It must be election season in Hialeah because, suddenly, everybody wants to give away tax cuts like they’re pastelitos.
Interim Mayor Jacqueline “Jackie” Garcia-Roves — who is running to keep the job she was handed when former Mayor Esteban Bovo went to D.C. to lobby and be with his wifey — called a press conference at a Hialeah housing complex last month to promise abuelitos a 1% cut in the city’s property tax rate.
It amounts to about $25 a year back in taxpayers’ pockets, just in time for them to maybe remember her fondly at the ballot box in November.
But here’s the kicker: that “gift” to residents would blow a $1.3 million hole in the city’s budget. And if history is any guide, Hialeah doesn’t exactly recover gracefully from these kinds of political sugar highs. Remember Carlos Hernandez’s tax cut in 2013? That one cost $3.2 million, gutted pensions, shut down pools and libraries, forced furloughs, and sent first responders packing. The city is still patching the potholes from that financial disaster.
Read related: René García ditches Hialeah mayoral race — after stirring the political pot
Garcia-Roves insists this time is different. Sure. She’s also promising to absorb Miami-Dade’s water and sewer hikes (to the tune of $12.5 million), scrap the water franchise fee ($3.7 million in lost revenue), and cover rising trash collection costs. In all, her plan would strip $18.3 million from city revenues. She says there’s a $61 million surplus, but the numbers in her own budget only show $49.3 million. Math is apparently as flexible as politics in Hialeah.
The Interim Alcaldesa said at the press conference that she asked all the department directors to slash and burn and bring her a 5% reduction in their budgets. “To show me where they’re going to save, how they can save, and that’s how the money will be replenished.”
Uh-huh.
And just to make sure nobody gets left out of the political piñata, Councilman Jesús Tundidor — who is also running for mayor against Garcia-Roves — has scheduled his own press conference Tuesday to roll out his tax cut plan. Of course he has. Because in Hialeah, no one can resist playing “who can give away more for less?” during campaign season.
Read related: Bryan Calvo becomes first candidate to file for November Hialeah mayor’s race
Tundidor promises nothing less than “the largest property tax reduction in Hialeah’s history,” which sounds more like a campaign slogan than a budget plan. The release says it will deliver “immediate and meaningful relief to residents’ wallets” while still keeping the city’s finances solid. Ladra can’t wait to hear the details of how he squares that circle.
“One percent is enough to buy a cafecito,” Tundidor told Political Cortadito Monday. He said his plan is going to more than double that — and without raiding the reserves — because he has identified “millions and millions” of dollars parked in capital improvement projects that can wait.
“I found some projects that aren’t really that urgent,” Tundidor said. “Cuando las cosas están dura, you kind of put things on hold.”
Tundidor is bringing Miami-Dade Property Appraiser Tomás Regalado along for the show, er, press conference in the lobby at City Hall, 501 Palm Ave., at 1 p.m. Tuesday, like some kind of fiscal padrino to bless the move.
Read related: Hialeah mayor, councilman clash over tax collector election endorsement
Let’s not forget, however, that former councilman and mayoral candidate Bryan Calvo — who bailed last year to run (and lose) in the Republican primary for Miami-Dade tax collector — actually pitched a tax cut of his own at last year’s budget hearing. But Bovo shut him down hard, calling the idea “irresponsible” and nothing more than a politically expedient stunt.
Calvo had tried to sell it as giving residents “a little money back” to offset rising costs. Same as Garcia Roves wants to do this year. Of course, back then, he was running for tax collector.
But hey, election season means short memories and big promises, right?
Meanwhile, the city is still being sued by Miami-Dade over $18 million in unpaid water and sewer bills. But hey, let’s not let lawsuits or fiscal reality get in the way of an election-year gimmick.
As firefighter union president Eric Johnson reminded commissioners (again), it all sounds great in political soundbites, but we’ve been down this road before: cuts now, chaos later. “Is it worth closing parks for our children? Is it worth reducing public safety, where mere seconds could affect the outcome of lives?” he asked.
Good questions. But in Hialeah, politicians are too busy trying to outdo each other’s campaign giveaways to stop and answer.
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Meanwhile, partisan politics creep into county office
Have you been arrested and actually gone to prison for mortgage fraud? Have you been caught drinking and driving on the job, or cheating taxpayers by running errands on the public dime? No problem! You can apply for a job at the Miami-Dade Elections Department. They won’t care.
Four months after newly-elected Elections Supervisor Alina Garcia took office in November, she hired a new executive secretary: Jenny Nillo, who was fired from the city of Miami Omni Community Redevelopment Agency after she was caught driving a city car to run private errands for former Commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla, the CRA chairman at the time, and stopping for cans of beer along the way. How she was not arrested for drinking and driving is a mystery.
But whatever. That’s in the past, Garcia said. So, apparently, is Nillo’s 2017 arrest for mortgage fraud and subsequent conviction and sentence of 36 months.
Garcia did not return calls and texts from Ladra. But she gave a statement to the Herald that said Nillo “has performed her responsibilities with excellence, integrity, and unwavering commitment.”
Surveillance video shots of Jenny Nillo playing hooky from her city of Miami job in 2021.
She really laid it on thick, calling Nillo “a dedicated professional and valued member of our team who has paid her dues to society and has demonstrated through her actions and work ethic that she is an outstanding individual fully committed to public service.
“Ms. Nillo is also a widow who, since the passing of her husband in 2017, has been the sole provider for her family — supporting both her 80-year-old mother and her 19-year-old son,” Garcia said. “Her strength, resilience, and professionalism reflect the values we uphold in our office.”
Really? What about her theft of taxpayer dollars and blatant disregard for the law or even common decency? Does that reflect the values you uphold in your office? Which, by the way, is really our office.
At least now, if Nillo works on a campaign during her work hours — like she did when Renier Diaz de la Portilla ran for county commission — she is still technically working in “elections.”
Read related: Jenny Nillo campaigned for Renier Diaz de la Portilla while on the public job
Nillo is making $45,000 a year, according to Tess Riski, who reported the scoop in The Miami Herald. That’s what she started at when ADLP forced her on the city’s Omni CRA in 2020 as a community liaison. She was making $53,000 when she was fired the next year after Florida Department of Law Enforcement Officers observed her drinking and driving and stopped her so she wouldn’t hurt anybody. But she was only fired from the CRA. Diaz de la Portilla hired her back to his district office, and she worked in the city even after his 2023 arrest in September on charges of bribery and money laundering, which were dropped last year.
Strangely enough, Ladra expected Nillo to be working with the ADLP campaign for Miami mayor. She has worked on all the Diaz de la Portilla campaigns for decades. And when Ladra asked the former commissioner, via text, if she would be joining him at City Hall should he be elected, he said she would. “Are you going to take Jenny with to the mayor’s office with you,” was the question. “Yes. Part of my team,” Diaz de la Portilla said Friday morning.
After reading about her new job, which the Herald reported started March 3, Ladra texted him again on Saturday. “I thought you said Jenny was part of your team.” His answer: “She is.”
That’s concerning because the Miami-Dade Elections Department is the one that is going to tally the votes for the city elections on Nov. 4. There should not be part of anyone’s “team” working there.

But then we have Garcia, a longtime Republican operative who is going to have a very difficult time putting her job before her party. It seems like she is still campaigning from her social media feed, going to events all over the county, mostly with other Republican officials. She was there last week to celebrate the swearing-in of interim Hialeah Mayor Jacqueline Garcia Roves, along with Hialeah’s former mayor and former Miami-Dade Commissioner Esteban “Steve” Bovo and Miami-Dade Commissioner and former state Senator Rene Garcia, who is allegedly running for mayor in the City of Progress, as well as a State Rep. Alex Rizo and a bunch of other electeds.
This is an election year in Hialeah, by the way. How is she going to remain objective? Ladra would be concerned if she was former Council Member Bryan Calvo. Looks like Calvo, who is also running for mayor, was left out of the group shot.
Read related: Meet our new Supervisor of Elections Alina Garcia and her storied past
It’s kinda strange to see Garcia, the head of our county election, hobnobbing with electeds — mostly Republicans — in Tallahassee and at local events. It’s kinda strange to see her celebrating Women’s Month with the Republican Party of Miami Dade County, which had invited special guest, former Alaska Governor and one time VP candidate Sarah Palin. It’s kinda weird to see our elections chief in Washington D.C. at an inauguration ball for a president who still insists, to this day, that he won the 2020 election.
Garcia’s social media feeds look like she is still campaigning – and using election events to do so.
In February, members of the Republican Party of Miami-Dade toured the Doral office, where Chief Executive Officer Christina White discussed voter registration, vote-by-mail ballots, and the procedures involved in managing a county-wide election, while Garcia stood near the back of the room with Kevin J. Cooper, the newly elected Chairman of the Miami-Dade Republican Party, like they were conspiring or something.
Ladra has not seen photos posted of a tour for the Miami-Dade Democratic Party.

This Jenny Nillo hire has to be a favor for somebody, right? Because a fair, competitive process in this economy would have drawn better candidates, for sure. But Nillo is a DLP loyalist lackey, a member of “my team,” as he says. And Garcia is self-proclaimed “Joe Carollo girl.” She worked with the Miami commissioner before she ran for the state senate before she ran for elections chief. Carollo and Diaz de la Portilla are both allegedly running for mayor of Miami against each other in another election this year that Garcia will oversee.
So, this favor of a hire only makes sense if what las malas lenguas say is true about a deal struck by Carollo and Diaz de la Portilla, for the latter to switch to the county commission District 5 race if, indeed, Miami-Dade Commissioner Eileen Higgins runs for mayor, after all.
Read related: Alex Diaz de la Portilla is investigated on ghost city employee at Omni CRA
That’s one hypothesis, anyway.
Meanwhile, Ladra has some questions.
Does this mean Nillo, who worked at the county a long time ago, gets a third public pension?
Will she get to handle ballots in the Miami election?
What’s in the green gift bags that the Republican Party guests got at the tour?
Who is Garcia going to hire next? Perhaps former Florida Sen. Frank Artiles, who she also used to work for?
Artiles is appealing his November conviction and sentence — 60 days in jail and five years probation — in an election conspiracy case after orchestrating the sham candidate that thwarted the 2020 state senate race in District 37, tilting it for Republican Ileana Garcia and against Democrat incumbent Jose Javier Rodriguez.
So, he has election experience.
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There are live elections today in four of Miami-Dade’s biggest cities: Miami, Hialeah, Miami Beach and Homestead. Some offer a little more drama than others.

In Miami, there are two seats up for grabs. Commissioner Manolo Reyes is also on the ballot but he is pretty much in like Flint. No muss, no fuss.

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Hialeah Councilman Carl Zogby, the former police department spokesman, won re-election outright in a three-way Group 5 race Tuesday, with 57% of the vote. Mayra Jimenez got 27% and Salvador Blanco got 16%.

But the other two council races, the open seats which had five and six candidates vying, are headed into a runoff after nobody got 50% plus one by the end of the Election Day Nov. 2. And in less than two weeks, the city will have two more fresh, new council members that, depending on who wins, could tilt power one way or another.

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