Talk about awkward: Steven Miro, the former chief of staff fired by Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo in 2018, is back at City Hall this week as special advisor to newly elected Commissioner Miguel Gabela.

Miro said his job would be to run the district offices and “make sure the constituent services are up to par, which they haven’t been.” He is going to be making $60,000 a year, which is more than he did as Carollo’s staffer before he became a whistleblower and got fired in 2018. Miro had gone to the State Attorney’s office to report PaellaGate, Carollo’s use of district funds to campaign with Commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla, in the county commission race of 2017, with the Spanish dish at elderly housing.

Read Full Story

It’s been almost three years since Steven Miro sued the city of Miami for wrongful termination after Commissioner Joe Carollo fired him.

The former aide says it was retaliation when he reported that the commissioner used his office and public dollars to campaign for Alex Diaz de la Portilla when the latter was running for county commission. A campaign event at a Little Havana and Nutrition Center location became known as PaellaGate for the Spanish rice served to senior voters by their commissioner and his friend, the candidate.

Read Full Story

The big news isn’t that Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo fired his one-time campaign manager, right hand man and District 3 Liasion Steven Miro. The big news is why.
Sources tell Ladra that Miro made a complaint to the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office recently about Carollo using city funds and city personnel to campaign for Alex Diaz de la Portilla‘s county commission bid, which the former senator lost, coming in third, last month. This about those events at almost every elderly public housing facilities and comedores in the district — and maybe $3,000 or so worth of paella. 
Miro would not comment on the investigation into Carollo using city funds and people — practically everyone on his staff — to promote Diaz de la Portilla. Both men are in a photograph here from Carollo’s own Instagram account, posted May 19, at the Little Havana Nutrition and Activities Center, handing out paper platefuls of paella. Miro would only say that he had hired Matthew Sorelson as his attorney to sue for wrongful termination. “I was given no justification. I am not a slacker. I work,” he said.
Sorelson works with JC Planas and was one of the lawyers working for Alfie Leon, who challenged Carollo’s residency days after he lost last year’s commission runoff election, with only 47%. Leon lost his final appeal last month when a judge, in essence and loathe to overturn an election, basically said he acted too late. Sorelson confirmed to Ladra Wednesday night that he had been retained by Miro but would not comment further on the merits of the case.
Carollo did not return two calls and two text messages to he and his wife’s cellphones late Wednesday. But if it’s true, it would be a little ironic in the sense that Carollo said he was fired as city manager in Doral by Luigi Boria because he was cooperating in state attorney led investigations against the then mayor. He was a whistleblower. Now he is firing the guy who blew the whistle on him?
Ladra has three sources, including one very close to the investigation, who told her that Miro had made the complaint to the SAO in recent weeks. And it may be a good one: There are photos all over social media indicating that Carollo used city resources to campaign for Alex. “This week, I was able to visit our seniors and bring a paella lunch,” Carollo wrote on the Instagram Post. Facebook photos on his wife’s page from an event at another public housing facility are posted under “A big day! Supporting senator Alex Diaz de la Portilla in his career to the Miami-Dade County Commission District 5.”
There are also a number of complaints against Carollo being investigated simultaneously by the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust — which should maybe just open a Carollo division. Miro, we’ve been told, is included in at least one of those complaints.
Read related: We get Joe Carollo in Miami — and all the drama, interest it comes with
But of course he is. In fact, people for the most part think of him as Carollo’s go-to guy for all the dark stuff. Miro practically ran Carollo’s campaign. Blogger Al Crespo called Miro the commissioner’s “enforcer,” and here they are, seemingly buds, on the night of Carollo’s victory a little more than six months ago.
“Since Carollo has been Commissioner, Miro was the guy who it was claimed would show up at your door if you pissed Joe off, like he was alleged to have done a couple months ago when he showed up with cops and tried to get the owners of that illegal sandwich shop on SW 8th Street arrested,” Crespo wrote when he announced the firing in his blog this week.
One can’t help but wonder if that’s one of the ethics complaints.
So what made Miro, who has been carrying Carollo’s mud for years, suddenly turn around and turn him in to the SAO?
Well, dicen las malas lenguas that it was because he supported Zoraida Barreiro, like Carollo was reportedly going to do until he pulled the old switcheroo again at the last minute. Barreiro — who made it into the runoff June 19 against Eileen Higgins — had endorsed Carollo against Leon after she came in third in the Miami race. And Crazy Joe was expected to return the favor. Only he apparently changed his mind. At least he did it this time before Barreiro called a press conference about his endorsement.
But it might also be because it is one thing to take some uniforms with you to flex some muscle with a sandwich guy that has no permits but refuses to close shop, and it is quite another to steal public dollars for political favors. And the line has to be drawn somewhere.

Read Full Story