There is a secret meeting in Miami Beach this afternoon at which the city manager’s contract will be discussed, as well as several other measures that include limiting residential input into government policy.
City Manager Jimmy Morales could come out of it with a raise and a five-year contract. Not right away, maybe. But once they know how the votes are going to go, a commission meeting is just a rubber stamp.
The Committee as a Whole meeting — coming three weeks after Morales asked for a five year extension and for the city commission to authorize the finance committee to negotiate a raise — is not a regular commission meeting. It is a more like a secret gathering. It is not in commission chambers. It is in the manager’s office conference room. It is not aired on television or streamed live online or even recorded. There is no public input.
If Commissioner Michael Góngora had not put it on Facebook, nobody would have known it was happening.
City commissioners got an emailed agenda from the mayor’s chief of staff Friday. “Below are the items to be discussed at Tuesday’s Committee of the Whole. Do you want to add anything,” Michelle Burger wrote, before adding the items:

City Manager Performance Evaluation
Ballot Questions / Resolutions
Best Practices for the Office of the Mayor & Commission
Eliminating the Commission Committee system and moving towards two (2) Commission meetings a month
Quarterly meetings for all boards and committees (except land use boards
Policies related to presentation and awards agenda

The last one seems pretty boring, but the rest certainly seem like they should be discussed at an open and public city commission meeting.
Particularly the manager’s evaluation, which was taken off the table by Mayor Dan Gelber last summer, when the commission evaluated the city attorney, Góngora said.
“I had inquired whether or not we were going to be evaluating the city manager and I was advised it would happen at a future date,” Góngora told Ladra, who said he was put off by fact that it came so much later on the heels of the request for a five year extension.
“Regardless of how you feel about the city manager’s performance, I’m unaware of us ever doing such a lengthy contract extension in the past,” Góngora said.
Gelber did not return a call for comment. Commissioners John Aleman, Micky Steinberg and Ricky Arriola did not return emails seeking comment Tuesday morning, although Arriola did have his aide call back and stress that the 2 p.m. meeting nobody knew about — with the seven commissioners, their staff, the city manager and his staff and the attorney and clerk and their staff in the manager’s conference room — is open to the public.
Commissioner Mark Samuelian said he was not concerned because nothing would be determined Tuesday without further discussion. “I’m under the impression there will be more than one discussion,” Samuelian said, adding that a salary increase would  go before the finance committee.
But when? Because also on the agenda for the secret meeting is a discussion about having all boards and committees meet quarterly instead of monthly or more regularly. This item would clearly get a lot of comment at a regular commission meeting.
“They are suggesting that the frequency of the meetings could be burdensome to city staff,” Samuelian said, adding that he wants to hear from staff about just how stressful it is and from his appointees to see what they think.
Góngora said he opposed the idea. “Those committees do a great job. Limiting them to once a quarter would stifle them and the hard work they do. It would severely impact citizen involvement,” he said.
There’s another questionable item about scrapping the committee structure within the commission and having all issues go before the full commission twice a month. These meetings are already 12 hours long sometimes, and this would likely make them longer. But it would also give the mayor more control.
No wonder he’s bringing these things up in secret.

Read Full Story

Someone is at it again in Miami Beach — and everyone thinks it’s Michael Grieco.
A campaign mailer arrived in mailboxes last week telling voters about the sweet deal $50,000 job that former Commissioner Joy Malakoff had gotten offered to her by Mayor Dan Gelber. Except that there was no disclaimer on the anonymous piece. And Malakoff isn’t up for election.
But she isn’t the only one targeted in the piece, which quotes Political Cortadito and also has photos of Gelber and Micky Steinberg, who Malakoff gave campaign contributions to. The mayor seems to be the main target, repeatedly calling him unethical. “Did you actually think it would be different with Gelber? Ask Mayor Gelber to explain this unethical payoff attempt,” it reads on the front.
The back of the mailer takes a stab at a general bond referendum the city wants to put on the November ballot.
“…and Mayor Gelber wants us to approve more of our money for a general obligation bond with no specific information on projects and his political friends like Malakoff lurking in the shadows?”
Reated: Ex Miami Beach elected Joy Malakoff got, then dropped juicy $50K job
It also thanks Commissioners Michael Gongora and Kristen Rosen Gonzalez, who not only voted against the palanca position but asked the questions that caused the whole community to raise a collective eyebrow and Malakoff to, eventually, back off and decline the offer. The piece doesn’t have any reference to Commissioners Ricky Arriola and John Elizabeth Aleman, photographed right, who also voted in favor of the Malakoff botella.
“I had absolutely nothing to do with it,” Grieco told Ladra over the weekend from Colorado where he’d been skiing. “I’m not in the business of spending my money in the off season. Why Malakoff? Why leave Ricky out of it if I think Ricky is a piece of shit?”
He has a point.
Grieco is an easy suspect because of the secret campaign cash scandal that saw him fall from the front runner position in the Miami Beach mayoral race to a defendant in an elections law case, accused of funneling money from a foreign citizen into a political action committee — that he said he had nothing to do with — through a third party. He resigned his commission seat and agreed to plead no contest — while simultaneously saying he knew nothing about it — and accepted a sentence of one year probation during which he can’t run for office. He also had to pay $6,000 restitution for the costs of the SAO and Miami Dade Ethics Commission investigations.
He was barred from running for office during his probation period, but that could be up in April (it often gets cut in half for first time offenders with “good behavior”). So might he run again? Hmmmm… there would be motivation if he wanted to ensure that Malakoff doesn’t get appointed, as widely rumored, to the seat that may be vacated by Rosen Gonzalez, who is running for Congress, because he has intentions to run again.
But (1) Malakoff’s chances at an appointment got blown when she went for that $50K post. Miami Beach doesn’t put up with that kind of shit. This ain’t Hialeah. And (2) Grieco, who has continued to be politically active on Facebook and posted a video of the Malakoff offer that got a lot of engagement, might be having too much fun as an outside agitator to go back into the fire.
“I’ve kind of enjoyed not being public property,” said Grieco, “I’ve enjoyed waking up in the morning without having 85 targets on my back.
“It’s been nice.”
You mean it was nice. Because he knows that everybody thinks he’s behind this. One of his former colleagues told him that 99% of the people on the street think it was him. Maybe just pure unadulterated revenge aided by his longtime political consultant David Custin? It really does look like Custin’s handiwork.
But the same people who think it could be Grieco wonder if it might be Rosen Gonzalez or Gongora — as if they were interchangeable. I am on Team Kristen all the way, even as a paid communications consultant, so I know for a fact it wasn’t her. She is an underdog with less money than every other candidate and all her funds are for communicating with CD 27 voters, okay? She also doesn’t need to pick any fights on the dais, where she is already alone most of the time.
Gongora said it wasn’t him either. “I got it in the mail,” he told Ladra on Sunday, adding that the thank yous were a “red herring” to make it look like they were involved.
“I certainly wouldn’t want my colleagues to think I spent time and money on this.”
Are there any other suspects?

Read Full Story

UPDATED: So this is why she didn’t run for re-election.
Former Miami Beach Commissioner Joy Malakoff, who said she wouldn’t run again because of a back injury, was hired by the city at Wednesday’s commission meeting to do three months of community outreach for the city’s general obligation bond effort for $50,000. Guess her back is feeling much better.
This juicy job was not advertised. There was no competitive process for it. And believe me, there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of people who could do it better than Malakoff, and in two languages.
By the end of Friday, after Ladra had made a series of inquiries, Malakoff “withdrew” her name from consideration. But the kicker is that there may have been a Sunshine Law violation because at least one commissioner got a late night call Tuesday about this item. From who? She wouldn’t say. But that means it’s interesting.
Normally, a former commissioner would have to wait two years after leaving office to work for or lobby the city, but commissioners on Wednesday — after the city attorney reminded them that they could — waived that rule in order to give Malakoff the palanca position. Both the vote to waive the rule and the vote to award the contract to Malakoff was 5-2, with only Commissioners Michael Góngora and Kristen Rosen Gonzalez voting against both times.
But it’s a moot point. Earlier Ladra said it was illegal and I certainly think it was invalid. That’s because Miami Beach — which has more rules about campaign contributions than any other city probably on Earth, prohibits anyone who gave to a candidate’s political campaign from becoming a city vendor, which is what Malkoff did on Wednesday, for at least a year. She left office three months ago, after contributing to both Mayor Dan Gelber’s and Commissioner Micky Steinberg’s campaigns. Ladra had first written that they shouldn’t have voted on this, but rather recuse themselves. I thought commissioners were the ones that were prohibited from voting on items for vendors who contributed.
Mayor Dan Gelber
Gelber, who only called me back after he read the story to correct me, fell all over himself to correct me and explain that it wasn’t exactly illegal. He pointed me to the ordinance and indeed, it says that “a person or entity other than a vendor who directly or indirectly makes to a candidate elected to the office of mayor or commissioner shall be disqualified for a period of 12 months following the swearing in of the subject elected official from serving as a vendor with the city.” This, too, can be waived by a 5/7th vote.
So, wait a minute. If the commission waives that part of the Beach ethics ordinance, then she can have the job. So the same mayor and/or commissioners who get the campaign contribution can then turn around and waive the rule that prohibits their benefactors from getting a juicy city contract?
“I actually looked at it the other day,” Gelber told me about Ordinance 2-487, giving me the number.
So he thought he was going to have to waive both sections of the ethics ordinance: The one that prohibits a former employee or elected from being a vendor and the one that prohibits a person or entity who gave to his campaign. Like that is so much better.
Ladra is glad the mayor corrected me because, actually, this is worse. He was going to waive both ethical requirements. For a guy who ran on ethics, this is rich.
But it gets better (or worse).
Gelber first told me that Malakoff didn’t get the job outright, that the commission simply authorized the city manager to negotiate a contract with her up to $50,000. We all know that’s how it works in every city and at the county. Electeds authorize or instruct the city manager or mayor and the negotiation is done. It doesn’t come back. And Gelber knows this, too, because he contradicted himself moments later.
“I don’t quibble with the fact that there are people more qualified. He may hire them, too,” Gelber said, referring to the city manager. “He may not have to go through us. There’s going to be lots of people doing outreach.”
First, whoa! “Lots of people?” How much is the city going to spend to convince residents to increase taxes? How many of those people are gonna be campaign contributors and friends? And, secondly, aha! “He may not have to go through us,” he said. And I asked him to confirm. “The only reason it was before us is because we couldnt hire her,” without the waiver, Gelber told Ladra, “because she was a commissioner. He needed that.”
But, then, he certainly wouldn’t have to come back to the commission.
Commissioner Michael Góngora
Góngora told Ladra he voted against Malakoff getting the plum post because there was no prior announcement or open, competitive process. The job came up during a discussion item, an update from the city manager on the efforts to get a GOB passed. Then suddenly, out of nowhere City Manager Jimmy Morales explains how they’ve been thinking about hiring Joy Malakoff, who was sitting in the audience, as a consultant to do outreach.
Only Góngora and Rosen Gonzalez seemed shocked, really. Every other commissioner talked about her unique knowledge and experience, laying it on pretty thick. Like, almost too much, you know? Over compensation. Commissioner Ricky Arriola practically drew a sword to defend his colleague. Really, anyone who cares about this has to watch the video on Facebook posted by former Commissioner Michael Grieco (more on that later).
Though she had previously voted to move forward with the GOB exploration process, citing parks and a swimming pool as some of the projects she would like to see funded, Rosen Gonzalez told Ladra Friday that she hasn’t decided whether to move forward with what is essentially a tax increase until she has details on how much it would be and how it would impact homeowners. She certainly wasn’t ready to hire someone to do outreach. Once, and if, the city gets to that point, she wants to advertise the position and hire a professional.
“This is obviously a political favor,” Rosen Gonzalez said on the dais, raising questions about Malakoff’s skills set for this particular position. But more importantly, telling her colleagues that she had gotten a late night call on Tuesday from someone telling her about the item. Who made that call? On behalf of whom? Nobody even asked her! Some might think that one of the commissioners would have been curious.
Góngora said he would have voted yes had it been presented as what it was, instead of snuck into a discussion item like a Trojan horse. He urged his colleagues to defer the item to the first meeting in March, three weeks from now, so that it would be properly noticed for what it was. His colleagues seemed adamant to make this happen now.
“Discussion items are typically not an action item,” Góngora told me later. “It was mislabeled and misleading. It hadn’t been advertised and properly noticed. The item didn’t say vote three times to hire someone. It said update.
“It seemed like a set up.”
Ya think?
Morales knew he was going to bring this up. It appears it was something that city staffers have been talking about. And at least Gelber was brought into the fold (though it appears Arriola was in on it, too), because the mayor said that “when I first heard about this idea, I thought it was a fair and good idea.”
So that begs the question: When did he first “hear” about the idea? From who?
Malakoff said that she was “asked to sell the GO bonds to the community and I’d be happy to do so.” Who asked her? When?
The city manager did not return several calls from Ladra. He returned a text message at 5:36 p.m., four hours after I texted him, with “She withdrew from the process.”
What freaking process?
When I texted Morales three minutes later asking for the letter or email in which Malakoff withdrew, Morales — who also used to be a poster child of ethics — didn’t respond.
But at this point, it doesn’t matter that Malakoff didn’t take the job that was offered, if not illegally then certainly unethically — though I would bet on the first. Because Ladra believes there was a Sunshine Law violation here. And that this was a deal done on the campaign trail — a job created for Joy, who endorsed several candidates last year. There is just no way that this wasn’t worked out behind the scenes.
This is something for Joe Centorino and the Miami Dade Ethics and Public Trust Commission to look into. Consider this post my complaint if you have to, Joe.

Read Full Story

There were no surprises in the Miami Beach elections, which ended Tuesday with Mayor Dan Gelber getting 82% of the vote against three nobodies who each got single digits and former Commissioner Michael Gongora coming back to the dais, as largely expected, with 65% over restauranteur Adrian Gonzalez, who got 35%.
In the other race, Mark Samuelian, who lost his first bid two years ago, came in with 68% over Rafael “Wild Willy” Velasquez, who still got 32% despite having whipped out his penis last month in an ill-fated effort to woo Commissioner Kristen Rosen Gonzalez.
It’s still gonna be awkward for Rosen Gonzalez because she had openly helped Velasquez, but at least she doesn’t have to worry about his willy on the dais.
She also doesn’t have to worry about Mayor Philip Levine messing her up anymore. Levine decided not to run for re-election because, as he announced last week, he is running for governor instead. God help us all.
Read related story: Michael Gongora, Mark Samuelian lead Miami Beach Commission money race
Ladra hopes that this means there is a change in the climate at City Hall, where Levine led with fear and intimidation. Gelber may be his own man or he might be, as some suggest, Levine’s hand-picked successor (after Ricky Arriola tanked in the polls). But he was a senator once and is the son of the great former mayor Seymore Gelber so Ladra expects a lot from him.
Samuelian, too, has a lot to live up to after being endorsed by nearly every former elected in the city. But he lucked out when former Commissioner Michael Grieco — who eventually resigned as part of a deal with the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office for his PAC’s illegal campaign contribution — dropped out of the race (more on that later).
Can Miami Beach leave all this nastiness in the past and start new with three new electeds on the dais? We still have Arriola and a couple of other Levine puppets doing his bidding up there, but will Gelber make them moot?
The election ended Tuesday as expected but the real political machinations have just begun.

Read Full Story

While it is not the only reason they are the frontrunners in the November election, it helps that former Miami Beach Commissioner Michael Gongora and comeback candidate Mark Samuelian have each raised more than $170,000, leading the pack in their respective commission races, according to the latest campaign reports filed last week.

And leading by quite a distance.

Gongora, who enjoys the most name recognition as a former commissioner and one-time mayoral candidate, has the most of any of this year’s commission hopefuls, with $188,785 raised since March. Or actually $168,785 since $20K is reported as a loan to himself. Also, a quarter of last month’s $40K, or $10,000, comes from Adam Walker of Boardwalk Properties, a real estate investor who owns several small apartment buildings in South Beach and who bundled $40,000 in contributions to Commissioner Michael Grieco, who is running for mayor. Maybe Gongora saw the Political Cortadito story about it in May and hit Mr. Walker up the next month.

Read related story: Michael Grieco its $500K, with help from real estate investor

Nobody else in the Group 3 race even comes close to Gongora’s bank. Adrian Gonzalez, the owner of David’s Cafe and Gongora’s most serious challenge, has raised just over $55,000 and Zachary Eisner has raised $17,250.

In the Group 2 race, Samuelian has raised $170,747, an impressive amount in two months. Until you read the fine print and realize that more than half of that — or $91,000 — is in loans from the candidate to himself. He loaned himself $56,000 in the first report for May, to make it a total of $105,472, and then made another $35,000 loan to the campaign in June, so he could report a total of $62,275. Without the loans, he would be reporting only $79,472 in the same two months — which is not really “more cash on hand than all our opponents combined,” as he claims in one of his email blasts.

Attorney Joshua Levy has reported raising $76,070, but $24,700 is on loan from himself. Rafael Velazquez has managed to resist loaning himself anything to artificially pump up his numbers, even though he has only raised $31,476 so far.

Is Samuelian trying to scare more challengers away? Already, Eisner switched to the Group 3 race against Gongora and Robert Lansburgh (who had loaned himself $50K) withdrew completely, giving Samuelian his endorsement. One of many.

Samuelian boasts basically everybody’s endorsement. Former Miami Beach Mayor Matti Herrera Bower, former Beach Commissioners Jorge Esposito, Saul Gross, Nancy Liebman, Ed Tobin and Deede Weithorn and former Miami-Dade County Commissioner Katy Sorenson have all given him their nod. So have a number of community activists like Daniel Ciraldo, Frank and Marian Del Vecchio, Brad Bonessi, Carla Probus and Michael DeFilippi, to name a few.

And as the former president of Miami Beach United (he resigned last month), Samuelian not only built a track record opposing the “train to nowhere” and fighting Watson Island development, but he also doubled the group’s membership and increased its influence, which means he made a lot of friends and gained a lot of supporters along the way. Add that to the name recognition he built in 2015 with the 4,999 people who voted for him against John Elizabeth Aleman and you have all the makings of a winner winner, chicken dinner.

Read related story: Mark Samuelian runs for Miami Beach commission, part II

Name I.D. and wall of endorsements are those other reasons that Samuelian is the one to beat, because money alone doe not always do it. After all, Samuelian spent $416,560 in is first bid against Aleman and he came real close — there was a 77 vote difference — but he spent way more than Aleman, who only spent $274,045. In fact, Samuelian also significantly bankrolled that race, too, loaning himself a whopping $216,247,  or more than half his total bank, in installments of $25,000 loans every month, $50K the last month and a little more than $16,000 that he apparently needed at the very end to make ends meet.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that Mayor Philip Levine is not running for re-election and will no longer be there to pull the strings, so he’s not going to back any puppet candidate against anyone — at least so far.

Oh, that and there are still four full months to raise funds for the November election.

Former Miami Beach Commissioner Michael Góngora is getting a good head start on his bid to get his seat back, raising $70,000 (including a $20,000 loan to himself) for the Group 3 race in his first month.

By comparison, the two others bidding for the open seat — because Commissioner Joy Malakoff doesn’t want to be there if Mayor Philip Levine ain’t — combined haven’t raised half of that, according to the latest campaign finance reports filed last week: Adrian Gonzalez , owner of the well-known Cuban eatery David’s Cafe, has raised $23,738 in three months, and Cindy Mattson, a consultant who is a former compliance officer with the U.S. Department of Labor, has raised $7,000, including a $5,000 loan to herself and a $1,000 contribution from. Mattson has also spent the most, with consultant Miriam Almer getting $3,000 and $625 for event supplies. The two boys haven’t spent $1,000 yet, neither one of them, but for some reason it seems like it’s going to e a showdown between them two.

Almost a third of Góngora’s money comes from addresses outside of Miami Beach and it also includes some bundling, most notably $5,000 from businesses owned by James Cavanaugh, who owns and manages and may want to redevelop several properties in South Beach. He also has $2,000 each from the owner of Mango’s and from lobbyist Manny Prieguez. But Góngora also has a ton of smaller checks from a personal trainer and a speech therapist and quite a few activists like Frank and Marian Del Vecchio and Ray Breslin, who is president of the Collins Park Residents Association. These are people who not only vote, but drum up votes from others.

Read related story: Michael Gongora wants back on Miami Beach commission

About a third of Gonzalez’s $24K treasure chest is also from outside the city — from as far away as New York and Philadelphia and Scarborough, Maine. There’s no obvious bundling but there is some development and construction money, as well as sympatico restaurants like Sliderz and Munchies Cafe and bars with names like Foxhole and Drunken Dragon. Gonzalez has been president of the Lincoln Road merchants association and instrumental in bringing some new events to South Beach, but he is running as a family man, only having photographs of himself with his wife and two daughters on his website.

One of the most interesting contributions, so far, is a $1,000 maximum gift from Gayety Theaters, also known as Club Madonna on Washington Avenue, which has been at odds with the city for years and is now in litigation with it.

The strip club was already at fighting with city officials in 2014 over the owner’s request for a liquor license (denied) when authorities found a 13-year-old runaway girl stripping there by force of three other people who were ultimately charged by police. City Manager Jimmy Morales revoked Club Madonna’s business license. But two weeks later, he reinstated it after the club promised to put in measures that would prevent underage girls from dancing there. A year later, city commissioners passed a human trafficking ordinance requiring stricter records and that strip venues — of which there really only is one — hire a manager to guarantee legal requirements for the nude dancers are met.

So a few months ago, Club Madonna owner Leroy Griffith sued the city of Miami Beach. He says that the new rules have little to do with stopping human trafficking and more to do with shutting down the only strip club on the beach.

Góngora said Griffith offered him a check last month, but he declined.

“He only gives contributions in exchange for a promise to support alcohol and nudity,” Góngora told Ladra.

Okay, sure, but then what do James Cavanaugh and Manny Prieguez give contributions in exchange for?