It looks like the Hialeah Hoodlums — otherwise known as Mayor Carlos Hernandez and his Seguro Que Yes crew of crooked council members –– were recruiting for their criminal enterprise last week.

And they peeled a few members off of Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez‘s old G-Men gang.

Campaign Finance Chair and graft master Ralph Garcia-Toledo, shake-down artist Brian Goldmeier and campaign strategist Jesse Manzano-Plaza were all at an event last week for Hernandez’s re-election campaign. Who is that guy to the right? He looks familiar. And just look at how giddy they are to be back in business — stealing ballots, taking money from developers for promised payola later, coming up with narratives to distract from Hernandez’s abysmal record and the chaos the last couple of years at the new fancy smancy water plant.

Just look at those smiles in this photo posted on Goldmeier’s Instagram. They look like a gang of cats that swallowed unos pajaritos zunzún.

Manzano-Plaza must have been the happiest as the event was at Hialeah Park and he is likely back representing casino giant Genting now that the Gimenez campaign is over. He only resigned temporarily (read: not at all) and after he was caught representing both Genting and Gimenez. He is certainly back at work now.

They don’t care that Hernandez is an admitted loan shark and proven liar who abuses his power. This is simply payback for Hernandez’s help getting Gimenez the ballots from residents in Hialeah Housing. Or is it just another public trough for these little piglets (possible gang name: Three Little Pigs). Ladra is going to have to start looking more closely at the water and sewer contracts and public works projects in the City of Progress.

Why isn’t tricky pollster Dario Moreno and Absentee Ballot Fraud King Al Lorenzo there? Did they not pass the gang initiation test?

Read related story: Liquor store owner gets it: Carlos Hernandez is a criminal

Hernandez is running for his third term. The former cop was the council president when former Mayor Julio Robaina left the office to run for county mayor against Gimenez in the recall result race of 2011. He served as acting mayor and then was elected in November 2011 against former Mayor Raul Martinez and former Sen. Rudy Garcia to serve the remaining two years of the term. In 2013, he was re-elected against former Mayor Julio Martinez and an active resident named Juan Santana, who he had harassed outside his home (and that is the kind of behavior that Goldmeier and Manzano are condoning).

Hopefully, this will Hernandez’s his last campaign. Maybe it takes a woman.

2011 at IHOP: Gavelgirl and The Rock were pals

Ladra hears that Gavelgirl herself, Councilwoman Isis Garcia-Martinez — a former Hernandez ally who, las malas lenguas say, has quit the Hoodlums — is going to challenge Hernandez. Ladra never thought she would say this, but You go, Gavelgirl! It ain’t easy to leave the thug life!

Yeah, sure, we’ve had our issues. Garcia-Martinez defended Hernandez all the time. She even went to his famous pancake breafast at IHOP, which was a campaign event paid for by city dollars and exposed by Ladra in 2011.

Read related story: Gavelgirl files false police report

She also had police eject me from a council meeting, had me illegally trespassed from both City Hall, which is a public building, and the campaign headquarters and tried to get a restraining order against me so that I wouldn’t attend any more meetings — or catch her at campaign breakfasts that were paid for by public money. She couldn’t because she had no legal justification.

But the past is the past. Ladra believes she has seen the error of her ways. She’s broken up with the bully, hasn’t she? She is willing to take him on publicly. Last year, she broke with the rest of the hoodlums to support former Miami-Dade School Board Member Raquel Regalado against Gimenez. She certainly isn’t all lockstep, Seguro Que Yes anymore.

So, until anybody else with a better shot challenges The Rock — an admitted loan shark and liar who had the audacity to pay an ethics fine with thousands of pennies — Ladra will be giving Gavelgirl the benefit of the doubt. And our support. What do they say about the enemy of my enemy?

Hashtag I’m with her. We’ll start a rival gang.

If there is anything we should have learned from the discovery last year that the mayor’s best friend was making $200 an hour as a subcontractor on a Miami-Dade Water and Sewer Department project is that these contracts need a little more scrutiny.

But it looks like we learned nothing because they aren’t getting it.

There are eight contracts worth more than $82.5 million on the county commission agenda Wednesday. But they are bunched up together and on the consent agenda, which means there is no discussion — unless one of our more enlightened commissioners pulls it out to get more details. You know who you are.

They might want to know, for instance, that the mayor’s daughter-in-law works for one of the subcontractors on one of the eight contracts.

Read related story: Barby Gimenez shows up to no-show job on county dime

The three resolutions are to ratify the mayor’s actions. The commission Wednesday just has to accept them; it looks like there’s really no choice. One of them should ask. Because these are not small contracts:

• A two-year countywide contract for cleaning and televising of large diameter sewers for $6 million to Layne Inliner LLC
• A construction contract for water plant upgrades to Poole & Kent for $24.9 million
• A one-year countywide contract for rehabilitation of sanitary sewers by the sectional living method to UIT LLC for $4 million
• A construction contract for the north district wastewater treatemant plant new pumps for existing deep injection well-pumping station to Poole & Kent for $6.3 million
• A two-year countywide contract for removal and replacemnt of “sanitary sewer gravity mains” to Metro Express Inc. for $14 million
• An eight-year (!) non-exclusive professional services agreement for hydrogeologic and engineering services for disposal, water supply, monitoring wells and aquifer storage and recovery to MWH Americas Inc for $16.5 .million
• A six-year (!) non-exclusive professional services agreement for engineering, design and related services for the design of large diameter water pipelines to Parson Brinckerhoff, Inc, for $5.5 million
• A six-year (!) non-exclusive professional services agreement for engineering design and related services for large diameter water pipelines to EAC Consulting for $5.5 million (which sounds redundant and like someone is spreading the wealth among more golden ticket holders),

These are certainly things that must be done. We have federal and state court-mandated consent decrees to correct the years of neglect on our water and sewer system that our county allowed to be perpetrated — perhaps intentionally so that they could then dole out millions of dollars to their friends and contributors. There are 81 consent decree projects, according to the county. And it’s why your water bill went up 6 percent last year, is going up 9 percent this year and will increase by about 30 percent over the next 10 years.

That’s a lot of millions to pass around to the mayor’s family and friends. We’re just getting started.

In this case, the mayor — who was just elected raising $8 million or so worth of gifts from some of these very same contractors and their lobbyists — is doling out contracts and getting the commission’s approval afterwards. Yes, this is allowed because, in 2014, the commission, in all its wisdom (not!), approved a resolution authorizing the mayor to award contracts for already funded capital projects “and related goods and services, and to accelerate the approval of WASD’s (1) consent decree projects and (2) projects identified in WASD’s Multiy Year Capital Plan’s Capital Improvements Program without the need of prior board approval but subject to ratification.”

Read related story: Why Carlos Gimenez should not have four more years

But some of these contracts date as far back as September, which makes Ladra wonder what kept them from the commission ratification for so long. An election, perhaps? Wasn’t Gimenez allowed to award these contracts so they could be expidited? Does this look expidited to anyone? Or does this mean that these prizes, er, we mean contracts have already been awarded and the commission action is just a rubberstamp afterthought?

Of course, this has nothing to do with expiditing nada. This was just good campaign planning. And then they wonder why people think this is the multi-million payback of IOUs collected during the campaign.

Only half of the contractors on Wednesday’s agenda had immediately obvious connections to Gimenez and his campaign. But it’s the big half: $53.2 million of the $82.5 million public trough buffet.

Poole & Kent Co. is represented by former Miami City Manager Sergio Pereira. Parsons Brinckerhoff is represented by Perreira and Gimenez buddy Alex Heckler, who has already gotten pieces of the WASA consent decree pie. MWH Americas is represented by Miguel de Grandy.

All of them have given to Gimenez’s campaign. Heckler had at least one big fundraiser for the mayor in Miami Beach. Most of the companies are familiar from the mayor’s campaign reports also.

But if you look more closely, at the back-up material that comes with the commission agenda, there are also 39 subcontractors between them getting a piece of this very big tarta de guayaba. These include:

1. BND Engineers
2. FR Aleman & Associates (on two contracts)
3. HBC Engineering (on two contracts)
4. HydroDesigns LLC
5. Kimley Horn & Associates
6. MCO Construction and Services
7. Milian Swain and Associates
8. Mirecki Geoscience LLC
9. Schlumberger Water Services USA
10. Tetra Tech Inc
11. The Sharpton Group P.A.
12. AMBRO Inc.
13. Aluces Corporation
14. MAGBE Consulting Services
15. Nova Consulting Inc.
16. Bello and Bello Land Surveying
17. EV Services (where the mayor’s daughter-in-law works)
18. Oracle Consulting Group, LLC
19. Robayna & Associates
20. SRS Engineering
21. 300 Engineering Group
22. Benson Electric, Inc. (on two contracts)
23. Mar’s Contractors, Inc.
24. Exceletech Coating and Application, Inc.
25. Emerson Process Management Power and Water Solutions, Inc.
26. Sunshine State Air Conditioning
27. Gomez and Son Fence
28. Corcel Corp.
29. Ovivo USA LLC
30. Dixie Metal Products, Inc.
31. Shand & Jurs
32. Ferguson Waterworks (on two contracts)
33. Infrastructure Repair Systems
34. Manufactured Technologies Corporation
35. Revere Control Systems, Inc.
36. Carter and Verplanck, Inc
37. Equipment Plus Solutions
38. American Builders Masters
39. A & B Pipe and Supply

Apparently, Gimenez has a lot of IOUs.

Number 17 isn’t really one of the IOUs: EV Services, the company where Barby Rodriguez Gimenez , the mayor’s daughter-in-law, works doing “public outreach.” That’s more like “criteria” for the contractor to get the job. Barby — photographed to the right with Julio Gimenez, who used to work for Munilla Construction Management (which is conspicuously absent from Wednesday’s gravy train) — already has a piece of another contract, getting paid $21.75 an hour.

We don’t know exactly how much more an hour she will get with this contract. That is in further documents that are not yet available to us or to the commission. Those are the details that the few inquisitive commissioners we have left should ask. And Ladra is talking to you, Commissioners Joe Martinez and Xavier Suarez, because Daniella Levine Cava is white water rafting out west on vacation with her husband (she left to the airport from the special anti-immigration commission meeting Friday).

Because these subcontracts is where the devilish details are. This is where the mayor’s BFF’s existing contract exists. Ralph Garcia Toledo, who went from being then Commissioner Gimenez’s driver and bodyguard in the 2011 campaign to being his campaign finance chair and a county employee in 2016, is making $200 an hour for what he self-identifies as mostly clerical work — going to meetings and tracking paperwork. He stands to make a maximum of $18 million over 12 years. A maximum of $18 million.

Read related story: Mayor’s BFF is back for another county contract payola

Well, on that contract anyway. Because it ain’t enough. While Garcia Toledo’s company, GT Construction, is not one of the subcontractors listed for the contracts being considered Wednesday, it is on another contract that is coming up — because this is just the beginning, ladies and gentlemen. A resolution approved by the Chairman’s Policy Council earlier this month and headed to the full commission is a contract award for $11 million for engineering services to Parsons Brinckerhoff (lucky guys they get another one!) to help the Department of Transportation and Public Works “execute projects in its capital improvements plan and implement the Strategic Miami Area Rapid Transit (SMART) Plan, including the study and implementation of future technology, such as driverless vehicles.”

That’s right, the mayor’s one-time driver is working on the future application someday in the county of driverless vehicles. Because this is where the county needs to spend its public dollars? Yes, the day is coming, as a lobbyist was quick to scold me the last time I wrote about this. Ford announced last year that it would release it’s first fully autonomous car — no steering wheel, no brake or gas pedal — in 2021. But should we be studying that now or can we take care of the real transit issues we are facing and worry about that in 2021 when we know what we’re dealing with?

There is little doubt in anybody’s mind that Ralph’s job at water and sewer is a palanca position, overpaid if not downright duplicated, and most likely unnecessary in the first place. Certainly there are county employees — probably dozens of them — that are more qualified than Ralph to do this job for less than $200 an hour. But there it is. And nobody does anything about it. This new subcontract sure doesn’t seem to be any different.

How many more of the 39 subcontractors are getting paid unnecessarily? How much more could those $82.5 million stretch to address other water and sewer issues? Ralph stands to make $18 million over 12 years just on the first contract. Couldn’t we better spend $18 million on something else?

Nobody has talked about the septic tanks in many parts of East and West Kendall — including Pinecrest and Continental Park — that need to be addressed due to sea level rise. That’s an immediate fix. Not more talk about sea level rise. Real action that needs to be taken, sooner rather than later. Let’s start with the homes and properties closest to the water. How much money are we wasting that could go to remediating that?

Commissioners need to go through these contracts more carefully. These are huge numbers and it’s easy to get away with a few hundred thousand here, $18 million there. They should not be abdicating their responsibility to a strong mayor with a history of giving work to those on his friends and family plan.

Ralph’s back for more public money.

Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez‘s best friend and campaign finance chair is up for another piece of a multi-million dollar county contract.

Oh, he’s not the one bidding. They’re smarter than to do it like that.

Ralph Garcia Toledo‘s company is one of the subcontractors listed for one of the bids that will be considered and likely awarded by the county commission in March. It goes before the Commission Chairman’s Policy Council at their first meeting Thursday.

The resolution is a contract award for $11 million for engineering services to Parsons Brinckerhoff to help the Department of Transportation and Public Works execute projects in its capital improvements plan and implement the all-powerful Strategic Miami Area Rapid Transit (SMART) Plan, including the study and implementation of future technology, such as driverless vehicles.

Ralph Garcia Toledo with the mayor’s daughter in law, Barby Rodriguez Gimenez, at a fundraiser years ago for a Miami commission candidate

Garcia Toledo’s bite is tucked inside the contract, where his firm, GT Construction, is listed among the 18 subcontractors. We don’t know what his piece of the pie is, but it can’t be as big as the one he’s already feasting on in the water and sewer department. Ralph is already getting $200 an hour mostly, and self-admittedly, for clerical work — to go to meetings and file documents. He stands to make $18 million over the next 12 years just on that contract.

Now, he’s just getting greedy.

Read related story: Mayor’s pal Garcia-Toledo eats lobster with county staffers

And he’ll get it, too. Chairman Esteban Bovo, who wants to run for mayor in 2020, will want Ralph to help him raise funds. And Garcia Toledo took Commissioner Sally Heyman‘s staff to lunch one day –– at Joe’s Stone Crabs.

This new contract is one of three separate $11 million contracts that are being considered Thursday for the same thing: professional engineering services for the Department of Transportation and Public Works for their capital improvements and the SMART plan. And there are a dozen subcontractors on the other two — one for Parsons Transportation and one for Aecom Technical Services, which is the same company that messed up the reverse osmosis plant in Hialeah but the county still keeps contracting nonetheless.

That makes for 42 subcontractors — or 41, really, since Manuel Vera is on two contracts — who are feeding from this $33-million buffet.

What it looks like, since this has been divided up into three contracts and 41 subcontractors, is that Gimenez is beginning to make good on the campaign IOUs he collected during the last mayoral election, where he took close to $8 million or more in contributions, many from companies and developers doing business with the county.

Or, if not, Ladra bets they’re doing business with the county now.

Ralph can’t be the only lucky duck.

Ralph Garcia-Toledo, the man who went from being Mayor Carlos Gimenez‘s driver to being a grossly-overpaid $200 consultant subcontractor on a $140 million water and sewer contract secured by his BFF, the mayor, sure is living the mogul’s life.

Here he is at Joe’s Stone Crabs, enjoying a leisurely lunch, we presume, with two lovely ladies — who work at County Hall.

It’s good to have palanca!

The picture was posted just around noon Thursday by Mary Juncadella Ferreiro, the deputy chief of staff for Miami-Dade Commissioner Sally Heyman. She is the one on the left. With the duck lips (channeling Barby Gimenez, are we?).

Ladra is told the other woman — the one on the right without the pouty ducky face — is also a Heyman staffer: Chief of Staff Bonnie Michaels, who looks like she really wanted to be in the picture.

Please notice the likes. I don’t follow Juncadella (mamadukes24), who has a private Instagram account (obviously someone I know does). But you can tell from the screen save that Brian Goldmeier, the mayor’s fundraiser, likes the photo. If lobster and blondes keep the Gimenez campaign finance chair happy, what are we gonna do, right?

Read related story: Why Carlos Gimenez should not have four more years

And he can afford it, okay? His contract guarantees him up to $18 million in the next 12 years. What’s a few hundred bucks for a nice dinner with wine and a couple of friends?

Just look at how happy he is! It almost looks like a date and RGT is now divorced from his lobbyist wife, Vicky Garcia Toledo, so we guess it could be. Who’s the third wheel?

Or maybe it was a belated birthday celebration: Garcia-Toledo turned 54 earlier this month.

Bet I know what he wished for: Four more years of the gravy train under Gimenez, which guarantees him lots of lobster in the future.

Gas to drive around to the bigger West Dade and Kendall precincts on Election Day Tuesday: $22.

Bottles of water to stay hydrated: $10.

Lunch at Subway: $8.

The look on Barby Rodriguez-Gimenez‘s face when she realized her father-in-law, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez, had not won the Miami-Dade mayoral race Tuesday and would be forced into a runoff: Priceless.

It’s almost like she’s saying: “F—! I may have to look for a real f—— job!”

Because Rodriguez-Gimenez has a mouth on her and a juicy no-show job at the county. She does “public outreach” for the water and sewer department as part of the same $139-million contract with CH2M Hill that pays the mayor’s BFF and campaign finance chair, Ralph Garcia Toledo, $200 an hour for clerical work. She got the job with subcontractor EV Services around the same time the company got the contract. You know, like it was criteria or something.

So… if Garcia Toledo’s total payout could equal $18 million over 12 years, what is the total payout for the mayor’s daughter-in-law?

Sources have told Ladra that this family botella is being investigated by the authorities. So is Garcia Toledo’s fraudulent use of what are called multipliers to pad invoices when he has no office (it’s a P.O. Box) or staff. We don’t know if that means the State Attorney’s Office or the Commission on Ethics and Public Trust. But it makes sense that it would be looked into. At least if the authorities are doing their job.

Because this rampant cronyism is one of the reasons why a majority voters rejected Carlos Gimenez Tuesday. And the more they learn about him and his friends and family plan — the more relatives and buddies we find feeding on the public trough — the more likely Gimenez will be rejected again in November.

So, yes, Barby, you might want to polish off that resumé and make some calls.

Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez continues to dodge debates with any of his challengers and is expected to be a no-show to the debate Wednesday hosted by a coalition of women’s groups — the first real public debate in such an important election.

A member and former vice president of the League of Women Voters of Miami Dade — which is hosting the debate with the YWCA of Miami-Dade, the Women’s Chamber of Commerce and The Women’s Fund of Miami-Dade —  tweeted last week that the mayor had not responded to their first request. In fact, he is the only candidate not to respond.

So his campaign was sent a letter.

“As the incumbent candidate, we invite you to participate and join your fellow candidates at this debate,” it starts. “We hope you accept the invitation so that you may share your platform and vision for Miami-Dade with our members and community. Through this debate, it is our collective intent to encourage informed and active participation in government.”

Herald county reporter Doug Hanks retweeted her tweet and said “four weeks to go and no debate to cover yet.”

To which the woman replied: “I hope you’ll be there Wed, despite no Gimenez. The people should know all the candidates’ platforms.”

But c’mon, people! Do you really expect Carlos Gimenez to go anywhere in public where he might be asked uncomfortable questions about his pal Ralph Garcia Toledo‘s $200-an-hour job at Water and Sewer? Of course not. Or about his son’s threatening phone calls to candidates who dared run for the same school board seat as his aunt? Nah.

Even before recent news stories got Gimenez hiding his head in the sand, he was not looking forward to debates. He may have told El Nuevo Herald’s Enrique Flor that he would debate all the candidates as he did in 2011, but his campaign has repeatedly declined requests. He was a no-show to the Kendall Federation of Homeowners Association forum last week. And a longtime Spanish-language TV show producer told Ladra that the mayor’s campaign manager, Jesse Manzano, had specifically said they did not want to debate his strongest rival, Miami-Dade School Board Member Raquel Regalado — the only one “within striking distance” according to polls — on a live show.

It’s not just because he’s an even worse speaker in Spanish than he already is in English.

It’s because he knows he can’t deny documented facts about his lack of vision and his mismanagement with special taxing districts and the People’s Transportation Plan half penny sales tax fund, which he has been misdirecting to balance the general budget. It’s because he knows he can’t defend his miserable track record with public safety, where he puts the optics of body cameras before the reality of a 500 officer shortage. It’s because he can’t deflect from the broken promises he has made in terms of transit solutions and transparency.

And it’s because he really doesn’t want to talk about his friend Ralph. Especially since Gimenez — photographed here with Garcia Toledo and former county aviation director Jose Abreu at Greenstreets in Coconut Grove around the same time Ralph started billing the county — might be subpoenaed about this and whatever other deals he and his BFF may have cooked up.

In fact, the only debate that Ladra believes Gimenez has accepted is the one on WPLG’s This Week in South Florida on Aug. 14 — which will be almost two weeks after absentee ballots are mailed out on Tuesday.

Happy coincidence? I think not.

But maybe by then we will know more into a criminal investigation into Garcia Toledo’s fraud. Ladra has been told that the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s office is looking into that lucrative inside deal. Because that’s what it is, ladies and gentlemen. Fraud. The wonderfully detailed Miami Herald story about how this totally unqualified insider — the mayor’s BFF, driver and campaign finance chair — got a lucrative contract where he has billed $672,000 in 18 months for having meetings and filing papers kinda glossed over one thing: That bill is intentionally and fraudulently bloated.

It appears that Garcia Toledo’s hourly rate benefits from a multiplier used in many municipal contracts. They pay vendors more when they have overhead — like office space, staff, equipment. All things that Garcia Toledo, whose address is a P. O. Box, does not have.

Going by past performance by our SAO public corruption unit, this investigation will not be completed before the Aug. 30 election and will probably end at Ralph. But if anyone thinks that Gimenez didn’t know about the inflated invoicing, well then they are not paying attention.

Remember how convoluted this whole process was when a $1.6 billion contract — part of federally- and state-mandated compliance projects we have to undertake in Water and Sewer — was awarded to AECOM after first being awarded to a competing company, CH2M Hill. Don’t feel bad for either of them. They both have a piece of this multi-billion infrastructure overhaul.

But you can be certain that Garcia Toledo’s subcontract as a contract manager — especially when there are probably dozens of county employees who are incredibly more qualified than he is — was part of the required criteria on the hush hush. It was part of the deal made. “You get this chunk of the billion dollar pie but you have to hire my buddy to do, well, really nothing.”

And Ladra will also bet that Ralph is not the only one who was made part of the deal. Las malas lenguas say his is not the only subcontract being investigated because of ties to Mayor Gimenez (more on that later).

An unofficial report in 2014 from the director of the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust said that “the decision making process as a whole, on a project of great significance to Miami-Dade County, has raised substantial issues regarding the integrity of the process and the fairness of the outcome, which could have a negative impact upon the public trust in County government.”

Ya think?

And that, again, is why Gimenez won’t debate. He knows he can’t regain the public trust so why bother having to try?

Especially if there’s going to be uncomfortable questions about his buddy’s sweet deal.