makes $215,000 a year, first tried to discourage him. There is nothing there, she told the commissioner. She herself requested the ethics investigation and has said that the emails, which she insist only show normal communications between attorneys on complicated zoning issues, were not intentionally withheld. She says Russell is simply being political for his constituency — he represents the Grove — and doesn’t like the opinion.

She was right about that last part.

“It’s such a Frankenstein of an opinion. They really did some gymnastics to be able to approve this for the developer,” he said.

So, Russell requested public documents including all the emails between the attorney’s office and the developers or their representatives. He got about a dozen. Thinking that something was still not adding up, he asked the IT department to do a search for emails using he same search criteria. This time, he got 40-something. That means there were more than two dozen emails that had not been included before, including exchanges between Mendez and attorney Javier Vazquez, the lobbyist for the developer and the city attorney’s friend.

“All the emails withheld show an entirely different story,” Russell said. “Every department issued a strong opinion as to why this was wrong. She shopped it to one attorney, but when she didn’t like that opinion it was a bad opinion. She took it to a second city attorney. Again it was a bad opinion.

“Through correspondence with the lobbyist, she says she’s working on it but she’s having a hard time,” Russell said.

That right there should be reason enough for commissioners to support Russell’s move to terminate Mendez, who became the city attorney three years ago. The withholding of public records is unacceptable in and of itself — and, from what I understand, it is a pattern with the Miami city attorney’s office. Just ask Grant Stern (more on that later). But the fact that she went out of her way to provide a favorable opinion to a friend is a big problem. Planning and zoning didn’t seek a legal opinion from the city attorney. They didn’t need it. They are certain that a warrant is needed to split the property. Vazquez asked for her opinion. And Mendez doesn’t work for Vazquez. She works for the commissioners and, by extension, the people of Miami.

To add insult to injury, she told a Miami Herald reporter earlier this month that Russell, her boss, just doesn’t understand. Isn’t that a violation of attorney client privilege? I mean, couldn’t a developer use that against the commissioner — hence the city — in a court of law. “He didn’t understand so that’s why he voted against us.”

Commissioners considering her ouster Thursday ought to think about that. Because today, it’s Russell. Tomorrow, it could be you. And how many lawsuits would comments like that bring the city?

For Russell — a freshman who was elected in a grass roots wave last year to replace Marc Sarnoff in a race against the much better financed Mrs. Sarnoff — it’s gone beyond those very serious professional improprieties.

“It goes to a question of trust. I know she was withholding documents from me, documents I need as tools to do my job. To me it’s very simple, very black and white,” Russell told Ladra. “How are we going to work together after this?

“If I get voted down, it’s going to be an awkward two years.”

Democrat activist Carlos Pereira, a candidate for Doral City Council, was suspended this week from the Miami-Dade Democratic Executive Committee (DEC) because he allegedly endorsed Republican State Rep. Carlos Trujillo.

Pereira says he has not endorsed anybody in the race for House District 105 and that he cannot control a photo that Trujillo posted on Facebook touting an endorsement. He also told Ladra that nobody in the DEC even contacted him to ask him about it and that there must be another reason why they are creating this controversy six weeks before the Doral election.

Miami-Dade Democrats Executive Director Juan Cuba says there is an investigation into it. Pereira is suspended until the committee meets to vote on it.

An endorsement would be a violation of his loyalty oath, a document signed by all members of the DEC that swears not to support any opponent of a Democratic nominee. Trujillo has a challenge from Democrat Patricio Moreno. It’s a throwaway challenge, sure. The Dems just tossed a bunch of token candidates into the state races at the last minute, again… but nobody expects them to actually compete. Even in District 105, which went to President Obama with the widest margin in 2012 and where the Dems apparently expect to win just because there’s a D next to Moreno’s name.

Maybe the DEC should have better supported Pereira, a DEC member since 2012, when he actually ran against Trujillo in 2014. None of the $13,000 or so he raised two years ago seems to have come directly from the party, although $2,500 comes from the SEIU, which many might think is an extension of the party.

Trujillo, who raised almost $265,000, easily beat Pereira 60 to 40 percent. 

Read related story: Doral considers condemning Trump, taking back city key

But apparently, Pereira is over it.

Despite leading the charge to take away the Doral key to the city given to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump because of his anti-immigrant stance, Pereira has been MIA from multiple immigrant advocate protests against Trujillo, who wants to pass a law that would make illegal immigrants felons just for being in this country without permission. Cuba says Pereira had Trujillo on his webcast show.

Then in June, Pereira received a $1,000 donation from Conservative and Principled Leadership for Florida, a PAC controlled by Carlos Trujillo. It is more than a quarter of the $3,775 raised as of Aug. 31. Then Tuesday, via Facebook, Trujillo announced the endorsement of Carlos Pereira. 

“Honored to receive the endorsement of my Democratic opponent from 2014, Carlos Pereira,” Trujillo posted with a photo of the two in front of Doral City Hall. “Thank you for your support!”

That caused Miami-Dade Democratic Party Chairman Dwight Bullard, a Florida senator facing his own re-election challenge, to suspend Pereira just hours later.

Read related story: Rep. Carlos Trujillo draws protests over anti-immigrant bill

“It is unfortunate that Carlos Pereira would endorse a Republican who wants to further criminalize undocumented immigrants, privatize public education, eliminate the minimum wage, and end collective bargaining,” Bullard said, hinting that the contribution to his campaign bought the endorsement. “It’s also deeply troubling that Pereira would accept a $1,000 contribution from Trujillo’s PAC and create a perception of quid pro quo.”

“Carlos Pereira should no longer be considered a spokesperson for the Democratic Party on any media outlets,” a statement read.

Pereira said that he and Trujillo are friendly.

“He treated me with respect during the 2014 campaign and since. He was a gentleman. He is supporting me in the non partisan race in Doral,” Pereira said, adding that the photo was taken during an art exhibit opening at Doral City Hall. “I can’t control what he puts on his Facebook page.”

The Democrat activist also told Ladra that he has “a good relationship with Patricio, too,” and had not yet decided who to support in that race. “At no moment, have I declared that I am with one candidate or the other.”

Perhaps the Miami-Dade Dems should place more efforts on helping Moreno, who is hung out to dry just like Pereira was in 2014, with only $1,200 raised and a $2,000 loan to himself. Meanwhile, Trujillo — who, by the way, qualified via petition signatures — has outdone his bank from two years ago with $282,000 raised as of Sept. 16.